The Relative Importance of the SDG Pillars

Abstract

The seventeen United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) comprise social, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainability, and as such they can be grouped into five so-called pillars, i.e., People, Prosperity, Planet, Peace, and Partnership. The present study elucidates the relative importance of these pillars for 193 countries and 12 regions in their attempts to comply with the SDGs as well as the trends towards compliance based on partial order analyses. It is unambiguously demonstrated that the pillar Planet, comprising SDGs 6, 12, 13, 14, and 15, in all cases turns out as the far most important pillar both about the present degree of compliance as well as concerning the development trend. Not surprisingly the OECD region appears as the region with the highest degree of compliance whereas Africa has the least. However, when it comes to the trends the OECD and the high-income countries (HIC) apparently come staggering up when it comes to the pilar planet due to rather low pillar planet values. For the individual countries Finland and Denmark were found on the top ranks. The reason for the importance of the pillar Planet as well as the difference between sustainability goals and sustainability is discussed.