The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) has published its annual global assessment of SDG progress, which reveals that ten years after the adoption of the SDGs, global commitment to the Goals remains high. However, it warns that while there are significant differences in progress across regions and countries, at the global level, only 17% of SDG targets are projected to be achieved by 2030.
Themed, ‘Financing Sustainable Development to 2030 and Mid-century,’ the tenth edition of the Sustainable Development Report highlights that since 2015, 190 of the 193 UN Member States have presented their voluntary national reviews (VNRs) at least once, with most countries having submitted two or more VNRs. It notes that Haiti, Myanmar, and the US are the only three countries that have not participated in the VNR process.
The report’s SDG Index and Dashboards rank the performance of all UN Member States on the SDGs, using 17 headline indicators to track overall SDG progress. The findings reveal that East and South Asia has outperformed all other regions in SDG progress since 2015. Among countries that have shown faster progress than others are Benin, Costa Rica, Nepal, Peru, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Uzbekistan.
As with previous rankings of countries’ overall performance on the SDGs, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark emerge at the top – but even those countries face challenges in achieving multiple targets, with significant international spillovers, driven by unsustainable consumption.
On average, globally, none of the 17 SDGs are on track to be achieved by 2030, according to the report, which identifies conflicts, structural vulnerabilities, and limited fiscal space among the factors impeding SDG progress in many parts of the world. Noting that around half the world’s population “lives in countries that cannot invest adequately in sustainable development due to debt burdens and a lack of access to affordable, long-term capital,” the report highlights the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) as an opportunity for countries to reform the global financial architecture so as to increase capital flows to the emerging and developing economies (EMDEs). It also offers recommendations “to scale up and align international financing flows to support global public goods and achieve sustainable development.”
This year’s edition also includes an index of countries’ support for UN-based multilateralism, ranking Barbados first – and the US last, due to its recent withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change and the World Health Organization (WHO) and its formal opposition to the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The report finds that Brazil is the most committed to UN-based multilateralism among Group of 20 (G20) countries, and Chile leads among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations.
The report was launched online on 24 June 2025. First published in 2016, the Sustainable Development Report, led by SDSN’s President Jeffrey Sachs, provides data to track and rank the performance of all UN Member States on the 17 SDGs. SDSN operates under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General, aiming to promote integrated approaches to address global economic, social, and environmental challenges.
The report is one of several SDG assessments released each year in the lead-up to the annual UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). The UN Secretary-General’s SDG Progress Report and the Sustainable Development Goals Report by the UN Statistics Division (forthcoming) will also inform HLPF deliberations. [Publication: Sustainable Development Report 2025: Financing the SDGs by 2030 and Mid-century] [Executive Summary] [Online Report] [SDSN Press Release]