PEER Research on Sustainable Development Goals: Tackling and Managing Risks with SDGs (PEER-TRISD)

The Partnership for European Environmental Research (PEER) as a network excels in the research on the biophysical and socio-ecological impacts linked to the implementation of the SDGs and the associated risks.

The pathways toward SDGs may lead to negative, unintended side-effects such as environmental impacts of green consumption patterns or over-use of water or chemicals for the intensified food-production. Although SDGs are implicitly about reducing or controlling risks (e.g., they deal with acting on climate change, tackling sustainability questions in cities and communities as well as responsible consumption and production patterns), there is no specific SDG for risks, and both the SDGs and the associated 169 targets address risks in an incoherent fashion.

The project PEER-TRISD aims to:

• Create a common understanding on what SDG-related risks exist, should be monitored, anticipated, and governed in the public and private sectors
• Analyse the monitoring, anticipation and governance needs, the existing UN, EU and national level systems and specific SDG systems
• Co-create recommendations that can support risk management in the implementation of SDGs in the policy field but also among the practitioners
• Identify needs for future research efforts and policy measures

 The following key tasks are planned:

• Co-creation workshops for actor and activity scanning
• System mapping through literature review
• Multi-level analysis of monitoring systems, indicators, and statistics
• Case studies of existing systems with SDGs to analyse of interlinkage and risk (e.g., cities, life on land, water)

Coordinating institutes:

UFZ – Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research and SYKE – Finnish Environment Institute