Suchergebnisse

The FEEM project APPS – Assessment, Projections and Policy of Sustainable Development Goals – focuses on the quantitative assessment of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations at the end of September 2015. The project consists of two phases. The first, retrospective, computes indicators for all SDGs in 139 countries and then derives a composite multi-dimensional index and a worldwide ranking of current sustainability. This allows informing on strengths and weaknesses of today socio-economic development, as well as environmental criticalities, all around the world. The second phase, prospective, aims at evaluating the future trends of sustainability in the world by 2030. The assessment of the SDGs is carried out by means of an extended version of the recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium ICES macro-economic model that includes social and environmental indicators. The final goal is to highlight future challenges left unsolved in the next 15 years of socio-economic development and to analyze costs and benefits of specific policies to support the achievement of proposed targets. This paper presents the methodology and the results of the retrospective assessment. Five main steps are described: i) screening of indicators eligible to address the UN SDGs; ii) data collection from relevant sources; iii) organization in the three pillars of sustainability (economy, society, environment); iv) normalization to a common metrics; v) aggregation of the 25 indicators in composite indices by pillars as well as in the multi-dimensional index. The final ranking summarizes countries' sustainability performance. As expected, Middle-North European countries are at top of the ranking (Sweden, Norway and Switzerland the first three), with the most industrialized European countries such as Germany and UK, however, penalized by insufficient environmental performance. Other highly developed countries are between 24th (Canada) and 52nd place (United States). The emerging nations are scattered in our sustainability ranking. Brazil (43rd) and Russia (45th) precede China (80th) and India (102nd), the latter two especially penalized because of their social complexity. The worst performances, in terms of overall sustainability, are in Sub-Saharan Africa (Comoros, the Central African Republic and Chad occupy the last places in the ranking).

Abstract
Paramount to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the effective tackling of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) is the cooperation and coordination of the different levels of government—i.e. the supranational, national and local levels. This is due to the very nature of the SDGs, which are multi-dimensional and intended to guide and boost sustainable development at multiple scales. The European Union (EU) demonstrated a full commitment to the Agenda, making sustainable development a top priority. In fact, the five strategic objectives of the EU are modelled on the principles of the 2030 Agenda and the Cohesion Policy, EU's most transversal policy, is designed to give a direct contribution to the tackling of the 17 SDGs. Introducing a new methodology to evaluate the sustainability of operational programmes co-financed by the EU, the following paper aims to contribute to the building literature around the question of monitoring public investments regarding sustainability criteria. By matching the 169 targets of the 2030 Agenda with the 143 intervention fields of the Cohesion Policy, with specific reference to Sardinia's European Regional Development Fund and European Social Fund 2014–2020 Regional Operational Programmes, the present work introduces the key features of the model developed and its first results. The model could be of valuable support to policymakers who now have an innovative tool to monitor investments' coherence with the sustainability standards of the 2030 Agenda.

The 2030 Agenda has been adopted on a global level, but its implementation must also take place at the local level (Cavalli, 2018). The integration between the different levels of government - supranational, national and local - is essential; they must necessarily cooperate and coordinate their actions to ensure the effective implementation of every Goal of the Agenda. It is evident that the European Union, with its Member States, is fully committed towards the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs (Sanna et al., 2019). In particular, the concept of sustainable development, clearly stated in the five Strategic Objectives, is also expressed in future operational programmes in the context of Cohesion Policy. The latter is one of the most transversal policies of the European Union, including not only economic cohesion but also the social and territorial ones, and "contributes to most, if not all 17 SDGs" (European Commission, 2019). This paper proposes a methodology that evaluates the sustainability of the operational programmes co-financed by the Union with reference to the 169 targets of the 2030 Agenda and it is based specifically on the 143 intervention fields. The developed methodology can be used as a decision support tool for the European Union itself as a means of monitoring expenditure with reference to the 2030 Agenda in the various European Cohesion Policies. The present work briefly presents the model developed and its first results, deriving from the pilot applications to the Sardinia ERDF and ESF 2014-2020 ROPs.