The sustainable development index: Measuring the ecological efficiency of human development in the anthropocene

Hickel, Jason

doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.05.011

Cited by 404 publications

(205 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…As global population increases, the tendency to overshoot these boundaries will increase if rates of consumption are not reduced. The Sustainable Development Index created by Hickel (2020) evaluates the environmental sustainability of the production and consumption models of different countries. Many of those furthest along towards meeting the SDGs (e.g., Norway, UK) are amongst the worst in environmental sustainability.…”

Section: Exploring Interactions Among the Sustainable Development Goamentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental justice and the SDGs: from synergies to gaps and contradictions

et al. 2020

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Through their synergies, trade-offs, and contradictions, the sustainable development goals (SDGs) have the potential to lead to environmental justices and injustices. Yet, environmental justice (EJ), and social justice more broadly, are not currently embedded within the language and spirit of the SDGs. We part from the premise that "many 'environmental' problems are, by their very nature, problems of justice" (Lele, Wiley Interdiscip Rev Water 4:e1224, 2017). We review progress in EJ frameworks in recent years, arguing for the need to move beyond a focus on the four principles of mainstream EJ (distribution, procedure, recognition, and capabilities) towards a more intersectional decolonial approach to environmental justice that recognises the indispensability of both humans and non-humans. EJ frameworks, and the SDGs should recognise power dynamics, complex interactions among injustices, and listens to the different 'senses of justice' and desires of theorists, activists, and other stakeholder from the Global South. We analyze how EJ frameworks are, or fail to be, incorporated in the SDGs with a focus on the food-water-health nexus (SDG2, 3, 6); climate-energy (SDG7, 13), conservation (SDG14, 15); and poverty and inequality (SDG1, 10). We call attention to the 'elephant in the room'-the failure to go beyond GDP but instead include economic growth as a goal (SDG8). We argue that sustainable degrowth and intersectional decolonial environmental justices would create better conditions for the transformative changes needed to reach the broader aim of the SDGs: to leave no one behind.

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Section: Exploring Interactions Among the Sustainable Development Goamentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental justice and the SDGs: from synergies to gaps and contradictions

et al. 2020

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“…In addition to these four major reports, UNDESA released the SDG Progress Chart 2019, which presents aggregate summary results for "Europe and North America" [17]. The Sustainable Development Index (SDI) also covers European countries, but it does not aim to strictly measure the SDGs [59].…”

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confidence: 99%

How Is Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals Measured? Comparing Four Approaches for the EU

Lafortune¹,

Fuller²,

Schmidt-Traub³

et al. 2020

Sustainability

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Evidence-based policymaking must be rooted in sound data to inform policy priorities, budget allocations, and tracking of progress. This is especially true in the case of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as they provide the policy framework that all 193 UN member states have pledged to achieve by 2030. Good data and clear metrics are critical for each country to take stock of where it stands, devise pathways for achieving the goals, and track progress. Current assessments of the EU’s performance on the SDGs, however, tend to reach different findings and policy conclusions on where the priorities for further action lie, which can be confusing for researchers and policymakers. In order to demystify the drivers of such differences and make them transparent, this paper compares and contrasts the results obtained by four SDG monitoring approaches. We identify three main elements that are responsible for most of the differences: (i) the use of pre-defined targets for calculating baseline assessments and countries’ trajectories; (ii) the inclusion of measures that track not only domestic performance, but also the EU’s transboundary impacts on the rest of the world; and (iii) the use of non-official statistics to bridge data gaps, especially for biodiversity goals. This paper concludes that there is not one “correct” way of providing an assessment of whether the EU and EU member states are on track to achieve the goals, but we illustrate how the different results are the outcomes of certain methodological choices. More “forward-looking” policy trackers are needed to assess implementation efforts on key SDG transformations.

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“…Theoretical foundations for such broader concepts of development have already been laid, for example with the writings about the environmental Kuznets curve (Stern, 2004;Victor, 2010;Pacini and Silveira, 2014). New indicator frameworks, adapted to that broader focus, have also already been proposed, such as the "Happy Planet Index" (Jeffrey et al, 2016) and different types of "Sustainable Development Indices" (Sachs et al, 2019;Hickel, 2020). To conclude, fifty years after their introduction, DSCSs remain a valid element of international statistics, worth being adapted to changing economic realities and changing statistical needs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development Status as a Measure of Development

Hoffmeister¹

2020

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Research Papers

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This study analyses to which extent the classification of countries as developing corresponds with their actual development level. Development status classification schemes (DSCSs) differ across international organizations, yielding heterogeneous outcomes. In the literature, different concepts of a developing country focus on different indicators of development levels. All analysed indicators have a highly significant effect on the countries' probability to be classified as developing, and discerning developing countries from others leads to a reduction of heterogeneity with all DSCSs for most indicators. Schemes which nominate countries for classes correspond mainly with concepts focusing on difficult starting points or an early stage in systemic transition. Schemes which classify countries based on specified criteria typically reflect a welfare-based concept. The hypothesis of a weakening correspondence over the last four decades cannot be confirmed for all indicators.

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The sustainable development index: Measuring the ecological efficiency of human development in the anthropocene

Cited by 404 publications

References 35 publications

Environmental justice and the SDGs: from synergies to gaps and contradictions

Environmental justice and the SDGs: from synergies to gaps and contradictions

How Is Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals Measured? Comparing Four Approaches for the EU

Development Status as a Measure of Development

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