The COVID-19 pandemic is causing unprecedented damage to our society and economy, globally impacting progress towards the SDGs. The integrated perspective that Agenda 2030 calls for is ever more important for understanding the vulnerability of our eco-socio-economic systems and for designing policies for enhanced resilience. Since the emergence of COVID-19, countries and international institutions have strengthened their monitoring systems to produce timely data on infections, fostering data-driven decision-making often without the support of systemic-based simulation models. Evidence from the initial phases of the pandemic indicates that countries that were able to implement effective policies before the number of cases grew large (e.g. Australia) managed to contain COVID-19 to a much greater extent than others. We argue that prior systemic knowledge of a phenomenon provides the essential information to correctly interpret data, develop a better understanding of the emerging behavioural patterns and potentially develop early qualitative awareness of how to react promptly in the early phases of destructive phenomena, eventually providing the ground for building more effective simulation models capable of better anticipating the effects of policies. This is even more important as, on its path to 2030, humanity will face other challenges of similar dynamic nature. Chief among these is Climate Change. In this paper, we show how a Systems Thinking and System Dynamics modelling approach is useful for developing a better understanding of these and other issues, and how systemic lessons learned from the COVID-19 case can help decision makers anticipate the destructive dynamics of Climate Change by improving perceptions of the potential impacts of reinforcing feedback and delays, ultimately leading to more timely interventions to achieve the SDGs and mitigate Climate Change risks.

The UK was one of the countries worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. A strict lockdown from early 2021 combined with an aggressive vaccination programme enabled a gradual easing of lockdown measures to be introduced whilst both deaths and reported case numbers reduced to less than 3% of their peak. The emergence of the Delta variant in April 2021 has reversed this trend, and the UK is once again experiencing surging cases, albeit with reduced average severity due to the success of the vaccination rollout. This study presents the results of a modelling exercise which simulates the progression of the pandemic in the UK through projection of daily case numbers as lockdown lifts. The model projects that if lockdown restrictions are lifted in July 2021, UK COVID-19 cases will peak at hundreds of thousands daily in most viable scenarios, reducing in late 2021 as immunity acquired through both vaccination and infection reduces the susceptible population percentage. Further lockdown measures can be used to reduce daily cases.

This paper presents the results from a national scenario modelling study for Fiji with broader relevance for other countries seeking to achieve the SDGs. We develop and simulate a business-as-usual and six alternative future scenarios using the iSDG-Fiji system dynamics model and evaluate their performance on the SDGs in 2030 and global planetary boundaries (PBs) and the ‘safe and just space’ (SJS) framework in 2050.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN 2030 Agenda are today’s global roadmap to sustainable development. Adopted in 2015, the SDGs are the culmination of 50 years of debate and consensus building on the imperatives of sustainable development. The 2030 Agenda explicitly calls for integrated methods for SDG achievement. Two multisector modeling frameworks have emerged to address integration in SDG policy: the system dynamics based Integrated Sustainable Development Goal (iSDG) model and the multimethod International Futures (IFs) model. Both are feedback rich and thoroughly integrated, and we term them as Integrated Systems Models (ISMs). ISMs enable quantification of policy impacts across SDG sectors, helping identify policies that benefit numerous SDGs as well as potential trade-offs. These benefits have been witnessed in countries where these ISMs have been put to task on SDG policy. As the sustainable development paradigm becomes increasingly integrated, a central role is being created for further development of ISMs.