SDG Index

Measure progress of all UN member states on the SDGs.

What does SDSN do to monitor progress on SDG achievement?

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Since 2018 SDSN has produced the Sustainable Development Report, which includes the SDG Index and Dashboards that ranks countries on SDG attainment. This annual report and regional editions have become world-leading references for monitoring progress on the SDGs. Find out where your country or region stands!

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.

The SDG Transformation Center produces SDSN's annual flagship Sustainable Development Report (SDR), which includes the SDG Index and Dashboards. Every year, this report provides the most comprehensive assessment of the performance of all 193 UN Member States on the 17 SDGs. Governments and civil society alike use the SDR to identify priorities for action, understand key implementation challenges, track progress, ensure accountability, and identify gaps that must be closed in order to achieve the SDGs by 2030 and beyond.

The Sustainable Development Report is consulted online more than 300,000 times annually by governments, researchers, investors, policymakers and consulting firms. SDSN's Index methodology was audited by the EU's Joint Research Commission in July 2019 and peer-reviewed by Nature Geoscience and Cambridge University Press.

In addition to the annual global edition, our team works with regional and local partners on regional SDG Indices (e.g. for Europe, Africa, Latin America etc.) and at the country and city levels.

We also publish spin-off indices to track the “Leave-No-One-Behind” principle of the SDGs and negative “International Spillovers” embodied into unsustainable supply chains and other physical and monetary flows. Together, the SDG Index and spin-off indices promote SDG accountability and action for the people and planet.

Our work

The SDG Transformation Center is ideally positioned to provide independent pathways and report cards building on research and science.

We partner with a variety of organizations to assess progress towards SDG achievement at the national level and the local level. One third of the data used in the SDG Index comes from outside official statistics, and comes from research, science, NGOs and space-based technologies. Combined with official datasets, often provided by UN custodian agencies, our assessment of distance to and progress towards SDG targets serves as a tool to guide government action, increase accountability and helps identify persisting gaps in data and statistics for sustainable development.

This SDG monitoring work of the SDSN is complementary to official UN monitoring efforts. By mobilizing our global network of researchers and practitioners, and work closely with UN country offices, we identify new data sources and localize policy recommendations and solutions. We particularly emphasize clear communication and accessible insights.

Our most relevant publications

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Sustainable Development Report 2023

The Sustainable Development Report (SDR) reviews progress made each year on the Sustainable Development Goals since their adoption by the 193 UN Member States in 2015. At the halfway mark to 2030, the Sustainable Development Report 2023 takes stock of progress made and discusses priorities to restore and accelerate SDG progress. Published on the eve of the 2023 Paris Summit for a New Global Financial Pact, this year’s edition focuses specifically on the need to scale up development finance and to reform the global financial architecture to support the SDGs.

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Europe Sustainable Development Report 2023/24

The Europe Sustainable Development Report 2023/24 (5th edition) provides an independent quantitative assessment of the progress by the European Union, its member states and partner countries towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In light of the upcoming European Elections and UN Summit of the future, this year’s edition identifies 10 priority actions for the incoming EU leadership to accelerate SDG implementation within Europe and internationally. In the context of a fragmented and multipolar world, the ESDR 2023/24 calls for decisive action by the EU to avoid dangerous environmental and social tipping points.

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Sustainable Development Report for Small Island Developing States 2023

The report presents for the first time a special edition of the SDG Index to assess where SIDS stand in terms of SDG progress. It also introduces the Multidimensional Structural Vulnerability Index (MSVI) to assess the structural vulnerability of 180 countries worldwide, including 33 SIDS. The report investigates to what extent structural vulnerability impacts the ability of countries to achieve sustainable development, and identifies targeted financing mechanisms that can be used to respond to countries’ specific needs and vulnerabilities.

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Benin Sustainable Development Report 2023

The Benin Sustainable Development Report 2023 marks the second edition of monitoring the performance and trends of the SDGs in Benin, as well as the policies aimed at achieving them. In a context of multiple crises, including COVID-19, geopolitical instabilities, and climate change, the world faces challenges in progressing towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Sachs et al., 2023). Despite these challenges, Benin is committed to continuing its economic and social development while ensuring that no one is left behind. This edition focuses on Transformation 1 (education, gender, and inequalities) as well as Transformation 2 (health, well-being, and demographics) within the "Six Transformations" framework (Sachs et al., 2019), which aim to enhance human capital and reduce socio-economic and gender inequalities.

Learn more about SDSN's reports, publications and data visualizations in our library