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The Hindu
24-06-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
India enters top 100 in global Sustainable Development Goals rankings for first time
India has for the first time secured a place among the top 100 out of 193 countries ranked for their progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to a report published on Tuesday (June 24, 2025). 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.
Time of India
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Jeffrey Sachs exposes US, Israel's role in Syrian conflict
Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Nuh Yilmaz, World Food Programme Chief Operating Officer Carl Skau, U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen and U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network President Jeffrey Sachs participate in a panel discussion titled 'Syria: Reconstructing and Reconciling the Country' at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum. Exposing the US and Israel's role in the Syrian crisis, Jeffrey Sachs said, "American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu's far-right Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins." Show more Show less
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Opinion: The value of believing in others
Pop quiz: If you knew you were going to lose your wallet, which country would you choose to lose it in? That's an unhappy question to which, fortunately, there is a happy answer. If you said Finland (or any of the Scandinavian countries), you would be right. And it's not a coincidence that those countries also rise to the top of the list as the happiest nations on Earth. The second question is, what can we, in the increasingly unhappy United States, do to be more like Finland? The answer may be that we should simply believe more in the goodness of the people around us. That can be easier said than done in the current political climate, where perceptions about corruption and dishonesty seem to outpace reality. Gallup, in partnership with the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, just released the annual World Happiness Report. Finland leads the world for the eighth year in a row, followed by Denmark, Iceland and Sweden. Norway came in seventh. No surprise there. It's pretty much all pickled herring and ski parties at the top. The U.S. came in 24th. One year ago, I was walking through a small Swedish city with my wife at about the time this annual report was published. As I wrote at the time, we were battling a headwind registering a windchill of 17 degrees Fahrenheit — miserably and unhappily cold. The people around us were scurrying. Few of them looked ready to burst into song. By contrast, a month ago I was on an assignment in Bangladesh, where the weather was pleasant in February. Virtually everyone I cast a smile at returned it readily, but Bangladesh came in 134th on the happiness report. Clearly, happiness, at least as Gallup and co. measured it, has nothing to do with the weather or other external conditions. But those lost wallets, on the other hand … I've written about lost wallet tests before. In one such experiment, researchers littered the world with 17,000 of them, filled with different amounts of cash, or in some cases a key, and a business card. Researchers would hand them in at public places, such as banks, hotels or the post office, and then wait to see what happened. The vast majority were returned, intact, to the name on the business card. The more money they contained, the more likely they were to be returned. The problem is, we don't tend to believe this is so. The happiness report asked people to guess how many times folks around them engaged in benevolent activities, including volunteering, donating and helping strangers. Then it asked, specifically, how likely did they think it was that their own lost wallet would be returned by either a neighbor, a stranger or a police officer. The Finns and Danes each scored high in their expectations of people in each category. So did the Swedes, although they were more skeptical of strangers, finishing 32nd in that measurement. Americans finished 52nd in their faith in strangers returning wallets. In reality, virtually all nations performed better in real terms than their people projected, but the Nordics were indeed the most honest with wallets. It turns out that human expectations are at least as important as real performance. In the United States, the percentage of returned wallets was roughly double what U.S. respondents expected it to be. The report's authors said that 'expected benevolence is a substantial predictor of life satisfaction, meaning that people may be made needlessly unhappy by their unwarranted pessimism.' In other words, exaggerated cynicism emanating from Washington about corruption and dishonesty can make us less happy and more skeptical about our neighbors. Americans ranked 25th in their faith that a police officer would return a wallet — a result, the report said, that reflects 'how people rate the quality of their public institutions.' The good news is that the antidote to this cynicism is as simple as doing good things. The report said 'simply witnessing someone else giving has positive effects on wellbeing.' That is a note of encouragement to people who believe one person can influence many for good. Gallup CEO Jon Clifton is quoted in the report as saying it 'proves we underestimate how kind the world really is. If we want stronger communities and economies, we must invest in what truly matters: each other.' The report also ties happiness to simple things such as sharing meals with someone, connecting with others and living in large households with family bonds. But the need for faith in other people is the biggest lesson. It turns out you don't need to fight a biting late-winter wind in a Scandinavian town square to be happy. You just need to see the good around you, and maybe step back from toxic partisanship for a while.
