Chapter 8: Urban Systems and Other Settlements
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8.2 Co-benefits and Trade-offs of Urban Mitigation Strategies
Figure 8.4: Co-benefits of urban mitigation actions. The first column lists urban mitigation options. The second column indicates synergies with the SDGs. The third column indicates both synergies and/or trade-offs. The dots represent confidence levels with the number of dots representing levels from low to high. In the last column, confidence levels for synergies and/or trade-offs are provided separately. A plus sign (+) represents synergy and a minus sign (–) represents a trade-off. Supplementary Material 8.SM.1 provides 64 references and extends the SDG mappings that are provided in Thacker et al. (2019) and Fuso Nerini et al. (2018). Please see Table 17.SM.1 for details and Annex II for the methodology of the SDG assessment.
Please refer to page 874 of the report to see the referenced figure.
8.2.2 Economic Development, Competitiveness, and Equity
Sustainable management of urban ecosystems entails addressing economic growth, equity, and good governance. In total, 102 SDG targets (99 synergies and 51 trade-offs) are identified with published evidence of relationships with urban ecosystems – out of the 169 in the 2030 Agenda (Maes et al. 2019). The targets require action in relation to urban ecosystem management, environmental improvements, equality related to basic services, long-term economic growth, economic savings, stronger governance, and policy development at multiple scales.
Mitigation measures related to different sectors can provide co-benefits and reduce social inequities. Transport-related measures, such as transportation demand management, transit-oriented development (TOD), and promotion of active transport modes provide economic co-benefits through, for example, reducing health care costs linked with pollution and cardiovascular diseases, improving labour productivity, and decreasing congestion costs (including waste of time and money) (Sharifi et al. 2021). As a case-in-point, data from cities such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Manila, Beijing, Mexico City, Dakar, and Buenos Aires indicate that economic costs of congestion account for a considerable share of their gross domestic product (GDP), ranging from 0.7% to 15.0% (Dulal 2017) (Section 8.4.2).
Since policy interventions can result in negative impacts or trade-offs with other objectives, fostering accessibility, equity, and inclusivity for disadvantaged groups is essential (Viguié and Hallegatte 2012; Sharifi 2020; Pörtner et al. 2021). Anti-sprawl policies that aim to increase density, or the introduction of large green areas in cities could increase property prices, resulting in trade-offs with affordable housing and pushing urban poor further away from cities (Reckien et al. 2017; Alves et al. 2019). Deliberate strategies can improve access of low-income populations to jobs, and gender-responsive transport systems that can enhance women’s mobility and financial independence (Viguié and Hallegatte 2012; Lecompte and Juan Pablo 2017; Reckien et al. 2017; Priya Uteng and Turner 2019).
Low-carbon urban development that triggers economic decoupling and involves capacity-building measures could have a positive impact on employment and local competitiveness (Dodman 2009; Kalmykova et al. 2015; Chen et al. 2018b; García-Gusano et al. 2018; Hu et al. 2018; Shen et al. 2018). Sustainable and low-carbon urban development that integrates issues of equity, inclusivity, and affordability while safeguarding urban livelihoods, providing access to basic services, lowering energy bills, addressing energy poverty, and improving public health, can also improve the distributional effects of existing and future urbanisation (Friend et al. 2016; Claude et al. 2017; Colenbrander et al. 2017; Ma et al. 2018; Mrówczyńska et al. 2018; Pukšec et al. 2018; Wiktorowicz et al. 2018; Ramaswami 2020).
