Closing decent living gaps in sustainable development pathways with strong equity improvements

Environmental action and international development are two closely linked agendas that dominate international policy discussions. It is therefore important to understand how inequalities and basic needs that are central to development are affected or resolved by environmental policies.

Here, we will showcase new development on integrating the material prerequisites for human well-being (using the Decent Living Standards framework; DLS) with energy and emissions scenarios (using Integrated Assessment Models; IAMs). This provides a representation of inequalities in IAMs beyond monetary indicators, at a country-level, for three sectors.

Our new model (DESIREv0.1.0) can be used to both (i) steer the construction of scenarios with IAMs through an iterative process by providing energy targets, and (ii) assess the size of the energy gap over time, with the related need for redistribution, increase in energy use, or efficiency improvements.

In this presentation, we focus on the outcomes of a set of Sustainable Development Pathways (SDPs), which pursue the achievement of all Sustainable Development Goals. All scenarios assume radical within-country inequality reductions and meet stringent climate mitigation targets in line with the Paris Agreement. Between-country economic inequality reduces faster than in SSP1 too, with the speed of convergence varied across scenarios.

We project extremely fast reductions in populations living below the energy requirement for DLS. The energy requirements for DLS themselves decrease due to improvements in service provisioning efficiency. Energy gaps also become very small for household energy needs, and by mid-century all regions have some energy beyond DLS. We also show how the emissions related to delivering energy for DLS are less than the remaining carbon budget under the SDPs, but much more if no climate policies are implemented. compare the emissions related to providing DLS to the remaining carbon budget.