OECD September 2019

Albert van JaarsveldInternational Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

Systems thinking and a sustainable future: avoiding systemic collapse

• Well-being (quality of life)• Wealth - 71% of adults own < than $ 10 000 in wealth• Health - life expectancy has doubled in a century

- one billion are obese while less go hungry- 100 million acute hunger (2018)

• Environment - 9 out of 10 people breathe air with high levels pollutants- 1 in 9 people use water from unsafe sources - 2.3 billion people lack access to a toilet

• Happiness - more die by suicide than war and violence- happiness inequality is on the rise

• Everyone in the world has a mobile phone but a billion people have no access to electricity

• 3 billion people suffer from land degradation, desertificationhave missed out on the great acceleration

Human society: quo vadis

Many of todays problems are the result of yesterdays solutions

Agenda 2030• Gift to Humanity (2015)• Most important global contribution since the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1984)

Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planetSteffen et al. (2015). Science 347: 6223

Education, Gender & Inequality

SDGs:Prosperity

Social InclusionSustainability

Energy Decarbonization

& Sustainable Industry

HealthWellbeing &

Demography

Sustainable Cities &

Communities,

SustainableFood Land, Water

& Oceans

Digital Revolutionfor Sustainable Development

Six Major Transformations (TWI2050.org)

A dignified future for humanity

What kind of society do wewant our children to live in?

The economic engine – speed above all else• Oil gauge• Rev counter• Fuel gauge• Temperature gauge(basket of indicators)

Growth may not be a great mirror for societal well-being

Simon Kuznets – “What are we growing? And why?”

VOLATILITY

COMPLEXITY

AMBIGUITY

Major challenges for decision making(no roadmap – navigate a risk landscape)

UNCERTAINTY

IIASA Integrated Assessment Framework

air pollution emission coefficients & abatement costs

Population Economy

G4Mspatially explicit

forest management model

GLOBIOMintegrated

agricultural, bioenergy and forestry model

MESSAGEsystems engineering model (all

energy sectors, all GHGs, pollutants and water)

socio-economic drivers

consistency of land-cover changes (spatially explicit

maps of agricultural, urban, and forest land)

carbon and biomass price

agricultural and forest bioenergy potentials,

land-use emissions and mitigation

potential

National level Projections

MAGICCsimple climate

model

GAINSGHG and air

pollution mitigation

model

GHG emissions

demandresponse

iteration

MACROAggregated

macro-economic model

energy service prices

Socio-economic drivers

EPICagricultural crop model

AccessFuel choice model

for cooking

Transport Module Modal split,

cost and value of time

BeWhereSpatially explicit

Techno-economic energy system

optimization model

GEO-WIKI.ORGCitizen Science

Community Water Model (CWatM)Hydrological model for

water supply, water demand, water quality

linking to hydroeconomy

Energy demand and water availability

Land use and water availability

Recycling materials

Renewable energy

Biodiversity enhanced

Human societies preserved

Health and well-being supported

Wealth beyond financial

Resilient economic

system

Consumption-growth conundrum

Appropriate consumption, production, trade and development (appropriate growth/ taxes)

Developing countries tax revenue (%GDP)

OECD countries tax revenue (%GDP)

Sustainability

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