The State of the ‘Planet’ Pillar by 2022 — A Partial Ordering-Based Analysis of the Sustainable Development Goals 6, 12, 13, 14, and 15

Abstract

The 2022 Sustainable Development Report provides the data for the so-called Planet pillar, i.e., the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6, 12, 13, 14, and 15 that are studied to elucidate the state of simultaneous compliance with these five goals as well as the trends in development for the 193 countries included in the report. To the extent that data for all five SDGs were available partial ordering methodology was applied as the analytical tool to rank the countries according to their compliance as well as their trend toward compliance based on the 2022 data. The analytical approach allows simultaneously taking data for all five SDGs into account to get an overall picture of the “planet” midway through the 15 years of the 17 UN SDGs. From the analyses, it became clear that high-income countries, despite their economic capacity are lagging both about the actual state and especially about the trend of development toward eventual compliance with the goals. The analyses further pinpointed that SDG 6 – clean water and sanitation – appeared as the most important indicator for the ranking of countries or regions. Building on the author’s previous research on the topic, this study points to the necessity for high-income countries to focus on the eventual compliance with the goal, both for themselves as well as for supporting countries with less economic capacities.