SDG-pathfinding: co-creating pathways to sustainable development in Africa (SDG-pathfinding)

ON Odume, JL Tanner, CG Palmer, A Magwala and C Murata
June 2021 – December 2024

Sponsor: Belmont Forum via the National Research Foundation (NRF)
Collaborators: Dr Barbara Willarts, IIASA, Austria; Olivier Barreteau, INRAE, France; Henri Mathieu Lo, GAIA, Senegal

The SDG-Pathfinding project contributes to the cocreation of sustainability pathways to meet multiple sustainable development goals (SDGs) in parts of Africa, through a bottom-up participatory approach that promotes cooperation and mutual learning across sectors and actors. Fimela district (Senegal), and the Swartkops catchment (South Africa), were selected as representative archetypal expressions of SDG-hotspots, that is, regions where multiple SDG gaps intersect. The project adopts a systems approach to governance-biophysical global interactions. On the science frontier, the project co-develops a climate-friendly participatory scenario tool where stakeholders engage in a hands-on exercise to explore interlinkages and opportunities between resources, policies, institutions, and multi-actors involved in pursuing the SDG agenda. Using national and global narratives of future changes in climate, demographics, health, and economic development trends and uncertainties, stakeholders explore suitable policy interventions and innovative governance forms within their operating space to meet the SDG agenda, and identify the costs and benefits of action with respect to going BAU.

The SDG Living Labs are established in each of the two case studies, building on existing networks in a two-stage process: in Stage 1, stakeholders engage in developing a baseline assessment, that is, an understanding of what the specific governance barriers and opportunities to sustainability in each SDG-hotspot are. In Stage 2, stakeholders co-develop user-inspired, use-oriented sustainability vision(s), and the associated transformation pathways required to localise and support the implementation of SDG agenda at sub-national levels. This mixed approach followed to date in this project helps to identify bottom-up means to overcome impediments to sustainability and resource equity taking into account national drivers and global changing conditions. The SDG-Pathfinding framework is flexible, transferrable, and broadly applicable to explore tailored SDG challenges and sustainability pathways.

Last Modified: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 12:41:11 SAST