Sustainable development progress and challenges - Modelling SDG’s based on the income level in European countries

Abstract

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a global framework for balancing the economy, society and environment. These are management tools for national, regional and global sustainable development planning and programming until 2030. The efforts to improve sustainable development data should be aimed at fostering innovation in SDG monitoring and modelling. Identifying inter-relationships between the 17 SDGs is crucial to managing them effectively and achieving sustainability. This study aims to explore the structure and interlinkages between the SDGs and determine the SDGs that significantly differ between groups of European countries depending on their income level. The dataset was created based on the European Sustainable Development Reports from 2017 – 2022 and World Bank open data. It was processed using the principal component analysis/factor analysis (PCA/FA) and discriminant analysis (DA). PCA of the data sets yielded five Principal Components with Eigenvalues ˃1, accounting for 81,57% of the total variance. Results indicate that specific social and economic indicators mostly determine the success of European countries in implementing sustainable development concepts. Also, there are notable synergies between SDGs, especially when it comes to the socio-economic dimensions. Conversely, important potential trade-offs with environmental-related SDGs are identified. The findings revealed that a higher level of economic development leads to greater success in implementing the general concept of sustainability. Lower-income countries are more advanced regarding the SDGs that fall under the environmental dimension – responsible consumption and climate change. The discrimination goals of responsible consumption and partnership for goals indicate clear differences between two groups of countries and can undermine progress toward sustainable development in high-income countries. It implies that socio-economic goals are prioritised over environmental ones when achieving sustainable development.