In 1992 the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) launched the interdisciplinary research programme ‘Global Dynamics and Sustainable Development’. The main objective of this research has been to investigate the concept of sustainable development from a global perspective. A key project within the programme was the development of a global model called TARGETS (Tool to Assess Regional and Global Environmental and health Targets for Sustainability). TARGETS belongs to a class of integrated assessment models which build on a tradition started in the early 1970s with the World3 model used in the Report to the Club of Rome. Despite better information and greater insights into the global system, a model like TARGETS only represents a simplified description of the world, and therefore still has many limitations and deficiencies. However, TARGETS distinguishes itself from previous integrated assessment models in that it deals explicitly with prevailing uncertainties in the form of perspective-based model routes.

It has been our intention for the TARGETS model to be used to assess the interlinkages between social, economic and biophysical processes on a global scale. One of our motivations has been the fact that the increasing rate and complexity of global change processes forces us to go beyond disciplinary boundaries and carry out integrative research, using integrated assessment models. We see the TARGETS model as a tool for experimenting with new concepts and techniques, not as some kind of ‘truth machine’ that generates predictions. More particularly, we have aimed at to produce fresh insights – not ready-made answers – on issues of global change processes in the context of the Rio Declaration on Sustainable Development and Agenda 21.