Walking a Narrow and Uneven Path: Our progress towards the 2030 SDGs

At the United Nations General Assembly held in September 2023, world leaders adopted a new agenda and political declaration in the hope of accelerating action towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). COP 28 is now continuing the discourse highlighting the interdependence of climate action and sustainable development. This renewed determination to fulfil the 2030 Agenda through unified action is cause for optimism.

The recent UNDP SDG-push publication illustrating global SDG patterns and insights echoed the need for a unified approach that does not leave anyone behind. It demonstrates how many countries remain constrained to focus on growth and recovery at the expense of planetary health, debt sustainability and long-term development gains.

While navigating responses to emergency shocks is a necessity that consumes fiscal capacity and requires global support, countries still need to be able to pursue green and digitally driven structural transformations that take an inclusive and interlinked approach to delivering sustainable and resilient development.

This article aims to unveil the experience across the Commonwealth in achieving the SDGs, highlighting key trends, performances, and requirements necessary to get back on track.

The SDG story across the Commonwealth

There are cases in which Commonwealth member countries have advanced relative to the world trend, as well as clear similarities in the stagnation or even reversal of progress in certain areas.

Commonwealth countries have experienced positive progress overall, building on the Millennium Development Goals towards the achievement of the SDGs. However, certain reversals in development gains, and deviations from that path towards achieving the SDGs, are cause for concern. Among certain groups such as small states, most recent trends suggest a running-out-of-steam that may be attributable to the compounding effects of the increasing frequency and severity of global and climatic shocks. This underlines the need to scale-up globally unified efforts and resource availability if we are to equitably achieve the targets by 2030.

The performance of Commonwealth countries

Across Commonwealth countries, there is significant difference in country scores and progression against the SDG Index (Tables 1a and 1b). While the average Commonwealth index score in 2022 was 65, there remains a 29-point difference between the highest and lowest-scoring Commonwealth countries. While all countries’ scores have improved over time, these gains are less pronounced among small states.

Table 1a: SDG index score by Commonwealth country as of 2022 (left), and Table 1b: Change in Commonwealth country SDG index scores, 2000–2022 (right)

Index scores by goal

The Commonwealth and its small states have made strong progress against many SDGs, particularly in areas that required acceleration from a very low starting point (see Table 2). Scores have improved against all SDGs, other than SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions),^[1] since the year 2000. SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), although still the lowest-scoring SDG in 2022, has seen the highest growth.

Table 2: Commonwealth countries’ overall SDG index score by goal, 2022

The score for SDG 13 (Climate Action), which continues to be the highest-scoring SDG across the Commonwealth since 2000, rose across Commonwealth nations even while its global average declined. In a similar vein, the Commonwealth has seen greater improvement in its score for SDG 5 (Gender Equality) than the global average, but it is falling behind in terms of progress towards SDG 1 (No Poverty).

The performance of Commonwealth small states against SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) has improved at a faster rate than the global average, and they are responsible for most of the rise in the Commonwealth's score for SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure). However, there are also obvious cases in which small states are finding it difficult to maintain progress (see Figure 1).

Trends in progress, 2000–2022

Although Commonwealth least developed countries (LDCs) have progressed the most, they still have the furthest to go – whereas Commonwealth small states, which have historically had scores above average, are experiencing a slowdown in progress (Figure 2). All country groupings have had a gradual and steady increase in their SDG scores. Small states have consistently outscored the Commonwealth average over time, however, the score gap has been closing, particularly in 2022 when small states saw a noticeable decline in scores.

2022: Progress interrupted

The Commonwealth’s progress towards achieving the SDGs took a backward step in 2022 relative to 2021 – a decline most prominent among small states, and in particular against SDGs 4, 11, and 16 (see Figure 3). While the trend in SDG scores over time is usually one of a continuous, albeit gradual, increase, 19 Commonwealth countries experienced a decline in score in 2022. Small states were the primary contributors to that decline, with their progress against the SDGs going into reverse. It is likely that this was linked to the disproportionately high impact on small states of the shocks that occurred during the COVID period (during which fiscal space was heavily squeezed).

So, is the Commonwealth on track for 2030?

Despite strong progress in various areas, many Commonwealth countries are not on-track to achieve the 2030 agenda, and will remain off-track unless efforts and financing are ramped up in order to make up for the decline in progress experienced in 2022 (see Figure 4). As of 2022, six Commonwealth countries had achieved a single SDG. On some SDGs – such as SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) and SDG 13 (Climate Action) – scores continue to be high, while others such as SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) have seen vast improvements.

However, as is shown in the green areas in Figure 4 below, the Commonwealth as a whole is not on-track to hit any SDGs in 2030 on the strength of its performance against the on-track trajectories for 2022. This demonstrates the need for countries to increase their interlinked focus on their SDG targets, and for the international community to ramp up the availability and accessibility of resources for countries to achieve their goals equitably. This is why the Commonwealth call for a systemic reform of the global financial architecture remains a high priority. Aiming to transform the existing traditional rules and regulations that make up the prevailing financial architecture to meet the current and emerging challenges of a changing world, the urgent call, if answered, will drive financial resources towards climate action and the attainment of the SDGs. 

Notes on the data

All data discussed above is taken from the Sustainable Development Report website (sdgindex.org) based on the publication: Sachs, J.D., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G., Drumm, E. (2023). Sustainable Development Report 2023: Implementing the SDG Stimulus. SDSN & Dublin University Press. doi.org/10.25546/102924.

Data is available only for 42 of the 56 Commonwealth countries and missing for 14 countries –-all of which are small states. Therefore, the average trends are taken as equal weights among the available member country data, and so is a representation from a sample of Commonwealth countries. The countries excluded from the analysis were those for which data were not available for at least 80 per cent of the analysis, or which were included in a previous edition of the SDG index but for which data were not available for at least 75 per cent of the indicators. Those countries were: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Saint Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Footnote

1. There was a three-point decline in the score for SDG 16 between 2000 and 2022, with the decline most prominent among small states. ^{[^back]}