Sustainable Development Goals Index Research Articles

Indicator‐based assessment of local and regional progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): An integrated approach from Romania

AbstractIn order to measure progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, 169 targets have been approved globally. Even though interest in implementing these goals is high, many states have not yet established a set of subnational indicators to measure the implementation of the SDGs and have not completed their own assessment of progress in achieving these global goals. This study aims to measure the progress toward achieving the SDG at local and regional level in Romania by calculating the SDG Index. For the calculation of the SDG Index at subnational level, we propose an integrated approach based on 90 indicators, stored and processed in a PostgreSQL object‐relational database. The results show the concentration of the highest performances of sustainable development in some specific geographical areas. The rural areas and the extended peripheral regions in the eastern and southern part of the country are the poorest performers.

Developing a Social Index for Measuring the Public Opinion Regarding the Attainment of Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. Implementing SDGs is an important issue for companies as well as for nations. However, to consistently monitor and evaluate progress towards these goals, major efforts in developing objective indices for measuring the levels of SDGs are essential. Currently almost all SDG studies uniformly use available country-level official statistics to synthesize an SDG index, failing to reflect the feelings and opinions of the general public. In this paper we introduce an SDG Social Index developed by a Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm. By using social media text data rather than conventional survey data, this index can measure and evaluate the outspoken feelings and opinions of the public toward the SDGs. Here we produce an SDG Social Index for a global company and statistically assess its effectiveness. This framework for producing an SDG Social Index can easily be extended to make other indices where various text data are available. It can also be easily extended to yield country-specific SDG indices across nations. In Conclusion section we summarize the implications of our approach and discuss limitations and future research areas.

Визначення потенційних напрямків формування власного «зеленого» бренду України

The article is aimed at studying the directions that are of paramount importance in the country's transition to ecologically oriented development, as well as determining on this basis Ukraine's readiness to form and develop its own «green» brand. In accordance with the set goal, the main directions to carry out the research were ecologization and sustainable development, organic agriculture and renewable energy. As a result of the research, Ukraine's position corresponding to the Sustainable Development Goals Index was determined. According to this, Ukraine successfully combines economic development, social integration and ecological sustainability. The value of the country's index is on par with new industrialized countries and even with some economically developed countries. Ukraine's position in accordance with the Environmental Performance Index is worse and shows a lag from the advanced countries of the world. Furthermore, it is determined that Ukraine inefficiently uses agricultural land, since there is a high level of plowing, and only 1.1% is occupied for organic production. Still, despite the fact that Ukraine is the second exporter of organic products to the EU after China, insufficient attention is paid to the markets of Asia and Africa. It is defined that renewable energy in Ukraine is at the stage of origin, the reason for which is, among other things, underfunding of this direction. The most developed sources of renewable energy in Ukraine are currently hydropower and solar energy. Additionally, the article highlights weaknesses that create obstacles to environmental friendliness and sustainable development and should be leveled when forming Ukraine’s own green brand.

Systematic prioritisation of SDGs: Machine learning approach

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework is recognised throughout the world as a significant global agreement that has been adopted by all UN members. These goals represent a solution to sustainability problems dealing with nations’ economies, the natural environment and societies. However, making progress towards achieving these goals has not been as effective as originally intended. One of the major concerns is whether the SDGs will be achieved globally by 2030. Given the current damage wrought internationally by the COVID-19 pandemic, what is required is a coordinated global effort to achieve the SDGs. In this uncertain time, an era of corona virus outbreaks, when countries’ resources are finite and the deadline is fast approaching, prioritisation is necessary to allocate resources effectively. Several attempts have been made to prioritise SDGs by quantifying synergies. However, systematic methods to identify the magnitude of how to enhance the SDG index by improving individual SDGs is lacking. The objective of this paper is to identify synergetic SDGs using Boosted Regression Trees model which is a machine learning and data mining technique. In this study, contributions of all SDGs to form the SDG index are identified and a “what-if” analysis is conducted to understand the significance of goal scores. Findings show that SDG3, “Good health and well-being”, SDG4, “Quality education”, and SDG7, “Affordable and clean energy”, are the most synergetic goals, when their scores are >60%. The findings of this research will help decision-makers implement effective strategies and allocate resources by prioritising synergetic goals.

Monitoring the progress of health-related sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Brazilian states using the Global Burden of Disease indicators

BackgroundMeasuring the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) has been the key to verifying the evolution of health indicators worldwide. We analyse subnational GBD data for Brazil in order to monitor the performance of the Brazilian states in the last 28 years on their progress towards meeting the health-related SDGs.MethodsAs part of the GBD study, we assessed the 41 health-related indicators from the SDGs in Brazil at the subnational level for all the 26 Brazilian states and the Federal District from 1990 to 2017. The GBD group has rescaled all worldwide indicators from 0 to 100, assuming that for each one of them, the worst value among all countries and overtime is 0, and the best is 100. They also estimate the overall health-related SDG index as a function of all previously estimated health indicators and the SDI index (Socio-Demographic Index) as a function of per capita income, average schooling in the population aged 15 years or over, and total fertility rate under the age of 25 (TFU25).ResultsFrom 1990 to 2017, most subnational health-related SDGs, the SDG and SDI indexes improved considerable in most Brazilian states. The observed differences in SDG indicators within Brazilian states, including HIV incidence and health worker density, increased over time. In 2017, health-related indicators that achieved good results globally included the prevalence of child wasting, NTD, household air pollution, conflict mortality, skilled birth attendance, use of modern contraceptive methods, vaccine coverage, and health worker density, but poor results were observed for child overweight and homicide rates. The high rates of overweight, alcohol consumption, and smoking prevalence found in the historically richest regions (i.e., the South and Southeast), contrast with the high rates of tuberculosis, maternal, neonatal, and under-5 mortality and WASH-related mortality found in the poorer regions (i.e., the North and Northeast).ConclusionsThe majority of Brazil’s health-related SDG indicators have substantially improved over the past 28 years. However, inequalities in health among the Brazilian states and regions remain noticeable negatively affecting the Brazilian population, which can contribute to Brazil not achieving the SDG 2030 targets.

J.Sachs, G.Schmidt‐Traub, C.Kroll, G.Lafortune, G.Fuller, F.WoelmThe Sustainable Development Goals and COVID‐19. Sustainable Development Report 2020Cambridge University Press, 2020. 510 p.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 2015 to “end poverty and set the world on a path of peace prosperity and opportunity for all on a healthy planet” by 2030. This ambitious framework includes 17 goals (e.g., no poverty, zero hunger, good health, quality education, etc.) with 169 targets and 231 unique indicators. The SDGs have been widely adopted to guide policy makers in development efforts around the world, but they also have been criticized as too unwieldy and all-encompassing. The Economist (March 26, 2015) concluded that the “SDGs are unfeasibly expensive” and “are so sprawling and misconceived that the entire enterprise is being set up to fail.” Nevertheless, the SDGs are now an integral part of the global development movement and are often cited by advocates of specific interventions. The Sustainable Development Report 2020 (SDR2020) was prepared by teams of independent experts at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the Bertelsmann Stiftung. It is separate from the The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 published by the UN. The project is directed by Jeffry Sachs, who was an advisor to UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban-Ki Moon in the creation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and SDGs. As in previous years, the SDR2020 presents and aggregates data from all UN member states to describe each country's progress towards achieving the SDGs and indicates areas requiring faster progress. Estimates of indicators rely on the most up-to-date data from variety of official and nonofficial sources. In order to summarize levels and trends in country performance, the report calculates indices for each SDG with a scale from 0 to 100 (worst to best). A country's overall SDG Index score and its scores on individual SDGs can be interpreted as a percentage of optimal performance. The overall SDG index score ranges from a high of 84.7 in Sweden to a low of 38.5 in Central African Republic. The report's central chapter summarizes global and regional trends in index scores, and appendix tables present two-page summaries of levels and trends for SDG indicators for each country. Besides struggling with a range of methodological issues, the authors faced the difficult task of succinctly summarizing a very large set of data (115 SDGs indicators for 193 countries). Unfortunately, there are few general findings, because the degree of progress towards achieving the SDGs depends on (i) country/region, (ii) the specific SDG, and (iii) level or trend. On average, progress since 2015 has been fastest in low- and middle-income countries especially in East and South Asia. Africa scores low but showed significant improvements in a number of SDGs. OECD countries, which have on average the highest scores, made only limited progress. The report provides a valuable but rather brief summary of these regional differences. A second objective of SDR2020 is to review policy efforts to implement the SDGs. This assessment is based on information gathered in new expert and public opinion surveys to gauge political leadership in support of the SDGs at the country level. Results confirm that the SDGs framework is increasingly used at many national and international statistical institutes and other data providers. The adoption of the SDG framework by policy makers is growing but more limited. The report's clear exposition in graphs and tables and the many country and regional statistics will no doubt be appreciated by policy makers and researchers in national and international organizations. However, the value of the findings is somewhat limited by the lack of current data for many indicators. As the authors discovered, most estimates are not up to date and a substantial proportion of the data points available now even have a year of reference that predates the adoption of the SDGs. This diminishes the value of publishing country-level estimates on an annual basis, as indicators for many countries change little from one year to the next. The report was in preparation when the Covid-19 epidemic struck. A brief discussion of this huge new human and economic crisis is included, and the authors identify which SDGs will likely be most heavily affected. The epidemic will cause massive disruption of progress on the SDGs for years to come, but it was too early to assess this damage at the time of the publication of the report (July 2020).

National Baselines for Integrated Implementation of an Environmental Sustainable Development Goal Assessed in a New Integrated SDG Index

Most indicator-based assessments of progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) focus on identifying priorities for implementation. However, once priorities are established, policymakers are called to implement them in an integrated way which requires progress not just on a Goal’s targets (siloed approach) but also progress in interrelated policy areas. To assess baselines for integrated implementation, this article introduces a new family of SDG index based on a Goal’s targets and first-order interrelations with other goals that divides targets linked to the prioritized or focal SDG into pressure, impact, and response components. Focusing on an application to SDG14, the conservation and sustainable use of marine resources, an important priority for many small island developing states, the article develops an integrated SDG14 (I-SDG14) index based on an international study of SDG14 interlinkages with indicators selected from SDSN’s global indicator set for all island states with sufficient data available for the year 2018. While all island states assessed face challenges on SDG14, top-performers in terms of I-SDG14 (United Kingdom, New Zealand, Japan, Ireland and Iceland) tend to face greater challenges on pressures, primarily reflecting their performance on targets related to SDGs 2, 12, 13 and 15, whereas bottom-performers (Timor-Leste, Vanuatu, Haiti, Jamaica and Comoros) tend to face greater challenges on responses, i.e., country capacities to influence SDG14, owing to their status on targets related to SDGs 4, 9, 16 and 17. In particular, country scoreboards, “traffic-light” visual representation of performance, and radar-diagrams are used to investigate country-level strengths and challenges for integrated implementation. The proposed index offers a useful starting point to frame discussions with different stakeholders around integrated approaches to implementation and can be flexibly applied to other SDGs and contexts. The article concludes with several suggestions for future research aimed at improving integrated assessments for the SDGs.

A systematic method for assessing progress of achieving sustainable development goals: A case study of 15 countries

17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) were committed by 193 countries in 2015. Assessing the spatio-temporal progress of achieving the SDGs can help to track the global sustainable development progress and identify critical development issues to eventually accelerate the achievement of SDGs. However, there is a lack of methods for the quantitative assessment of the progress of achieving SDGs at the regional level (above the national level), especially systematic methods that can simultaneously assess regions along the “Belt and Road”. To fill this research gap, after classifying 17 SDGs into four dimensions (society, economy, environment, means of implementation and cooperation), we have developed the Composite SDG Index to represent the comprehensive performance of achieving SDGs. Specifically, the index is constructed by two sub-indices, including the SDG subindex used to assess the overall performance of achieving the four dimensional SDGs and the Coupling Coordinated SDG subindex used for the first time in the SDG assessment to measure the coupling coordination degree between the four SDG dimensions. To implement this methodological framework, we chose 15 countries along the “Belt and Road” as the case study, and used 108 indicators to assess the performance of achieving SDGs for these countries. Eventually, various national development models and related policy recommendations were proposed. The three indices included in the methodological framework developed in this study can effectively enhance the global stakeholders' mutual understanding of the progress of achieving SDGs to support regional coordinated planning and national-level strategic decision-making.

Green Technology and Sustainable Development: Assessment and Green Growth Frameworks

The aim of this study is to investigate the characteristics of a sustainable development assessment methodology being designed in the context of green technology. The methodology in question is based on indicators from the Sustainable Development Goals Index (SGDI), specifically in its ecological component. These indicators underlie an Averaging Sustainable Development Index (ASDI) and a Normalized Sustainable Development Index (NSDI). The resultant methodology was applied to 20 countries from the SDGI ranking. According to the research results, the intensive activity of the brown industries in the United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan, the United States, Korea, and Russia resulted in significant carbon dioxide emissions. Switzerland, Kazakhstan, and Russia had high scores on sustainable management of water and sanitation. Russia was the only developed country to have an ASDI higher than its SDGI and its gap between NSDI and ASDI indexes was not significant, indicating a positive trend in greentech development. The reason why NSDI was increasingly different from SDGI was that countries leading the socio-economic rankings had higher consumption of energy and resources, and a much greater environmental footprint than those countries that consumed less. The originality of this study is that it identifies gaps between NSDI and ASDI values, which indicate that conditions for greentech adoption in most developing countries are unfavorable.

Decent Work and Inclusive Economic Growth: Bangladesh Perspective

The study has made an effort to analyze the performance of Bangladesh economy in line with the decent work and inclusive economic growth target of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the period of 2015 to 2019 and to identify the challenges of achieving decent work for all by 2030. Bangladesh has ranked 109 th among the 166 countries and moved seven notches up from 116 th of 2019 in the SDGs Index 2020. Analyzing the International Labour Organization (ILO) modeled estimated data on the decent work indicators like labour force participation rate, employment to population ratio, unemployment rate, youth unemployment, informal employment, child labour and employment in agriculture, industry and service sector, the study reveals that the high youth unemployment, informality in the job market, mismatch between demand and supply of skilled labour, less female participation in the labour force, insufficient investment, participation of child and forced labour in hazardous work, etc. are the major hindrance for ensuring decent work for all. Skill development programs, large scale investment, products diversification, good governance, elimination of child and forced labour from hazardous work, etc. may help to create more employment opportunities, decent work environment as well as inclusive and sustainable economic growth in Bangladesh. Keywords: Decent Work, Inclusive Economic Growth, SDGs, Bangladesh. DOI: 10.7176/JESD/11-16-02 Publication date: August 31 st 2020

Sustainability: Analysis Using Mathematics of Uncertainty

All member states of the United Nations adopted Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. The 17 SDGs describe a universal agenda that applies to and must be implemented by all countries. We take the metrics and data provided in the SDG Index and Dashboards Reports and the Report of a Study by Stakeholder Forum and transform them into a fuzzy logic setting. This allows for the analysis of the results in these reports by using techniques of mathematics of uncertainty. We focus on countries making up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We provide a ranking of the countries in the OECD as to their achievement of the SDGs.

Impact of Entrepreneurship Activity Sustainable Development

Sustainable development considers the development that achieves the present economic goals, without obstructing the future development in a sense of satisfying the needs of society and endangering the environment. Recently, the entrepreneurship phenomenon has been widely recognized as an important path towards sustainable development, positively contributing to the development of society. Thus, in the paper, the empirical evidence on linkages between entrepreneurial activity indicators and social development goals is provided. To examine the linkages, the data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and Sustainable Development Goals Index were used. The empirical results suggest that entrepreneurship represents an important factor for fostering sustainability, particularly in opportunity-driven and innovative entrepreneurial activities. The results show, that both of them have a positive impact on sustainable development, while the necessity-driven entrepreneurial activity negatively affects sustainable development. This could be explained by the fact that necessity entrepreneurs are not likely to become the entrepreneurs to implement a promising business opportunity, but rather to earn an income. To achieve the sustainable development goals as well as entrepreneurship should become the national priority by introducing new policies and measures, that is, making the conditions, through which entrepreneurship could achieve positive contributions to the development of the society.

Sustainable Development and Populism

All 193 UN member states have pledged to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), following the guiding principle to leave no one behind. At the same time, rising populist movements increasingly influence the political debate in many countries by challenging multilateral cooperation and liberal democracy. This paper contains the first empirical study of the relationship between the SDGs and populism. In order to analyse the nexus between these growingly important concepts, we introduce a new “Sustainability-Populism Framework”. It allows us to asses how the performance on the 17 SDGs over time relates to electoral support for populist parties, resulting in a classification of 39 countries into four categories. Moreover, in a regression analysis, we find that for each 1-point increase on the aggregate SDG Index (out of 100) over time, the vote share of populist parties on average drops by about 2 percentage points. Our results lend some support to the notion that a strong commitment to the SDGs (overall, as well as in particular to SDGs 1, 2, 11 and 15) could be part of an appropriate and effective answer to populism. We hope to initiate a timely debate on populism and sustainable development with our study, along with more research into this complex relationship.

Health Status in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Middle East and North Africa Countries: Implications for Global Health

The aim of this study was to evaluate the health status of the Iranians following the sustainable development goals' (SDGs) introduction and the recent health reform implementation in Iran and to compare with those of the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) and global average. This comparative study used secondary data to investigate socio-demographic and health status indicators. The sources included census, population-based surveys and death registries. Global and regional health status indicators were obtained from international databases including WHO, the World Bank and the Institute for Health Metric and Evaluation (IHME). Life expectancy and human development index improved following the reform implementation. Among causes of death, 74.6% were attributed to non-communicable diseases (NCDs). There was an increasing trend in risk factors for NCDs in Iran, while at the same time neonatal, infant and under-5 mortality rates reduced. Compared to the MENA, Iran has a lower maternal mortality ratio, neonatal, infant, and under-5 mortality rates, and a higher life expectancy. NCDs and road traffic injuries accounted for a larger portion of disability-adjusted life years in Iran compared to the MENA and worldwide. Actions against communicable diseases and road traffic injuries are required together with continued efforts to address NCDs. Although based on the results, Iran has relatively high rankings, there is a need to develop a roadmap to accelerate achieving global health goals and SDGs targets.

Using an artificial neural network for estimating sustainable development goals index

PurposeThis paper aims to develop a simple model for estimating sustainable development goals index using the capabilities of artificial neural networks.Design/methodology/approachSustainable development has three pillars, including social, economic and environmental pillars. Three clusters corresponding to the three pillars were created by extracting sub-indices of three 2018 global reports and performing cluster analysis on the correlation matrix of sub-indices. By setting the sustainable development goals index as the target variable and selecting one indicator from each cluster as input variables, 20 artificial neural networks were run 30 times.FindingsArtificial neural networks with seven nodes in one hidden layer can estimate sustainable development goals index by using just three inputs, including ecosystem vitality, human capital and gross national income per capita. There is an excellent similarity (>95%) between the results of the artificial neural network and the sustainable development goals index.Practical implicationsInstead of calculating 232 indicators for determining the value of sustainable development goals index, it is possible to use only three sub-indices, but missing 5% of precision, by using the proposed artificial neural network model.Originality/valueThe study provides additional information on the estimating of sustainable development and proposes a new simple method for estimating the sustainable development goals index. It just uses three sub-indices, which can be retrieved from three global reports.

DIGITALIZATION – SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT CONVERGENCE: METRICS AND EFFECTS IN ROMANIA

Sustainability and digitalization both require major transitions in our world and the way we imagine them. Digitalization is considered to be the engine that alters sustainability. However, it is not yet known whether and to what extent this digital transformation facilitates or hinders the development of a more sustainable world. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the implications of digitalization for sustainable development in Romania and to provide answers to the following questions: how does digitalization affect the most important pillars of sustainability? How can digital technology help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in the next period? These key issues are of immediate practical relevance and therefore need to be addressed by researchers and decision-makers alike. In order to achieve this objective, this research examines the relationship between digitalization and sustainable development, in the specific case of Romania, and examines how digital performance affects the main components of sustainable development, pursued on the basis of the following sustainable development objectives: non-poverty, good health and well-being, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, At the same time, it examines the most important measures for evaluating the level of digitalization of countries (more specifically, the Digital Economy and Society Index DESI methodology) and sustainable development at the macro-economic level (through the Sustainable Development Goals Index SDGI components).

A Review of the Sustainability Concept and the State of SDG Monitoring Using Remote Sensing

The formulation of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) was a major leap forward in humankind’s quest for a sustainable future, which likely began in the 17th century, when declining forest resources in Europe led to proposals for the re-establishment and conservation of forests, a strategy that embodies the great idea that the current generation bears responsibility for future generations. Global progress toward SDG fulfillment is monitored by 231 unique social-ecological indicators spread across 169 targets, and remote sensing (RS) provides Earth observation data, directly or indirectly, for 30 (18%) of these indicators. Unfortunately, the UN Global Sustainable Development Report 2019—The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable Development concluded that, despite initial efforts, the world is not yet on track for achieving most of the SDG targets. Meanwhile, through the EO4SDG initiative by the Group on Earth Observations, the full potential of RS for SDG monitoring is now being explored at a global scale. As of April 2020, preliminary statistical data were available for 21 (70%) of the 30 RS-based SDG indicators, according to the Global SDG Indicators Database. Ten (33%) of the RS-based SDG indicators have also been included in the SDG Index and Dashboards found in the Sustainable Development Report 2019—Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. These statistics, however, do not necessarily reflect the actual status and availability of raw and processed geospatial data for the RS-based indicators, which remains an important issue. Nevertheless, various initiatives have been started to address the need for open access data. RS data can also help in the development of other potentially relevant complementary indicators or sub-indicators. By doing so, they can help meet one of the current challenges of SDG monitoring, which is how best to operationalize the SDG indicators.

Graphical sustainability analysis using disjoint biplots

The assessment of sustainability is of the utmost importance nowadays. Several approaches exist that measure sustainability at a national level and rank countries accordingly. Comparison of countries could be done numerically or pictorially. This paper introduces a novel clustering disjoint HJ-biplot approach, which is then applied to data from two well-known models: Sustainability Assessment by Fuzzy Evaluation (SAFE) and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Index (UN-SDGs). This approach performs a graphical ranking that makes the sustainability standing of countries very transparent. As expected, the pictorial model yielded similar rankings to those of SAFE and UN-SDGs, but it additionally grouped countries according to their most important indicators, thereby yielding a more global picture of sustainability. Our approach thus comprises a useful complement to existing mathematical sustainability ranking models.

Development of a Global SDG Progress Index Aimed at “Leaving No One Behind”

The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) constitute a set of shared global objectives for the development over the coming years, which both developed and developing countries are working together to achieve. It is, however, very difficult to know from tracking national-level SDG performance estimates whether steps are being taken to arrive at 2030 with an adequate degree of compliance, and fully delivering on the aim of “leaving no one behind”. This paper proposes and evaluates a Global SDG Progress Index which exploits the reported country rankings for the SDG Index, and incorporates a series of weighting coefficients to effectively involve all countries in improving SDG performance, regardless of their position in the ranking. Thresholds for the index are established to determine the adequacy of progress in relation to the 2030 goals. The results show that the current rate of progress in developing countries (assuming as an indicator GDP per capita values) is insufficient to achieve equitable compliance with the SDGs at the global level.

To Achieve a Sustainable Blue Future, Progress Assessments Must Include Interdependencies between the Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) focus on providing society with a sustainable future. Progress toward the goals is being tracked by a series of indicators. These indicators show progress toward individual goals and targets but do not show how success or failure in relation to one goal might affect success or failure in another area. We show how interactions between the oceans and human poverty, hunger, and gender equity are hidden by indicator assessments and how this undermines the capacity of governments and organizations to maximize long-term moves toward sustainability. These findings are important for decision makers who work in the public and private sectors and wish to avoid unforeseen outcomes when implementing sustainability initiatives. Here, we suggest extensions to the current assessment framework to help counteract the identified issues, providing a research agenda for scientists working in all fields of sustainability science.