At the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Summit on 25-26 September 2015, world leaders adopted the global framework ‘Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, which included 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets. The 2030 Agenda builds on the Millennium Development Goals and aims to eradicate poverty, leaving no one behind, and to shift the world on to a sustainable and resilient path.
The SDGs are clustered into five areas, which are also known as the ‘5Ps’ of the 2030 Agenda: people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership. The planet cluster covers SDGs with an environmental focus and aims, inter alia, to protect the planet from degradation by promoting sustainable consumption and production, the sustainable management of natural resources, and taking urgent action on climate change.

To track progress towards the SDGs, the UN adopted a revised set of global indicators in July 2017, which includes 232 indicators covering all 169 targets. Throughout 2019, a comprehensive review was conducted to improve the global monitoring framework and facilitate global monitoring of the 2030 Agenda. As a result, the global set now includes 231 indicators with the available methodology. At the European level, Eurostat leads the development and review of the EU SDG indicator set, which was first published on 31 May 2017 and subsequently updated each year (latest update was 16 January 2020). Based on this set of indicators, Eurostat is responsible for publishing annual EU SDG monitoring reports, the latest of which was published in June 2020.

Contents

Sustainable Development Goals and the environment in Europe: a cross-country analysis and 39 country profiles
Background, purpose and methodology
Cross-country analysis
Varied focus of environmental action and prioritisation in Eionet countries
What are the SDG-related structures and processes in Eionet countries?
European countries lead the way on global SDG action
References and further reading