Japan falls to 19th in world rankings for SDG progress

Asahi Shimbun

4 days ago

Dropping one spot from last year, Japan ranked 19th in the world for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and received the lowest evaluation level in six categories, including gender equality and food security.
The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), an international research organization that operates under the United Nations, released its annual report on countries' progress on SDGs on June 24.
The 'Sustainable Development Report 2025' covered 167 countries that hold comparable data.
Japan has continued to fall in the rankings since placing 11th in 2017. It placed 18th last year.
The SDSN also rated countries on a four-level scale for their progress on each of 17 goals.
Like last year, Japan received the lowest rating of 'major challenges remain' for five goals: gender equality; responsible consumption and production; climate action; life below water; and life on land.
This year, Japan also received the lowest rating in the category of zero hunger, which represents food security and sustainable agriculture.
The report cited Japan's worsening nitrogen management, which leads to air and groundwater pollution, and high meat consumption, which puts a burden on the environment.
Japan also ranked poorly in: proportion of seats held by women in national parliament; gender wage gap; amount of electronic waste that is not recollected; volume of plastic waste exported; CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion; rate of fish caught from overexploited or collapsed stocks; and biodiversity conservation efforts.
Furthermore, Japan dropped two evaluation levels for industry, innovation and infrastructure.
Japan had previously received a top evaluation of 'achieved' in that category, but it slid due largely to its low score in the newly adopted indicator assessing the percentage of women among university graduates in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.
In the 2025 report, Japan received an 'achieved' evaluation for only one goal: good health and well-being. This was attributed to an increase in Japanese people reporting a sense of well-being, both physically and mentally.
This lifted Japan's overall rating.
The top five countries remained unchanged from last year, with Finland leading for the fifth consecutive year.
Japan remains the highest-ranked country outside of Europe.
The report noted that more people have access to electricity and the internet, and infant mortality rates have declined worldwide.
It emphasized that development support through the SDGs is a high-return investment that will benefit future generations.