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Jun 24, 2025Now available: the Sustainable Development Report 2025

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A Decade After Their Adoption at the UN, the World Remains Highly Committed to the Sustainable Development Goals

Limited and declining support for UN-based multilateralism by major powers and insufficient fiscal space pose key obstacles to achieving the Global Goals

24 June 2025 (Paris, France) — Ten years after the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), progress remains alarmingly off-track, with less than 20% of targets projected to be achieved by 2030. Yet, global averages mask stark disparities across regions and countries in SDG progress. Despite these challenges, commitment remains high among the majority of UN Member States, reveals the 10th edition of the Sustainable Development Report (SDR), released today by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).

The SDR includes the SDG Index and Dashboards, which rank all UN Member States on their performance across the 17 Goals, and this year’s report features a new Index (SDGi), which focuses on 17 headline indicators to track overall SDG progress over time. Ahead of the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (Ff4D) in Seville, Spain (30 June – 3 July, 2025), the report outlines urgent reforms to the Global Financial Architecture (GFA) that should be adopted during the conference to unlock the financing needed to achieve the SDGs. On the heels of the 80th anniversary of the creation of the UN System, the report also provides improved measures and a new web platform to track countries’ support for and engagement with the UN system via its Index of countries’ support for UN-based multilateralism (UN-Mi).

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, President of the SDSN and a lead author of the report, emphasizes the following: “Amid rising geopolitical tensions, widening global inequalities, and the escalating climate crisis, this year’s SDR underscores that the world overwhelmingly recognizes the Sustainable Development Goals as the vital pathway to peace, equity, and well-being. Many countries are making significant progress, but much more can be accomplished through stepped-up investments in education, green technologies, and digital solutions. Above all, we need peace and global cooperation to achieve the SDGs.”

The report is available online from 23 June 2025 at 11:59 PM CET here.

Website: https://sdgtransformationcenter.org/

Data Visualization: https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/

UN-Mi data visualization: https://dashboards-unmi.sdgindex.org/

Citation Details: 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

This year’s SDR highlights five key findings:

  1. SDG commitment is high globally. To date, 190 of the 193 UN Member States have participated in the Voluntary National Review (VNR) process, presenting their national plans and priorities for sustainable development. Since 2015, most countries have submitted two or more VNRs, and 39 countries have committed to presenting a VNR this year. Only three countries have not participated: Haiti, Myanmar, and the United States (U.S.). Additionally, a growing number of regional and local governments have developed Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) to report on SDG implementation at the subnational level.

  2. European countries continue to lead the SDG Index, while East and South Asian countries outperform other regions in SDG progress. As in previous years, European, specifically Nordic, countries top the SDG Index: Finland (#1), Sweden (#2), and Denmark (#3). Yet, even these countries face challenges in achieving multiple goals and tend to generate large international spillovers, notably due to unsustainable consumption. On average, East and South Asian countries have demonstrated the fastest progress since 2015 (in points): Nepal (+11.1), Cambodia (+10), the Philippines (+8.6), Bangladesh (+8.3), and Mongolia (+7.7). Other countries demonstrating rapid progress among their peers include Benin (+14.5), Peru (+8.7), the United Arab Emirates (+9.9), Uzbekistan (+12.1), Costa Rica (+7), and Saudi Arabia (+8.1). In this year’s SDG Index, China (#49) and India (#99) also make their entry, respectively, in the top 50 and 100 performers.

  3. At the global level, SDG progress has stalled; none of the 17 Global Goals are on track, and only 17% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved by 2030. Conflicts, structural vulnerabilities, and limited fiscal space continue to hinder progress, especially in emerging and developing economies (EMDEs). The five targets showing significant reversal in progress 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 perception index (SDG 16). Conversely, many countries have made notable 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 rate (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 finance.

  4. Barbados leads again in UN-based multilateralism commitment, while the U.S. ranks last. The SDR 2025’s Index of countries’ support to UN-based multilateralism (UN-Mi) ranks countries based on their support for and engagement with the UN system. The top three countries most committed to UN multilateralism are: Barbados (#1), Jamaica (#2), and Trinidad and Tobago (#3). Among G20 nations, Brazil (#25) ranks highest, while Chile (#7) leads among OECD countries. In contrast, the U.S., which recently withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO) and formally declared its opposition to the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda, ranks last (#193) for the second year in a row.

  5. The Global Financial Architecture (GFA) must be urgently reformed to finance global public goods and achieve sustainable development. Roughly half the world’s population resides 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, yet the GFA continues to direct capital toward high-income countries instead of EMDEs, which offer stronger growth prospects and higher returns. Global public goods also remain significantly underfinanced. The upcoming Ff4D offers a critical opportunity for UN Member States to reform this system and ensure that international financing flows at scale to EMDEs to achieve 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 200+ country and regional SDG profiles. The report was written by a group of independent experts at the SDG Transformation Center, an initiative of the SDSN.

Contacts

Alyson Marks | alyson.marks@unsdsn.org (Head of Communications and External Relations, U.S.-based)

Guillaume Lafortune | guillaume.lafortune@unsdsn.org (Vice President of the SDSN, Lead Coordinator, and Report Author, France-based)

About the SDSN

The UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) has been operating since 2012 under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General. The SDSN mobilizes global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical solutions for sustainable development, including the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement. We aim to accelerate joint learning and promote integrated approaches that address the interconnected economic, social, and environmental challenges confronting the world. One of the SDSN’s flagship initiatives is the SDG Transformation Center, which produces the Sustainable Development Report (SDR) and provides science-based tools and analytics for SDG pathways, policies, and financing. For more information, visit unsdsn.org and sdgtransformationcenter.org.