Examining the unsustainable relationship between SDG performance, ecological footprint and international spillovers

Abstract

For almost a decade, countries have been working to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet progress on the SDGs across countries, as well as across the 17 goals, has proven frustratingly slow. Even countries that have performed relatively well on the SDGs may have done so by causing negative externalities, such as environmental degradation, in other parts of the world. To determine if this is the case empirically, we developed and tested hypotheses concerning how a country's SDG performance is associated with such externalities. We then ran a regression to examine correlations between indices measuring SDG progress, ecological footprints and international spillovers. We found that SDG progress is positively correlated with increased ecological footprints and spillovers. The results indicate that SDG progress remains closely associated with conventional measures of economic growth, and that negative environmental and social impacts of internationally-sourced consumption represent behavioural and structural barriers to meaningful progress on sustainability.

Figure 1

Illustrative example of how international spillovers occur. Source: Adapted from SDG Transformation Center.

Figure 2

Patterns of ecological footprint of consumption over the years for selected countries. Source: Authors (Based on data from Global Footprint Network).

Figure 3

Illustration of the relationship between SDG performance, spillover effect and ecological footprint in 2022. Explanation of the figure: Each bubble is positioned to reflect the respective country’s (or country group’s) SDG performance (SDG Score), and international spillover effect (Spillover Index in reverse), while the size of the bubble indicates that country’s (group’s) ecological footprint. Note that the Spillover Index scores are reversed (100—Spillover Index) so that higher values denote a more negative impact internationally. Furthermore, the colour of the bubbles represents the geographic location of each country. Orange is used for the three groups of countries (OECD, G20, and LDCs). For the country groups, the arithmetic mean is used as an average score. However, our dataset consists of 163 countries in total. Some countries were excluded due to data unavailability. The estimated average score, particularly for the LDC country group, only considers countries that are included in our list of 163 countries. Source: Authors, based on data from SDSN and Global Footprint Network.