Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022;34(1):58.
doi: 10.1186/s12302-022-00629-9. Epub 2022 Jul 1.

An assessment of requirements in investments, new technologies, and infrastructures to achieve the SDGs

Walter Leal Filho  1   2 , Diogo Guedes Vidal  3   4 , Chen Chen  5 , Maria Petrova  6 , Maria Alzira Pimenta Dinis  7 , Peter Yang  8 , Steven Rogers  9 , Lorena Álvarez-Castañón  10 , Ilija Djekic  11 , Ayyoob Sharifi  12 , Samara Neiva  13
Affiliations

An assessment of requirements in investments, new technologies, and infrastructures to achieve the SDGs

Walter Leal Filho et al. Environ Sci Eur. 2022.

Abstract

Background: The implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires much planning and the provision of resources, especially regarding the necessary investments, technologies and infrastructures needed. Yet, it is presently unclear how available these elements are, what gaps exist, what changes have taken place in terms of their availability since the adoption of the SDGs and what their requirements will be in the future. The knowledge gap has become even more concerning because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a bibliometric analysis, an assessment of the global progress of SDG implementation and requirements, identifying challenges through the development of a matrix, and a set of 11 case studies to triangulate the holistic analysis, an assessment of the global progress of the SDGs implementation and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on this process was carried out.

Results: The findings suggest that the scope and width of resources limitation are currently undermining the implementation of the SDGs. Apart from the fact that the pace of progress has been insufficient, the potential of the SDGs in pursuing sustainability and improving life quality is not fully realised. This trend suggests that a substantial acceleration of the efforts is needed, especially for the five SDGs whose progress since 2015 has not been optimal, namely SDG2, SDG11, SDG13, SDG15, and SDG16, while SDG3, SDG7, SDG9, SDG14, and SDG17 show signs of progress. The case studies showed that different industries have dissimilar effects on achieving the SDGs, with the food sector correlating with 15 SDGs, as opposed to the energy sector correlating with 6 SDGs. Accordingly, the priority level assessment in terms of achieving the SDGs, points to the need to further advance the above-mentioned five SDGs, i.e., 2, 11, 13, 15 and 16.

Conclusions: This study fills in a knowledge gap in respect of the current need for and availability of investments, new technologies, and infrastructures to allow countries to pursue the SDGs. It is suggested that this availability is rather limited in specific contexts. In respect of the needs to be addressed, these include resource-related constraints, limited technologies and infrastructures, affecting SDG2, SDG11, SDG13, SDG15, and SDG16, whose progress needs to be enhanced. Since the global progress in the process of implementation of the SDGs depends directly and indirectly on addressing the resource gaps, it is suggested that this topic be further investigated, so that the present imbalances in the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental, be adequately addressed.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12302-022-00629-9.

Keywords: Achievement of UN SDGs; Bibliometric analysis; Case studies; Infrastructural challenges; Investment challenges; Technological challenges.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interestsThe authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
SDGs and their main purposes. Source: developed by the authors based on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Steps of the research. Source: developed by the authors
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The output of the term co-occurrence analysis
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. United Nations (2015) Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015, A/RES/70/1. Geneva
    1. Salvia AL, Leal Filho W, Brandli LL, Griebeler JS. Assessing research trends related to sustainable development goals: local and global issues. J Clean Prod. 2019;208:841–849. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.242. - DOI
    1. Sachs JD, Schmidt-Traub G, Mazzucato M, et al. Six transformations to achieve the sustainable development goals. Nat Sustain. 2019;2:805–814. doi: 10.1038/s41893-019-0352-9. - DOI
    1. DasGupta R, Hashimoto S, Gundimeda H. Biodiversity/ecosystem services scenario exercises from the Asia–Pacific: typology, archetypes and implications for sustainable development goals (SDGs) Sustain Sci. 2019;14:241–257. doi: 10.1007/s11625-018-0647-1. - DOI
    1. McGowan PJK, Stewart GB, Long G, Grainger MJ. An imperfect vision of indivisibility in the sustainable development goals. Nat Sustain. 2019;2:43–45. doi: 10.1038/s41893-018-0190-1. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources