Sustainability goals combining social and environmental aspects

Abstract: This thesis examines how to take into account both environmental and social sustainability goals to be used in scenarios or in policymaking.In paper I, we select four sustainability goals that have to be fulfilled by 2050 in normative future scenarios for Sweden in a degrowth context. Two goals address ecological challenges, climate change and land use issues specifically. The other two goals address social issues and deal with participation and influence in society as well as resource security and distribution. The environmental goals will require significant reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land use compared to today's levels. The social goals are within reach today, although the degree of fulfillment differs across different groups in society.In paper II, we review existing and suggested climate or energy targets at a global, national and local scale and search for justice perspectives or for proposals for such perspectives. We find that the justice aspect is not explicitly formulated in existing climate and energy targets and that, the community of justice i.e. the receivers of benefits or burdens, in our reviewed examples, is limited to human beings, thereby excluding all other living beings.In paper III, we assess how four different backcasting scenarios for land use in a Swedish context, all of which fulfil a climate target of zero CO2 emissions in 2060, impact on other sustainability goals. We conduct a goal conflict analysis between the chosen climate goal and the other Swedish environmental goals, the gender equity goals and the public health goal. We find that there are more potential goal conflicts in scenarios with no global climate agreement.From the results of all three papers, I then discuss several aspects that have to be taken into account when setting goals, such as the major uncertainties associated with long-term goals, the elusiveness, the normativity of goals and the need to separate goals from the means to achieve the goals.