The 17 United Nations’ sustainable development goals: a status by 2020

TLDR

The United Nations adopted 17 sustainable development goals in 2015 to guide global development. The study applied partial‑ordering analysis to data on 102 countries for 2010, 2015, and 2019, examining four sets of indicators: all 17 SDGs, the five SDG pillars, and the SDGs grouped by economic status and region. The analysis revealed that SDGs 12, 13, 14, and 17, as well as SDGs 1, 6, and 7, were the most and least influential, highlighting poverty, lack of clean water, and energy as major global challenges, while the ‘Planet’ and ‘Peace’ pillars ranked highest and lowest respectively, and SDGs 1 and 4 were most important with SDG 10 least important in the economic and regional groupings.

Abstract

The United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) were adopted in 2015. Following a 2020 status report of the status and development for 102 countries, for which data for all 17 SDGs for the years 2010, 2015 and 2019 were studied. The analyses were carried out applying partial ordering methodology. Four sets of analyses are reported: 1) all 102 countries with the 17SDGs as indicators, 2) all 102 countries using the 5 pillars of the SDGs as indicators, 3) the 17 SDGs using the four groups of countries combined according to their economic status and 4) the 17 SDGs using the four groups of countries combined according to their regional affiliation. Average ranking for the objects, i.e., countries in set 1 and 2 and SDGs in set 3 and 4, was performed elucidating the countries that on an overall basis best comply with the 17 goals and which SDGs are the most important. The analyses disclosed which SDGs are the most important/influential on the rankings, unequivocally demonstrated that the SDGs 12, 13, 14 and 17 and SDG 1, 6 and 7 as the most and least important (set 1), respectively, disclosing that poverty and the lack of clean water and energy are major problems around the globe. In case 2 the ‘Planet’ and ‘Peace’ pillars appear as the most and the least important, respectively. For set 3 and 4 the SDGs 1 and 4 were found as the most important for the ranking, whereas SDG10 apparently is the least important.