Assessing regional implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 9 “Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation” in Poland

Abstract

The paper deals with an immensely important and topical issue related to the implementation of sustainable development policies at the regional level. It focuses on assessing the level of sustainability in building stable infrastructure, promoting sustainable industrialization, and fostering innovation between 2015 and 2021 at the regional level in Poland. The areas included in the assessment relate to Goal 9 of the UN Agenda 2030 adopted by member states. The basis for the assessment was a developed research methodology based on a selected set of 19 indicators characterizing the development of innovation, industrialization and infrastructure at the regional level. The research covered 16 regions (provinces) in Poland from 2015 to 2021. In addition to determining the dynamics of change of individual indicators, characterizing the rate of change of the sustainable economy in these 16 regions, their ranking was created, reflecting the status of implementation of Goal 9 of the Agenda. The ranking was made using the developed new approach to analyzing a multi-criteria problem based on the MCDM methodology. The CODAS and CoCoSo methods and the Laplace criterion were used to determine the final value of the index for assessing the level of sustainable development of regions. Meanwhile, the values of the indicator weights were determined based on the Shannon Entropy and CRITIC methods and the aforementioned criterion. The determined index values formed the basis for making a ranking of the studied regions and assessing their level of development. The result of this process was their division into four classes differing in the level of achievement of Goal 9 of the Agenda. With the use of non-parametric tests (Kendall's Rank and Spearman Rank), an evaluation was carried out of the relationship between the values of the determined index and selected economic and social parameters characterizing the studied regions between 2015 and 2021. The results show that Poland is highly differentiated both temporally and spatially at the regional level. Throughout the entire analyzed period, the high level of development in the assessed scope was reported for the Masovia, Lower Silesia and Pomerania provinces, and the low level – for the Holy Cross Province. The results also confirm the relationship between a high degree of innovation, industrialization and stable infrastructure and economic development and living standards. The results show regions that need a decision on their nature and the role they are to play in the national and European economy.