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Environmental destruction not avoided with the Sustainable Development Goals

Nature Sustainability volume 3, pages 795–798 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were designed to reconcile environmental protection with socioeconomic development. Here, we compare SDG indicators to a suite of external measures, showing that while most countries are progressing well towards environmental SDGs, this has little relationship with actual biodiversity conservation, and instead better represents socioeconomic development. If this continues, the SDGs will likely serve as a smokescreen for further environmental destruction throughout the decade.

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Fig. 1: Many SDG indicators do not adequately reflect changes in external indicators of successful biodiversity conservation.
Fig. 2: Evaluation of the efficacy of environment-related SDG indicators, based on 17 external indicators of the current state of biodiversity and socioeconomic development.

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Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2, and raw data can be provided from the corresponding authors upon request.

Code availability

All R scripts used to process the data are available from the corresponding authors upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Z. Z. Rahim and D. C. J. Yeo for their contributions towards improving this paper. Y.Z. and L.R.C. acknowledge support from the National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under its Commonwealth Research Fellowship grant NRF-CSC-ICFC2017-05.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Republic of Singapore

    Yiwen Zeng & L. Roman Carrasco

  2. Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia

    Sean Maxwell & James E. M. Watson

  3. School of Geography, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

    Rebecca K. Runting

  4. Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia, Canada

    Oscar Venter

  5. Wildlife Conservation Society, Global Conservation Program, Bronx, NY, USA

    James E. M. Watson

Authors
  1. Yiwen Zeng
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  2. Sean Maxwell
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  3. Rebecca K. Runting
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  4. Oscar Venter
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  5. James E. M. Watson
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  6. L. Roman Carrasco
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Contributions

Y.Z. and L.R.C. conceived the study. Y.Z. carried out the analyses. Y.Z., S.M., R.K.R., O.V., J.E.M.W. and L.R.C. contributed discussions and modelling insights. Y.Z., S.M., R.K.R., O.V., J.E.M.W. and L.R.C. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yiwen Zeng or L. Roman Carrasco.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–3 and Tables 1 and 2.

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Zeng, Y., Maxwell, S., Runting, R.K. et al. Environmental destruction not avoided with the Sustainable Development Goals. Nat Sustain 3, 795–798 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0555-0

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