The disparities and development trajectories of nations in achieving the sustainable development goals.
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Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39875793.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-56076-6 and PMC identifier 11775216.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a comprehensive framework for societal progress and planetary health. However, it remains unclear whether universal patterns exist in how nations pursue these goals and whether key development areas are being overlooked. Here, we apply the product space methodology, widely used in development economics, to construct an 'SDG space of nations'. The SDG space models the relative performance and specialization patterns of 166 countries across 96 SDG indicators from 2000 to 2022. Our SDG space reveals a polarized global landscape, characterized by distinct groups of nations, each specializing in specific development indicators. Furthermore, we find that as countries improve their overall SDG scores, they tend to modify their sustainable development trajectories, pursuing different development objectives. Additionally, we identify orphaned SDG indicators - areas where certain country groups remain under-specialized. These patterns, and the SDG space more broadly, provide a high-resolution tool to understand and evaluate the progress and disparities of countries towards achieving the SDGs.