Consistent assessments of pathways toward sustainable development and climate stabilization

Many of the numerous difficult issues facing the world today involve relationships entailing trade-offs and synergies. This study quantitatively assesses some alternative scenarios using integrated assessment models, and provides several indicators relating to sustainable development and climate change, such as indicators of income (per capita GDP), poverty, water stress, food access, sustainable energy use, energy security, and ocean acidification, with high consistencies among the indicators within a scenario. According to the analyses, economic growth helps improve many of the indicators for sustainable development. On the other hand, climate change will induce some severe impacts such as ocean acidification under a non-climate intervention scenario (baseline scenario). Deep emission reductions, such as to 2 degrees C above the pre-industrial level, could cause some sustainable development indicators to worsen. There are complex trade-offs between climate change mitigation levels and several sustainable development indicators. A delicately balanced approach to economic growth will be necessary for sustainable development and responses to climate change.