The Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provides the framework that all United Nations (UN) member states have pledged to fulfill. The achievement of this agenda crucially depends on whether humankind will be able to maximize synergies and resolve existing trade-offs between the SDGs. We provide the first analysis of future interactions for projected SDG trends until 2030 within and between goals, and we analyze how trade-offs and synergies have evolved in the recent past globally. For certain goals, we find positive developments with notable synergies in our projections, especially for SDGs 1, 3, 7, 8, and 9: Poverty alleviation and strengthening the economy, rooted in innovation, and modern infrastructure, therefore continue to be the basis upon which many of the other SDGs can be achieved. However, especially SDGs 11, 13, 14, 16, and 17 will continue to have notable trade-offs, as well as non-associations with the other goals in the future, which emphasizes the need to foster innovations and policies that can make our cities and communities more sustainable, as well as strengthen institutions and spur climate action. We show examples of a successful transformation of trade-offs into synergies that should be emulated in other areas to create a virtuous cycle of SDG progress. The alarming inability to overcome certain persistent trade-offs we have found, and indeed the deterioration for some SDGs, can seriously threaten the achievement of the Agenda 2030.

The Sustainable Development Report 2022 features the SDG Index and Dashboards, the first and widely used tool to assess country performance on the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. In a context of multiple crises, the report analyzes and outlines how the SDGs can be used as a roadmap for more sustainable societies by 2030 and beyond. In particular, this year's edition underlines the importance of international financing mechanisms for addressing lack of fiscal space in poorer countries and promoting sustainable investments into physical and human infrastructure. The authors examine country performance on the SDGs for 193 countries using a wide array of indicators, and calculate future trajectories, presenting a number of best practices to achieve the historic Agenda 2030. The views expressed in this report do not reflect the views of any organization, agency or program of the United Nations. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) -agreed in 2015 by all 193 member states of the United Nations and complemented by commitments made in the Paris Agreement -map out a broad spectrum of economic, social and environmental objectives to be achieved by 2030. Reaching these goals will require deep transformations in every country, as well as major efforts in monitoring and measuring progress. Here we introduce the SDG Index and Dashboards as analytical tools for assessing countries' baselines for the SDGs that can be applied by researchers in the cross-disciplinary analyses required for implementation. The Index and Dashboards synthesize available country-level data for all 17 goals, and for each country estimate the size of the gap towards achieving the SDGs. They will be updated annually. All 149 countries for which sufficient data is available face significant challenges in achieving the goals, and many countries' development strategies are imbalanced across the economic, social and environmental priorities. We illustrate the analytical value of the index by examining its relationship with other widely used development indices and by showing how it accounts for cross-national differences in subjective well-being. Given significant data gaps, scope and coverage of the Index and Dashboards are limited, but we suggest that these analyses represent a starting point for a comprehensive assessment of national SDG baselines and can help policymakers determine priorities for early action and monitor progress. The tools also identify data gaps that must be closed for SDG monitoring.

The Sustainable Development Report 2020 features the SDG Index and Dashboards, the first and widely used tool to assess country performance on the UN Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. The report shows that all countries need to strengthen the resilience of their health systems and prevention programs. Some countries have outperformed others in containing the Covid-19 pandemic, yet all remain at serious risk. The report frames the implementation of the SDGs in terms of six broad transformations. The authors examine country performance on the SDGs for 193 countries using a wide array of indicators, and calculate future trajectories, presenting a number of best practices to achieve the historic Agenda 2030. The views expressed in this report do not reflect the views of any organizations, agency or programme of the United Nations. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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