India Climbs 10 Spots in UN’s 2025 Sustainability Index Amid Slow Global Progress

India has secured the 99^th spot 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. This places India among the top 100 out of 167 countries ranked for their progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the first time, according to a Sustainable Development Report published on June 24.

This marks a remarkable growth as 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, reported PTI.

Meanwhile, among India's neighbours, Bhutan ranks 74th with 70.5 points, Nepal stands at 85^th spot 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).

India’s SDG Target

The report stated that the global progress has mostly stalled with only 17% of the targets being on track to be achieved by 2030 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), stated the report while underlining that conflicts, structural vulnerabilities and limited fiscal space as key barriers to progress, reported TOI.

The report has been released just days ahead of the fourth international conference on financing for development (FdD4) in Seville, Spain. It emphasises that the current global financial system is broken favouring rich nations while neglecting emerging and developing economies. The report calls for urgent reform to ensure capital flows more effectively to these regions.