Climate action may reduce the risk of unemployment: An insight into the city-level interconnections among the sustainable development goals

Abstract

As for the interconnections among 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), reconciling decarbonization (SDG 13) with the needs of economic growth and productive employment (SDG 8) is vital. However, balancing trade-offs between SDG 13 and SDG 8 is complicated by the difficulty of assessing how the interconnections between these two SDGs vary across cities. Here we identified the patterns among CO2 emissions, economic growth and employment structure across 297 Chinese cities through machine learning. We show that, industrial transitions towards the tertiary sector are not always the optimal option for decoupling economic growth from CO2 emissions. In contrast, manufacture and construction industries with sustainable technical enhancement can not only promote decoupling but also stabilize social employment. Our study thus has provided novel insights into the city-level interactions between SDG 13 and SDG 8, enhancing the realism of guiding regions to act as a whole for nationwide sustainability improvement.