Three main dimensions reflected by national SDG performance

Xutong Wu; Bojie Fu; Shuai Wang; Yanxu Liu; Ying Yao; Yingjie Li; Zhenci Xu; Jianguo Liu

doi:10.1016/j.xinn.2023.100507

Three main dimensions reflected by national SDG performance

Innovation (Camb). 2023 Sep 9;4(6):100507. doi: 10.1016/j.xinn.2023.100507. eCollection 2023 Nov 13.

Authors

Xutong Wu¹, Bojie Fu^{1

2}, Shuai Wang¹, Yanxu Liu¹, Ying Yao¹, Yingjie Li³, Zhenci Xu⁴, Jianguo Liu⁵

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
³ Natural Capital Project, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
⁴ Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China.
⁵ Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA.

Abstract

Unraveling the complexity of the 17 interacting sustainable development goals (SDGs) is crucial for their achievement. Empirically revealing the dimensions of the SDGs helps generalize the dominant features of SDGs and better understand their drivers. Here, using a database of 166 countries' progress toward achieving each individual SDG, we found that about 70% of the variability of national SDG performance can be captured by three dimensions: socioeconomic development at the expense of resource and climate, the environment, and development at the expense of equality. Moreover, these dimensions are mainly affected by the economy; as gross domestic product (GDP) per capita increases, the first dimension increases monotonically, the environment dimension decreases and then increases, and the inequality dimension increases and then decreases. Our findings indicate a dim prospect of eventually achieving all SDGs because of the conflicts between economic growth and resource and climate goals under the current development paradigm, highlighting the importance of sustainable transformation.