Hughes, B. B. (2025, July 22). Analysis of Integrated Global SDG Pursuit: Challenges and Progress. Sustainability, 17(15), 6672. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17156672

How can we more fully analyze potential progress toward the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, globally and by country? Methodological challenges include (1) the comprehensiveness of issue coverage, integration of causal elaboration, and geographic detail in available models; (2) clear quantification of goal targets; and (3) specification of scenario interventions that connect meaningfully to the potential leverage of agents. This study uses a large-scale, global but country-based analytical system that tightly integrates multiple issue-area models to push against methodological challenges. It explores the prospects for progress toward selected quantified targets across all goals, using scenarios that consider potential agency-linked interventions relative to the Current Path (CP). The scenarios distinguish interventions focused on Human Development (HD) and natural system sustainability (NSS) plus a Combined SDG scenario (CSDG). Even with a large, integrated push through 2030 and 2050, the world in aggregate will fail to reach many targets, and a great many of the 188 countries represented will fall short. Also of interest is possible tension between the underlying thrusts of HD- and NSS-oriented interventions. Both the Current Path of key variables and intervention leverage constraints make NSS goals harder to reach than HD goals. Because synergies of action considerably outweigh trade-offs, however, complementarity better characterizes the two intervention sets.

Hughes, Barry B. International Futures: Choices in the Creation of a New World Order. 2. ed. Dilemmas in World Politics. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996.

Hughes, B.B. (2019) International Futures: Building and Using Global Models. Academic Press (Elsevier Ltd).

In March 2019, International Futures: Building and Using Global Models by Barry B. Hughes was published by Elsevier Academic Press. The volume has two purposes: (1) to explain (by no means fully document) the International Futures (IFs) model system and (2) to place it in the context of the larger environment of global modeling. It thereby is commentary on the state of the enterprise of building and using global models, its strengths and challenges.

Founding Director of the Pardee Center and developer of IFs, Dr.Hughes is John Evans Professor at the Korbel School and now serves as Senior Scientist and Mentor to the Center. His principal interests are in global change, computer simulation models for economic, energy, food, population, environmental, and socio-political forecasting, and policy analysis. The fundamental concerns that synthesize these interests are developing effective response to long-term global change and improving the long-term human condition.

Hughes, B. B. (2019). International Futures: Building and Using Global Models. London Academic Press, An Imprint Of Elsevier.

eBook ISBN: 9780128134221
Hardcover ISBN: 9780128042717
In March 2019, International Futures: Building and Using Global Models by Barry B. Hughes was published by Elsevier Academic Press. The volume has two purposes: (1) to explain (by no means fully document) the International Futures (IFs) model system and (2) to place it in the context of the larger environment of global modeling. It thereby is commentary on the state of the enterprise of building and using global models, its strengths and challenges.

Founding Director of the Pardee Center and developer of IFs, Dr. Hughes is a Distinguished University Professor at the Korbel School and now serves as Senior Scientist and Mentor to the Center. His principal interests are in global change, computer simulation models for economic, energy, food, population, environmental, and sociopolitical forecasting, and policy analysis. The fundamental concerns that synthesize these interests are developing effective response to long-term global change and improving the long-term human condition.

Hughes, B.B. (2019) International Futures: Building and Using Global Models. Academic Press (Elsevier Ltd).

In March 2019, International Futures: Building and Using Global Models by Barry B. Hughes was published by Elsevier Academic Press. The volume has two purposes: (1) to explain (by no means fully document) the International Futures (IFs) model system and (2) to place it in the context of the larger environment of global modeling. It thereby is commentary on the state of the enterprise of building and using global models, its strengths and challenges.

Founding Director of the Pardee Center and developer of IFs, Dr.Hughes is John Evans Professor at the Korbel School and now serves as Senior Scientist and Mentor to the Center. His principal interests are in global change, computer simulation models for economic, energy, food, population, environmental, and socio-political forecasting, and policy analysis. The fundamental concerns that synthesize these interests are developing effective response to long-term global change and improving the long-term human condition.

Hughes, Barry B. 2015. "International Futures (IFs) and integrated, long-term forecasting of global transformations." Futures 81: 98-118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.07.007

Hughes, Barry B. 2015. "IFs Economic Model Documentation." Working paper 2015.07.20. Pardee Center for International Futures, Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, University of Denver, Denver, CO.

Hughes, Barry B. 2014. "IFs Population Model Documentation." Working paper 2014.03.05.b. Pardee Center for International Futures, Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, University of Denver, Denver, CO.

Hughes, Barry B. 2014. "IFs Interstate Politics Model Documentation." Working paper 2014.02.17. Pardee Center for International Futures, Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, University of Denver, Denver, CO.

Pardee Center for International Futures (Barry. B. Hughes, ed.). 2013.

“Development-Oriented Policies and Alternative Human Development Paths: Aggressive but Reasonable Interventions.” United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Occasional Paper 2013/05. UNDP Human Development Report Office, New York, NY.