India has for the first time secured a place among the top 100 out of 167 countries ranked for their progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to a report published on Tuesday.
According to the UN 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.
India ranked 109th in 2024, 112th in 2023, 121st in 2022, 120th in 2021, 117th in 2020, 115th in 2019, 112th in 2018 and 116th in 2017.
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 SGDs were adopted in 2015 with the idea that to save the planet, no one should be left behind in the overall development matrix by 2030.
The score measures progress on a scale of 0 to 100 where 100 indicates a country has achieved all 17 goals and 0 means no progress has been made.
The report’s authors flagged that SDG progress has stalled at the global level, with only 17 per cent of the 17 targets projected to be achieved by 2030.
“Conflicts, structural vulnerabilities and limited fiscal space impede SDG progress in many parts of the world,” said the report, with world-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs as its lead author.
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 per cent 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 the 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 fourth 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.
