How can a coherent policy mix, spanning mitigation, education, employment, and industry, shape Italy’s sustainable future? A new contribution by CMCC to the ASviS Spring Report 2026 explores this question using a forward-looking scenario analysis, showing how integrated policy action can improve sustainability outcomes across multiple dimensions.

CMCC has contributed to the new ASviS Spring Report 2026 – Scenarios for Italy to 2030 and 2050: Sustainable investments and policies in an unstable world, delivering quantitative projections on how sustainability may evolve under alternative policy pathways.

ASviS – the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development – brings together institutions, associations, and civil society actors working to promote sustainable development in Italy. Its reports provide an overview of sustainability trends and policy priorities, combining statistical analysis with forward-looking assessments.

CMCC analysis is conducted using the ASDI framework (Aggregated Sustainable Development Goals Index), which quantifies current well‑being and future sustainability based on 29 indicators covering 16 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The methodology combines historical data, empirical analysis, and a macroeconomic model.

“The ASviS report provides a comprehensive assessment of Italy’s sustainability performance and its alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals. Our contribution complements this analysis by providing a forward‑looking perspective on sustainability trends up to 2050.” explains Lorenza Campagnolo, CMCC researcher and contributor to the report.

In 2020, Italy ranked second to last within the European Union based on the indicators considered. Italy’s gap with the top performer (Germany) is mainly explained by weaker performance in the economic dimension, with a smaller but still noticeable difference in the social dimension. By 2050, under the SSP2 reference scenario, which assumes a middle-of-the-road pathway for socio-economic drivers, Italy is expected to experience only a modest improvement in overall sustainability, driven mainly by economic gains, while social progress remains limited and environmental performance deteriorates, leading the country to rank last among EU regions and macro‑regions in terms of sustainability.

Simulating climate mitigation, education, employment, and industrial policies individually shows that targeted actions can improve specific sustainability indicators, but may also entail economic trade‑offs, particularly in the case of mitigation policies when not accompanied by investments in efficiency and technological change.

“A key result is that combining policies across dimensions leads to stronger sustainability gains by correcting the imbalances that arise when policies are implemented in isolation,” says Campagnolo. “At the same time, these interventions are not sufficient to close the remaining gap to the SDGs – while some co‑benefits emerge, certain indicators, such as intensive water use, that are not directly targeted may even deteriorate.”

Analysing policy implications through a sustainability lens makes it possible to understand how policy choices affect environmental, economic, and social dimensions simultaneously.

“The importance of this type of analysis lies in revealing how deeply interconnected sustainability dimensions are,” Campagnolo explains. “Using models and forward‑looking scenario analysis helps uncover trade‑offs and co‑benefits that are not immediately apparent to policymakers.”

CMCC has previously contributed to earlier editions of the ASviS reports, supporting its efforts to strengthen evidence-based sustainability discussions in Italy through scientific analysis and long-term scenario modelling.