{"id":59592,"date":"2021-09-29T17:51:40","date_gmt":"2021-09-29T22:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59592"},"modified":"2021-09-29T17:51:40","modified_gmt":"2021-09-29T22:51:40","slug":"the-worlds-sustainable-development-goals-arent-sustainable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59592","title":{"rendered":"The World\u2019s Sustainable Development Goals Aren\u2019t Sustainable"},"content":{"rendered":"

The World\u2019s Sustainable Development Goals Aren\u2019t Sustainable<\/a><\/h3>\n

There are big problems with the most important metric used to assess progress toward the U.N.’s environmental goals.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Art<\/span><\/p>\n
Art for the Global Goals campaign at Liu Bolin Studio in Beijing on Aug. 28, 2015.\u00a0JAMES WASSERMAN\/GETTY IMAGES FOR GLOBAL GOALS\/UNITED NATIONS<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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In 2015, the world\u2019s governments signed on to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a commitment to bring the global economy back into balance with the living world. Now, five years later, as the U.N. General Assembly convenes online to discuss the global ecological crisis, everyone wants to know how countries are performing.<\/p>\n

To answer this question, delegates and policymakers have referred to a metric called the\u00a0SDG Index<\/a>, which was developed by Jeffrey Sachs \u201cto assess where each country stands with regard to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.\u201d The metric tells a very clear story. Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, and Germany\u2014along with most other rich Western nations\u2014rise to the top of the rankings, giving casual observers the impression that these countries are real leaders in achieving sustainable development.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s only one problem. Despite its name, the SDG Index has very little to do with sustainable development all. In fact, oddly enough, the countries with the highest scores on this index are some of the most environmentally unsustainable countries in the world.<\/p>\n

Take Sweden, for example. Sweden scores an impressive 84.7 on the index, topping the pack. But ecologists have long pointed out that Sweden\u2019s \u201cmaterial footprint\u201d\u2014the quantity of natural resources that the country consumes each year\u2014is one of the biggest in the world, right up there with the United States, at\u00a032 metric tons per person<\/a>. To put this in perspective, the global average is about 12 tons per person, and the sustainable level is about\u00a07 tons per person<\/a>. In other words, Sweden is consuming nearly five times over the boundary.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The World\u2019s Sustainable Development Goals Aren\u2019t Sustainable There are big problems with the most important metric used to assess progress toward the U.N.’s environmental goals. Art for the Global Goals campaign at Liu Bolin Studio in Beijing on Aug. 28, 2015.\u00a0JAMES WASSERMAN\/GETTY IMAGES FOR GLOBAL GOALS\/UNITED NATIONS In 2015, the world\u2019s governments signed on to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[326,17122,769,822,826],"class_list":["post-59592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-foreign-policy","tag-jason-hickel","tag-sustainability","tag-un","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59593,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59592\/revisions\/59593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}