India enters top 100 in global Sustainable Development Goals rankings for first time
According to the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network's 10th and latest Sustainable Development Report (SDR), India ranks 99th on the 2025 SDG Index with a score of 67, while China ranks 49th with 74.4 and the US 44th with 75.2 points.
Among India's neighbours, Bhutan takes 74th place with 70.5 points, Nepal ranks 85th with 68.6, Bangladesh 114th with 63.9 and Pakistan 140th with 57 points.
India's maritime neighbours, Maldives and Sri Lanka, stood at 53rd and 93rd places, respectively.
The report's authors said that SDG progress has stalled at the global level, with only 17 per cent of the 17 targets adopted by the U.N. member countries in 2015 projected to be achieved by 2030.
"Conflicts, structural vulnerabilities and limited fiscal space impede SDG progress in many parts of the world," the report, with world-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs as its lead author, said.
European countries, especially the Nordic nations, continue to top the SDG Index, with Finland ranking first, Sweden second and Denmark third.
A total of 19 out of the top 20 countries are in Europe.
Yet even these countries face significant challenges in achieving at least two goals, including those related to climate and biodiversity, largely due to unsustainable consumption, the authors said.
East and South Asia have outperformed all other global regions in terms of SDG progress since 2015 largely due to rapid socioeconomic development.
The countries in East and South Asia that have demonstrated the fastest progress since 2015 (in points) include Nepal (+11.1), Cambodia (+10), the Philippines (+8.6), Bangladesh (+8.3) and Mongolia (+7.7).
The other countries showing rapid progress among their peers include Benin (+14.5), Peru (+8.7), the United Arab Emirates (+9.9), Uzbekistan (+12.1), Costa Rica (+7) and Saudi Arabia (+8.1).
Though only 17% of the targets are on track to be achieved worldwide, most UN member states have made strong progress on targets related to access to basic services and infrastructure, including mobile broadband use (SDG 9), access to electricity (SDG 7), internet use (SDG 9), under-five mortality rate (SDG 3) and neonatal mortality (SDG 3).
Five targets show significant reversals in progress since 2015. These are obesity rate (SDG 2), press freedom (SDG 16), sustainable nitrogen management (SDG 2), the Red List Index (SDG 15) and the Corruption Perceptions Index (SDG 16).
The report said the top three countries most committed to the UN multilateralism are Barbados (1), Jamaica (2) and Trinidad and Tobago (3).
Among G20 nations, Brazil (25) ranks highest, while Chile (7) leads among OECD countries.
The United States, which recently withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO) and formally declared its opposition to the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda, ranks last (193rd) for the second year in a row.
The report, which comes ahead of the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in Seville, Spain, (June 30-July 3) noted the global financial architecture (GFA) is broken.
"Money flows readily to rich countries and not to the emerging and developing economies (EMDEs) that offer higher growth potential and rates of return. At the top of the agenda at FfD4 is the need to reform the GFA so that capital flows in far larger sums to the EMDEs," it said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
India Today
4 hours ago
- India Today
From Holocaust victims to Gaza's executioners?
As Gaza descends further into devastation, the statistics are harrowing: over 61,700 Palestinians dead, including 17,492 children, 111,000 injured, and more than 14,000 still missing. These are not the casualties of conventional war. These are victims of what many—including Amnesty International and UN experts—now openly call genocide. What began as an Israeli retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attacks has transformed into a relentless campaign of annihilation. Civilian infrastructure has been flattened. Aid convoys bombed. Hospitals, bakeries, schools and refugee camps obliterated. Meanwhile, Israel continues to restrict access to food, water, electricity, and medicine—weaponising deprivation to break Gaza's will to Shockingly, Israel's own ministers have spoken openly of 'flattening' Gaza and 'erasing' its people. One even suggested the use of nuclear weapons. These are not the remarks of a government seeking peace or security—they are the chilling declarations of an occupying power with genocidal comparison to past atrocities is unavoidable. Gaza has become a modern-day ghetto, blockaded, surveilled and bombed into submission. And the most painful irony of all: the state of Israel, born from the ashes of genocide, now invokes the Holocaust not as a moral compass, but as a shield for its own call this genocide is not to deny Jewish suffering—it is to affirm Palestinian humanity. It is to refuse selective outrage. Genocide is not a sacred term reserved for one people. When mothers are forced to feed toddlers grass, and hospitals for premature babies are bombed, the world cannot stay complicity deepens the crisis. The United States continues to veto ceasefire resolutions, while European governments offer muted condemnations and send more weapons. This is not neutrality. It is 'Never Again' is to mean anything, it must apply to all people. Gaza is not just a humanitarian disaster. It is a moral failure. The world must stop pretending otherwise.- Ends
The Hindu
6 hours ago
- The Hindu
France says Iran sanctions decision depends on detainees' release
France said on Thursday (July 3, 2025) it would decide whether to reimpose sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme depending on whether Tehran released two French detainees charged with spying for Israel. "Freeing Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris is an absolute priority for us," Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said. "We have always told our interlocutors from the Iranian regime that any decisions on sanctions will be conditional on resolving this issue." Iran officially suspended its cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog on Wednesday. The move came after a 12-day conflict last month between Iran and Israel, which saw unprecedented Israeli and US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and sharply escalated tensions between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The United States and other Western countries, along with Israel, accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon. Tehran denies that, but has gradually broken away from its commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal it struck with world powers, after the United States pulled out of it in 2018. Israel has maintained ambiguity about its own atomic arsenal, neither officially confirming nor denying it exists, but the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates its arsenal amounts to 90 nuclear warheads. The landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal provided Tehran with sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its atomic programme to be monitored by the UN nuclear watchdog. The deal included the possibility of UN sanctions being reimposed through a mechanism called "snapback" if Iran failed to fulfil its commitments, an option that expires in October. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has urged European signatories of the 2015 deal to trigger the "snapback" mechanism and reinstate all UN sanctions on Iran. Kohler, 40, and Paris, her 72-year-old partner, have been held in Iran since May 2022 on espionage charges their families reject. But Iran has now charged the pair with spying for Israel's intelligence agency Mossad, diplomatic and family sources told AFP on Wednesday. They were also accused of "corruption of Earth" and "plotting to overthrow the regime", the sources said. All three charges carry the death penalty. Tehran has not confirmed the new charges. A French diplomatic source described the allegations as "completely unfounded". Iran is believed to hold around 20 European nationals, many of whose cases have never been publicised, in what some Western governments including France describe as a strategy of hostage-taking aimed at extracting concessions from the West. Three other Europeans, who have not been identified, have also been arrested in the wake of the current conflict, two of whom are accused of spying for Israel, according to the authorities.
Time of India
6 hours ago
- Time of India
Iran committed to Non-Proliferation Treaty, foreign minister says
Despite suspending cooperation with the IAEA, Iran asserts its commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, channeling future interactions through its Supreme National Security Council. This action follows accusations against the IAEA of siding with Western nations and comes after alleged Israeli airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites. The IAEA awaits official clarification from Iran regarding the new restrictions on inspections. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Iran remains committed to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its safeguards agreement, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Thursday, a day after Tehran enacted a law suspending cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog."Our cooperation with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) will be channeled through Iran's Supreme National Security Council for obvious safety and security reasons," Araqchi wrote in a post on Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday enacted the legislation passed by parliament last week to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, a move the U.S. called "unacceptable."Araqchi's comment on X was in response to a call from Germany's Foreign Ministry urging Tehran to reverse its decision to shelve cooperation with the accused Germany of "explicit support for Israel's unlawful attack on Iran, including safeguarded nuclear sites".Iran has accused the IAEA of siding with Western countries and providing a justification for Israel's June 13-24 airstrikes on Iranian nuclear installations, which began a day after the U.N. agency's board of governors voted to declare Tehran in violation of its obligations under the powers have long suspected that Iran has sought to develop the means to build atomic bombs through its declared civilian atomic energy programme. Iran has repeatedly said it is enriching uranium only for peaceful nuclear inspectors are mandated to ensure compliance with the NPT by seeking to verify that nuclear programmes in treaty countries are not diverted for military law that went into effect on Wednesday mandates that any future inspection of Iranian nuclear sites by the IAEA needs approval by Tehran's Supreme National Security Council."We are aware of these reports. The IAEA is awaiting further official information from Iran," the Vienna-based global nuclear watchdog said in a statement.U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told a regular briefing on Wednesday that Iran needed to cooperate fully with the IAEA without further delay.
