When the SDG Index Meet the Doughnut: Reality Shock.
The Sustainable Development Report (1) published its 2020 report ranking the countries based on how close they are to achieve the 17 SDGs, available here.
The index purpose is to track "country performance on the 17 SDGs, as agreed by the international community in 2015 with equal weight to all 17 goals" and its value "signifies a country’s position between the worst (0) and the best or target (100) outcomes".
The higher the country index, the closer it is to achieve the best SDG outcome.
But how realistic this index reflects the real development of sustainable actions?
In one of the most significant works in the last years, developed at Leeds University, "A Good Life For All Within Planetary Boundaries" (2) (interactive site here) mapped the sustainability performance of a series of countries was estimated using the doughnut economics model, which provides an indication, for each country, on how close it is to the ideal social and environmental equilibrium.
 |
| The Doughnut Model: The closer to the social foundation the better, the farther from the ecological ceiling the worst. © Kate Raworth |
So let's compare the SDG Index Score with the doughnut performance for the top 10 countries presented in the Sustainable Development Report.
Sweden and Denmark
The top two of the list scoring 84.7 and 84.6 respectively.
Their doughnut performance:
 |
| https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/countries/#Sweden |
Finland and France
Scoring 83.8 and 81.1 respectively.
Their doughnut performance:
 |
| https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/countries/#Finland |
Germany and Norway
Both scoring 80.8
Their doughnut performance:
 |
| https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/countries/#Germany |
Austria and Czech Republic
Scoring 80.7 and 80.6 respectively.
Their doughnut performance:
 |
| https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/countries/#Austria |
Netherlands and Estonia
Scoring 80.1 and 80.0 respectively.
Their doughnut performance:
 |
| https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/countries/#Netherlands |
As we can see, all of the top 10 countries perform excellently when it comes to social parameters, fulfilling almost all of them perfectly.
When it comes to the environmental aspects however, a different scenario unfolds.
Overshooting in 5 of 7 indicators, with particular attention to the ecological footprint, it's questionable how close they really are to achieve any kind of sustainable development at all.
It must be kept in mind that, given the finitude of Earth's resources, a higher footprint (higher use of global resources) by one country, let alone overshooting it, directly implies resource scarcity to another, with not only the environmental issues derived of it but also the social ones.
So, what does it means that a country is 80% closer to fulfill the best outcome across the SDGs while overshooting?
How realistic does such an index represent how close the country is to any kind of sustainable development?
Obviously, it doesn't and the consequences of using it as any sort of guidance or example are dreadful, at least.
Given the monumental scale, and seriousness, of the problem that we are facing, one must wonder what, what indeed, will need to happen before the "sustainability" community actually begins to address the issues realistically.
(1) Sachs, J., Schmidt-Traub, G., Kroll, C., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G., Woelm, F. 2020. The Sustainable Development Goals and COVID-19. Sustainable Development Report 2020. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(2) O’Neill, D.W., Fanning, A.L., Lamb, W.F. et al. A good life for all within planetary boundaries. Nat Sustain 1, 88–95 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0021-4
Comments
Post a Comment