Country diagnostics for low carbon development: Can developing countries pursue simultaneous implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement?

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the 2030 Development Agenda and the Paris Agreement, both agreed in 2015, call for the world to simultaneously address development and climate change. Some researchers argue that the SDGs put more emphasis on the value of economic growth, and if so, it would pose a challenging situation, especially to developing countries considering the nexus among economic growth, energy consumption, and CO 2 emissions. In order to understand to what extent the SDGs advancement accompanies CO 2 emissions increase, a study is needed to investigate development pathways of various countries during the past decades. This study aims to empirically identify well‐performing countries, in terms of both the SDGs implementation and CO 2 emission mitigations, and investigate causes of the difference from the others through the decomposition analysis. The results confirm a good number of well‐performers, particularly among the Latin American and the transition countries. It is found that well‐targeted policy interventions for expanding the essential public services such as health, education, energy, water, and sanitation, are effective for advancing the SDGs. The decomposition analysis shows that the countries which made significant advancements in the SDGs had tangible positive economic growth effects on their per‐capita CO 2 emissions. But if policy attention is paid to reduce the energy and carbon intensities, especially in the energy‐intensive sectors, such as the industry, energy, and transport sectors, the increases of per‐capita CO 2 emissions can be minimized. Proper private sector engagements are considered effective to this end.