Toward achieving Sustainable Development Goals in Ivory Coast: Simulating pathways to sustainable development

With the adoption of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, countries face the challenge of implementing strategies to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). To support the Ivory Coast Government in this process, we have developed the Treshold21-iSDG model, which integrates long-term social, economic and environmental policy analyses for SDG attainment. Specifically, we assess the impact of the implementation of the National Prospective Study (NPS) on achievement of the 17 SDGs, and identify necessary strategic adjustments. We compare SDG attainment under three scenarios: business-as-usual, NPS, and an SDG scenario that includes adjustments for critical aspects of SDGs not sufficiently covered by the NPS. The analysis identifies cross-sector impacts of policies and highlights the benefits of coordinated implementation of comprehensive and coherent SDG strategies. Such findings emphasize the importance of integrated simulation models to support planning of SDG strategies and to complement information provided by stakeholder engagement and other sector-specific or qualitative tools.