Wu Xutong, Fu Bojie, Wang Shuai, Liu Yanxu, Yao Ying, Li Yingjie, Xu Zhenci, Liu Jianguo
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
Innovation (Camb). 2023 Sep 9;4(6):100507. doi: 10.1016/j.xinn.2023.100507. eCollection 2023 Nov 13.
Unraveling the complexity of the 17 interacting sustainable development goals (SDGs) is crucial for their achievement. Empirically revealing the dimensions of the SDGs helps generalize the dominant features of SDGs and better understand their drivers. Here, using a database of 166 countries' progress toward achieving each individual SDG, we found that about 70% of the variability of national SDG performance can be captured by three dimensions: socioeconomic development at the expense of resource and climate, the environment, and development at the expense of equality. Moreover, these dimensions are mainly affected by the economy; as gross domestic product (GDP) per capita increases, the first dimension increases monotonically, the environment dimension decreases and then increases, and the inequality dimension increases and then decreases. Our findings indicate a dim prospect of eventually achieving all SDGs because of the conflicts between economic growth and resource and climate goals under the current development paradigm, highlighting the importance of sustainable transformation.
理清17个相互关联的可持续发展目标（SDGs）的复杂性对其实现至关重要。从实证角度揭示可持续发展目标的维度有助于概括其主要特征并更好地理解其驱动因素。在此，我们使用了一个包含166个国家在实现各个可持续发展目标方面进展情况的数据库，发现国家可持续发展目标绩效约70%的变异性可由三个维度来解释：以牺牲资源、气候和环境为代价的社会经济发展，以及以牺牲平等为代价的发展。此外，这些维度主要受经济影响；随着人均国内生产总值（GDP）的增加，第一个维度单调增加，环境维度先下降后上升，不平等维度先上升后下降。我们的研究结果表明，由于当前发展模式下经济增长与资源和气候目标之间存在冲突，最终实现所有可持续发展目标的前景黯淡，这凸显了可持续转型的重要性。
