Opportunities for Climate Mitigation and Sustainable Development (OPTIMISM)

Research Project, 2019 – 2020

This project addresses the challenge: How can we make sure rapid and extensive action to mitigate climate change can be leveraged to deliver both Agenda 2030 and a well below 1.5 C world? The project takes a whole system perspective. It uses the sustainable development goal framework to analyse (i) how interactions between human development and the environment change with rapid and extensive climate mitigation, and (ii) how policy and practice interventions informed by a better understanding of enabling interactions can come together to create transformational change. The main objectives of the project are to:- Assess the vulnerabilities and critical thresholds that underpin social, economic, cultural and natural system constraints to collectively achieving the SDGs, focussing on climate mitigation and interactions between goals.- Explore policy and practice interventions, operating at a range of scales and contexts that can influence paths by which progress towards the overarching goals can be made.- Evaluate the implications for national and international efforts to achieve the SDGs and climate change policies, taking into account local impacts to identify key leverage points for how action can be scaled from local best practice to effective global action.- Recommend improvements in the methodological frameworks used to assess SDGs interactions and to integrate that knowledge into sectoral, national and international decision-making processes.