SUPERVISOR: Willi HAAS

PROJECT ASSIGNED TO: Eva WRENTSCHITSCH

The Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim for long-term sustainability transformations, yet achieving these goals requires ambitious policies and profound system changes. The strong interconnections among the goals cause both synergies and trade-offs that need to be managed to enable a sustainable transformation. This doctoral project investigates how integrated systems perspectives can support Austria’s transition towards long-term sustainability by explicitly investigating the interactions of climate change mitigation with other sustainability goals. It addresses the current lack of quantitative national pathways to achieve progress for the SDGs, with particular focus on the interactions between climate action (SDG 13), inequality (SDG 10), decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), and poverty reduction (SDG 1).

The research applies qualitative as well as quantitative systems modelling to explore how stakeholders perceive interactions and leverage points around selected SDG targets, how these insights align with existing literature, and how sustainability scenarios can guide Austria towards long-term SDG progress while managing trade-offs and synergies. To address these questions, the project first analyses Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs) that capture stakeholders’ mental models, highlighting important system dynamics and potential leverage points. Second, a quantitative system dynamics model (iSD-AT) simulates long-term development pathways for Austria, comparing an existing business-as-usual climate mitigation scenario with a co-created sustainability scenario that integrates ecological, social, and economic dimensions and is derived from a participation process.

The project advances understanding of SDG interactions by applying a systems perspective and integrating stakeholder knowledge, and identifies strategies to balance trade-offs while amplifying synergies in national pathways to sustainability.