Bad News: More Than 80% Of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Cannot Be Achieved By 2030 – OpEd

As we ourselves, together with others, predicted, the recently published Sustainable Development Report 2025 confirms that less than 20% of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be achieved by the intended end date.

As is the custom every year, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), which has been operating under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General since 2012, discusses the progress made on the SDGs since they were adopted by all UN member states in 2015. While concerns were already expressed in previous years, this 10th anniversary edition of the SDR is downright alarming. Limited and declining support for multilateralism within the UN by major powers, and insufficient budgetary space, pose major obstacles to achieving the global goals.

In preparation for the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (Ff4D) scheduled for 30 June to 3 July in Seville, Spain, this SDR 2025 outlines urgent reforms to the Global Financial Architecture (GFA) and includes, for the first time, an assessment of which countries have made the most progress towards the SDGs.

The upcoming Ff4D conference therefore offers a crucial opportunity for UN member states to reform this system and ensure that international finance flows at scale to Emerging Market and Developing Economies (EMDEs) to accelerate sustainable development.

Since 2016, the SDR has provided the most up-to-date data to track and rank the performance of all UN member states on the SDGs. This year, more than 200,000 individual data points were used to produce more than 200 country and regional SDG profiles.

The SDR includes the SDG Index and dashboards, which rank all UN member states based on their performance on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This year’s report includes a new index (SDGi), which focuses on 17 key indicators to track overall progress on the SDGs over time.

The report also offers enhanced measures and a new web platform to track countries’ support for and engagement with the UN system through the Index of Countries Supporting UN-Based Multilateralism (UN-Mi).

Eight Key Findings

This year’s SDR highlights eight key findings:

1. Global commitment to the SDGs is high. To date, 190 of the 193 UN Member States have participated in the Voluntary National Review (VNR) process and presented their national plans and priorities for sustainable development.

Only three countries have not participated: Haiti, Myanmar and the United States (US). In addition, an increasing number of regional and local governments have developed Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) to report on the implementation of the SDGs at the subnational level.

2. On average, East and South Asia have made the fastest progress on the SDGs since 2015, thanks in particular to rapid progress on the socio-economic targets. The outliers were Nepal (+11.1), Cambodia (+10), the Philippines (+8.6), Bangladesh (+8.3) and Mongolia (+7.7).

3. Other countries that have made faster progress than their peers include: Benin (+14.5) (Sub-Saharan Africa), Nepal (East and South Asia), Peru (+8.7) (Latin America and the Caribbean), the United Arab Emirates (+9.9) (Middle East and North Africa), Uzbekistan (+12.1) (Eastern Europe and Central Asia), Costa Rica (+7) (OECD), and Saudi Arabia (+8.1) (G20). 

This year’s SDG Index also includes China (#49) and India (#99) in the top 50 and 100, respectively. They too are showing rapid progress compared to their peers.

4. As in previous years, European, particularly Scandinavian, countries lead the SDG Index: Finland (#1), Sweden (#2), and Denmark (#3). Followed by Germany (#4), France (#5), Austria (#6), Norway (#7), (Croatia #8), Poland (#9) and Czech Republic (#10). Belgium is at #18 and the Netherlands at #23.

However, even these countries face challenges in meeting multiple goals and often generate large international spillovers, notably through unsustainable consumption.

5.   Globally, progress on the SDGs is stagnating; none of the 17 global goals are on track and it is feared that only 17% of the SDG targets will be met by 2030.

Conflicts, structural vulnerabilities and limited fiscal space continue to hamper progress, particularly in emerging and developing economies (EMDEs).

The five goals that have shown significant reversals since 2015 include: obesity rate (SDG 2), press freedom (SDG 16), sustainable nitrogen management (SDG 2), the Red List Index (SDG 15), and the Corruption Perceptions Index (SDG 16). 

In contrast, many countries have made significant progress in expanding access to basic services and infrastructure, including: mobile broadband use (SDG 9), access to electricity (SDG 7), internet use (SDG 9), under-5 mortality (SDG 3), and neonatal mortality (SDG 3).

However, future progress on many of these indicators, including health-related outcomes, is threatened by global tensions and the decline in international development financing.

6. The SDR 2025 Index of Countries Supporting UN-Based Multilateralism (UN-Mi) ranks countries based on their support for and commitment to the UN system.

The three countries most committed to UN-based multilateralism are: Barbados (#1), Jamaica (#2) and Trinidad and Tobago (#3). Brazil (#25) is ranked first among G20 countries, while Chile (#7) is ranked first among OECD countries.

In contrast, the US, which withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO), and formally declared its opposition to the SDGs and Agenda 2030, ranks last for the second year in a row (#193).

7. The Global Financial Architecture (GFA) urgently needs to be reformed to finance global public goods and achieve sustainable development. 

About half of the world’s population lives in countries that cannot adequately invest in sustainable development due to unsustainable debt burdens and limited access to affordable long-term capital. 

Sustainable development is a high-return investment, but the GFA continues to direct capital towards high-income countries rather than emerging markets (EMDEs), which offer stronger growth prospects and higher returns. Global public goods also remain significantly underfinanced.

8.  Sustainable development offers high returns: capital should flow to emerging and developing countries on more favourable terms. However, the Global Financial Architecture (GFA) is no longer functioning properly. Money flows

easily to rich countries rather than to emerging and developing countries (EMDEs), which offer higher growth potential and returns.

At the top of the FfD4 agenda is the need to reform the GFA so that capital flows in much larger amounts to EMDEs.

Part 1 of this SDR report provides practical recommendations to scale up and align international financing flows in support of global public goods and the achievement of sustainable development.

Part 1: How to finance development?

The International Financial Architecture – the system of public and private finance that channels global savings into global investments – should be thoroughly reviewed and adjusted during the upcoming Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4). The conclusions should convey a message of hope that humanity’s global goals of ending poverty and curbing the climate crisis are within reach.

According to the initiators, no member state of the United Nations can shirk the responsibility to contribute fairly and adequately to the provision of global public goods and services. High-income member states have a special responsibility, both from the perspective of distributive justice—that the rich do not abandon the poor—and from the perspective of restorative justice—that those countries that have contributed most to greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental damage in the past should do most to reduce their emissions in the future and compensate others for the damage their actions have caused in the past. No individual member state can escape these demands of justice.

There are four categories of public goods that need to be addressed in Seville.

First, UN member states must adequately fund the UN system itself. The total cost of UN operations was only $46 billion in 2023 (the year with the most recent data), compared with $2.4 trillion spent globally on the military that year. The United States paid $13 billion for UN operations in 2023, compared with $916 billion in military spending. 

The UN budget must be fully utilized and even increased. Efficiency gains in UN operations are to be welcomed, but cutting UN budgets at a time of widespread conflict, human displacement, climate disasters, epidemics and other crises is unacceptable.

Second, UN member states must increase their official financing of the SDGs in the run-up to 2030, including providing debt relief where needed to create the financial space to achieve them. 

Since 2016, SDG financing from official sources has been noticeably underreported. High-income countries have postponed critical capital increases at the World Bank and other multilateral development banks, despite the large and well-documented shortfall in SDG financing. They have also postponed critical increases in International Monetary Fund (IMF) quotas and allocations of Special Drawing Rights.

Third, UN member states must increase their financing of the global commons, including the biodiversity of tropical rainforests; marine life in the oceans; and the protection of the atmosphere, freshwater, soils, coastlines, wetlands and other ecosystems from transboundary pollution and global degradation. High-income countries are responsible for filling the funds they have designated for these purposes, including the Adaptation Fund, the Loss and Damage Fund, the Green Climate Fund and others.

Fourth, UN member states must agree on crucial reforms of international financial markets to ensure that global savings flow to countries with the highest investment returns and the highest growth prospects – the world’s poorest countries. This is not the case today. International financial markets are driven by flawed regulations and policies to favor countries that use the major international currencies, particularly the US dollar and the euro, as well as countries already favored by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. The rest of the world, especially poorer countries, is largely cut off from international capital by low credit ratings that punish poor countries as a matter of formula rather than economic logic, and by a maze of unilateral economic sanctions imposed by key currency countries. The IMF and World Bank also fail to recognize the crucial positive role of long-term debt financing for development. Instead, they favor a system of debt sustainability that discourages or even prohibits long-term financing of infrastructure and human capital in poorer countries.

SDR 2025 calls for a bold outcome with four components.

First, the FfD4 core document must reflect the consensus of UN member states, if not necessarily their unanimity. No single state or small group of states should block the collective will of UN member states. The core document must reaffirm the global frameworks and agreements for sustainability (Agenda 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement, and the Montreal-Kunming Biodiversity Agreement).

Second, there must be a space reserved by individual states so that they can voice their concerns without blocking the consensus of member states. No state or small number of states should obstruct actions that are supported by the majority of UN members, who represent the vast majority of the world’s population.

Third, there must be space for ambitious initiatives by “coalitions of the willing.” FfD4 should encourage and welcome bold actions by individual regions or groups of countries, which in turn inspire other countries and regions to raise their ambitions.

Fourth, there must be a clear list of specific action items that can be reported to the world in clear terms, along with timelines and metrics for accountability.

The highest priorities include: 

(1) full financing of the UN system; 

(2) significant increases in official financing by the World Bank, multilateral development banks, and the International Monetary Fund, supported by capital increases in these institutions where necessary, and debt relief where necessary to increase crucial fiscal space; (3) adequate financing of the institutions established to protect the global commons, including the Global Environmental Facility, the Adaptation Fund and the Loss and Damage Fund, with clear country-by-country assessments and new revenues through international taxes (e.g. on international shipping, aviation and greenhouse gas emissions) and other agreed means; 

(4) clear steps to reform the regulation of private capital markets, including a revision of the IMF-World Bank credit rating system and Debt Sustainability Framework to increase capital flows to high-yield investments in low-income countries, with a commitment to report on these measures to the UN General Assembly in 2026.

Part 2: The SDG Index

The SDG Index and Dashboards provide an annual assessment of progress on the SDGs for all 193 UN member states. This year’s SDG Index includes 126 indicators, including 102 global indicators and 24 additional indicators for the OECD country dashboards.

While each UN member state has a country profile, only countries with less than 20 percent missing data are given an SDG Index score and ranking. This is to ensure comparability of results and minimize bias due to missing data. This year, 167 countries are included in the SDG Index.

This year’s edition also introduces a “main” SDG Index (SDGi), which focuses on 17 SDG indicators to evaluate countries’ and regions’ progress on the SDGs, while minimizing statistical bias due to missing time series data.

As previously reported, and based on progress since the international community adopted them in 2015, none of the 17 SDGs will be achieved by 2030. 

At the global level, SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG 14 (Life Below Water), SDG 15 (Life on Land) and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) are particularly far behind schedule. They face major challenges and show no or very limited progress since 2015.

Progress on SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) is also very limited, partly due to the global failure to address persistent gaps in access to finance for developing countries and the wide disparities in countries’ support for multilateralism within the UN (see Part 3).

Detailed dashboards by world region, country group and country can be found in the annexes and country profiles.

In other words, less than 20 percent of SDG targets are on track globally (16.7 percent). The five targets that are most on track are: mobile usage (SDG 9), access to electricity (SDG 7), internet usage (SDG 9), under-5 mortality (SDG 3), and neonatal mortality (SDG 3).

In contrast, most countries are stagnating or backsliding on the following five targets: obesity rate (SDG 2), press freedom index (SDG 16), sustainable nitrogen management index (SDG 2), red list index (SDG 15), and corruption perception index (SDG 16).

Part 3: Commitment to the SDGs and UN-based multilateralism

In September 2024, at the UN Summit for the Future, UN Member States reaffirmed their commitment to the SDGs and effective multilateralism by adopting by consensus the Pact for the Future, the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations.

The Pact calls for 56 actions on the implementation of the SDGs, peace and collective security, including the transformation of the multilateral system and the reform of the international financial architecture (United Nations 2024):

• We will take bold, ambitious, accelerated, just and transformative action to implement the 2030 Agenda, achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and leave no one behind. (Action 1)

• We will redouble our efforts to build and sustain peaceful, inclusive and just societies and address the root causes of conflict. (Action 13)

• We will transform global governance and revitalize the multilateral system to address the challenges of today and tomorrow and seize the opportunities. (Action 38)

• We will accelerate the reform of the international financial architecture to address the challenges of today and tomorrow. (Action 47)

Part 3 of the SDR 2025 aims to measure countries’ support for the SDGs and UN-based multilateralism. Unlike the SDG Index (Part 2), which focuses on the achievements or implementation of the SDGs, this part focuses on intentions to promote global cooperation for sustainable development – ​​for example, through regular SDG reviews and action plans and the ratification of key UN treaties.

The report presents an updated and expanded version of the Index of Countries’ Support for UN-Based Multilateralism (UN-Mi), including aggregated results and detailed results by indicator.

Most of the charts in this chapter focus on the G20 and large countries (which together represent almost three-quarters of the world’s population). The global median is also included in each chart, as a measure of central tendency across the 193 UN member states, since the median is less affected by outliers than the mean. Detailed data for all countries can be found at: https://sdgtransformationcenter.org/.

The ‘missing link’: SDG 18 is urgently needed

The current fear of global conflict, rather than global cooperation, also forces us to rethink strategies and approaches. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fact that, in order to support those who are hardest hit and build their resilience for the future, our development interventions must be holistic and multidimensional. 

An additional target – SDG18: Communication for All – is therefore necessary if we are to witness a world free from poverty, inequality and where issues such as climate change and environmental degradation are addressed.

For more information, see: Jan Servaes & Muhammad Jameel Yusha’u (eds.) (2023), SDG18 Communication for All, Volume 1, The Missing Link between SDGs and Global Agendas, Palgrave/Springer + Jan Servaes & Muhammad Jameel Yushau (eds.) (2023), SDG18 Communicaton for All, Volume 2, Regional Perspectives and Special Cases, Palgrave/Springer

Hopeful?

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and Chair of the SDSN and lead author of the report, remains hopeful nonetheless. He emphasizes that: “Amid rising geopolitical tensions, rising global inequality, and the escalating climate crisis, this year’s SDR underscores that the world overwhelmingly recognizes the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the essential path to peace, equality, and well-being. Many countries are making significant progress, but much more can be achieved through increased investment in education, green technologies, and digital solutions. Above all, we need peace and global cooperation to achieve the SDGs.”

References:

• Sachs, J.D., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G., Iablonovski, G. (2025). Financing Sustainable Development to 2030 and Mid-Century. Sustainable Development Report 2025. Paris: SDSN, Dublin: Dublin University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25546/111909
• Website: https://sdgtransformationcenter.org/
• Data Visualization: https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/