IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/sustdv/v32y2024i6p6836-6863.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Perceived adequacy of policy instruments reveals weak targets in the Sustainable Development Goals

Author

Listed:
  • Omar A. Guerrero
  • Daniele Guariso
  • Gonzalo Castañeda

Abstract

We report the results of a novel worldwide survey on how adequate are existing policy instruments (if any) across the 169 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals. By obtaining more than 130,000 responses about 146 countries from more than 7000 experts, a large‐scale picture of the existence and adequacy of policy instruments emerges. This survey provides the first dataset depicting the current state of the world according to how well prepared (in terms of instruments) are countries and regions to tackle the challenges posed by the 2030 Agenda. We combine these data with the official UN SDG indicators and identify targets that systematically exhibit weaknesses in their historical performance and the adequacy of the available policy instrument, revealing key policy issues that need to be prioritised through interventions that go beyond the allocation of financial resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Omar A. Guerrero & Daniele Guariso & Gonzalo Castañeda, 2024. "Perceived adequacy of policy instruments reveals weak targets in the Sustainable Development Goals," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(6), pages 6836-6863, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:32:y:2024:i:6:p:6836-6863
    DOI: 10.1002/sd.3044
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.3044
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sd.3044?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Qiuyue Xia & Lu Li & Jie Dong & Bin Zhang, 2021. "Reduction Effect and Mechanism Analysis of Carbon Trading Policy on Carbon Emissions from Land Use," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-22, August.
    2. Shirin Malekpour & Cameron Allen & Ambuj Sagar & Imme Scholz & Åsa Persson & J. Jaime Miranda & Therese Bennich & Opha Pauline Dube & Norichika Kanie & Nyovani Madise & Nancy Shackell & Jaime C. Monto, 2023. "What scientists need to do to accelerate progress on the SDGs," Nature, Nature, vol. 621(7978), pages 250-254, September.
    3. Omar A. Guerrero & Gonzalo Castañeda, 2021. "Quantifying the coherence of development policy priorities," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 39(2), pages 155-180, March.
    4. Bahta Yonas Tesfamariam & Enoch Owusu-Sekyere & Donkor Emmanuel & Tlalang Boipelo Elizabeth, 2018. "The impact of the homestead food garden programme on food security in South Africa," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 10(1), pages 95-110, February.
    5. Lipeng Chen & Yang Yu & Amsalu K. Addis & Xiao Guo, 2022. "Empirical Assessment and Comparison of Educational Efficiency between Major Countries across the World," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-17, March.
    6. Nils Ohlendorf & Michael Jakob & Jan Christoph Minx & Carsten Schröder & Jan Christoph Steckel, 2021. "Distributional Impacts of Carbon Pricing: A Meta-Analysis," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 78(1), pages 1-42, January.
    7. Anne Warchold & Prajal Pradhan & Jürgen P. Kropp, 2021. "Variations in sustainable development goal interactions: Population, regional, and income disaggregation," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2), pages 285-299, March.
    8. Katherine Browne & Adis Dzebo & Gabriela Iacobuta & Alexia Faus Onbargi & Zoha Shawoo & Ines Dombrowsky & Mathias Fridahl & Sara Gottenhuber & Åsa Persson, 2023. "How does policy coherence shape effectiveness and inequality? Implications for sustainable development and the 2030 Agenda," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(5), pages 3161-3174, October.
    9. Cheng, Ya & Sinha, Avik & Ghosh, Vinit & Sengupta, Tuhin & Luo, Huawei, 2021. "Carbon Tax and Energy Innovation at Crossroads of Carbon Neutrality: Designing a Sustainable Decarbonization Policy," MPRA Paper 108185, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2021.
    10. Silvio Daidone & Benjamin Davis & Sudhanshu Handa & Paul Winters, 2019. "The Household and Individual-Level Productive Impacts of Cash Transfer Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1401-1431.
    11. Kamenya, Madalitso A. & Hendriks, Sheryl L. & Gandidzanwa, Colleta & Ulimwengu, John & Odjo, Sunday, 2022. "Public agriculture investment and food security in ECOWAS," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    12. Asadikia, Atie & Rajabifard, Abbas & Kalantari, Mohsen, 2021. "Systematic prioritisation of SDGs: Machine learning approach," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    13. Elmond Bandauko & Eunice Annan-Aggrey & Godwin Arku, 2021. "Planning and managing urbanization in the twenty-first century: content analysis of selected African countries’ national urban policies," Urban Research & Practice, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 94-104, January.
    14. Mavis S. B. Mensah & Evelyn Derera, 2023. "Analysis of Ghana's and South Africa's women's entrepreneurship policies," Chapters, in: Colette Henry & Susan Coleman & Kate V. Lewis (ed.), Women's Entrepreneurship Policy, chapter 9, pages 214-239, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Zheng Jiang & Shuohua Zhang & Wei Li, 2022. "Exploration of Urban Emission Mitigation Pathway under the Carbon Neutrality Target: A Case Study of Beijing, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-18, October.
    16. Anita Breuer & Hannah Janetschek & Daniele Malerba, 2019. "Translating Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Interdependencies into Policy Advice," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-20, April.
    17. Rogge, Karoline S. & Reichardt, Kristin, 2016. "Policy mixes for sustainability transitions: An extended concept and framework for analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(8), pages 1620-1635.
    18. Jan C. Steckel & Ira I. Dorband & Lorenzo Montrone & Hauke Ward & Leonard Missbach & Fabian Hafner & Michael Jakob & Sebastian Renner, 2021. "Distributional impacts of carbon pricing in developing Asia," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 4(11), pages 1005-1014, November.
    19. Miningou,Elise Wendlassida, 2019. "Quality Education and the Efficiency of Public Expenditure : A Cross-Country Comparative Analysis," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9077, The World Bank.
    20. Christian Kroll & Anne Warchold & Prajal Pradhan, 2019. "Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Are we successful in turning trade-offs into synergies?," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-11, December.
    21. David Lusseau & Francesca Mancini, 2019. "Income-based variation in Sustainable Development Goal interaction networks," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 2(3), pages 242-247, March.
    22. Guanglu Zeng & Chenggang Zhang & Sanxi Li & Hailin Sun, 2021. "The Dynamic Impact of Agricultural Fiscal Expenditures and Gross Agricultural Output on Poverty Reduction: A VAR Model Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-13, May.
    23. Aiora Zabala, 2021. "Comparing policy instruments for sustainability," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 4(7), pages 565-566, July.
    24. Rhodes, Ekaterina & Scott, William A. & Jaccard, Mark, 2021. "Designing flexible regulations to mitigate climate change: A cross-country comparative policy analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    25. Omar A. Guerrero & Gonzalo Castañeda, 2021. "Does expenditure in public governance guarantee less corruption? Non-linearities and complementarities of the rule of law," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 139-164, June.
    26. Jan Christoph Steckel & Sebastian Renner & Leonard Missbach, 2021. "Distributional Impacts of Carbon Pricing in Low- and Middle-Income Countries," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 22(05), pages 26-32, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Haris Alibašić, 2025. "Resilience in action: Kosovo's National Development Strategy to incorporate sustainable development goals," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(1), pages 319-332, February.
    2. Imre Fertő & Štefan Bojnec, 2025. "Gender Equality and Green Entrepreneurship in Farms," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(3), pages 3985-4008, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Missbach, Leonard & Steckel, Jan Christoph & Vogt-Schilb, Adrien, 2024. "Cash transfers in the context of carbon pricing reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    2. Yuru Guan & Jin Yan & Yuli Shan & Yannan Zhou & Ye Hang & Ruoqi Li & Yu Liu & Binyuan Liu & Qingyun Nie & Benedikt Bruckner & Kuishuang Feng & Klaus Hubacek, 2023. "Burden of the global energy price crisis on households," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 8(3), pages 304-316, March.
    3. Liotta,Charlotte & Avner,Paolo & Viguié,Vincent & Selod,Harris & Hallegatte,Stephane, 2022. "Climate Policy and Inequality in Urban Areas : Beyond Incomes," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10185, The World Bank.
    4. Linden, Jules & O’Donoghue, Cathal & Sologon, Denisa M., 2024. "The many faces of carbon tax regressivity—Why carbon taxes are not always regressive for the same reason," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    5. de Bruin, Kelly & Yakut, Aykut Mert, 2024. "Efficiency–equity trade-off in the Irish carbon tax: A CGE investigation of mixed revenue recycling schemes," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    6. Hänsel, Martin C. & Franks, Max & Kalkuhl, Matthias & Edenhofer, Ottmar, 2022. "Optimal carbon taxation and horizontal equity: A welfare-theoretic approach with application to German household data," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    7. George, Jan Frederick & Werner, Simon & Preuß, Sabine & Winkler, Jenny & Held, Anne & Ragwitz, Mario, 2023. "The landlord-tenant dilemma: Distributional effects of carbon prices, redistribution and building modernisation policies in the German heating transition," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 339(C).
    8. Malerba, Daniele & Roscioli, Federico & Gaentzsch, Anja & Ward, Hauke, 2024. "Changing carbon footprints and the consequent impacts of carbon taxes and cash transfers on poverty and inequality across years: A Peruvian case study," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    9. Myriam Pham‐Truffert & Florence Metz & Manuel Fischer & Henri Rueff & Peter Messerli, 2020. "Interactions among Sustainable Development Goals: Knowledge for identifying multipliers and virtuous cycles," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(5), pages 1236-1250, September.
    10. Yakut, Aykut Mert & de Bruin, Kelly, 2023. "The importance of having a more realistic welfare transfer determination rule: A CGE analysis for Ireland," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 1310-1325.
    11. Patrick Bigler & Doina Maria Radulescu, 2022. "Environmental, Redistributive and Revenue Effects of Policies Promoting Fuel Efficient and Electric Vehicles," CESifo Working Paper Series 9645, CESifo.
    12. Missbach, Leonard & Steckel, Jan Christoph, 2024. "Distributional impacts of climate policy and effective compensation: Evidence from 88 countries," EconStor Preprints 296491, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    13. Rao Fu & Kun Peng & Peng Wang & Honglin Zhong & Bin Chen & Pengfei Zhang & Yiyi Zhang & Dongyang Chen & Xi Liu & Kuishuang Feng & Jiashuo Li, 2023. "Tracing metal footprints via global renewable power value chains," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-14, December.
    14. Ilyas, Rubina & Hussain, Khadim & Ullah, Mehreen Zaid & Xue, Jianhong, 2022. "Distributional impact of phasing out residential electricity subsidies on household welfare," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    15. Weiner, Csaba & Muth, Dániel & Lakócai, Csaba, 2023. "A szén-dioxid-kibocsátást terhelő adó társadalmi elfogadottsága és a fizetési hajlandóság alakulása Magyarországon [Public acceptance of and willingness to pay for a tax on carbon-dioxide emissions," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(10), pages 1077-1107.
    16. Leimbach, Marian & Hübler, Michael & Mahlkow, Hendrik & Montrone, Lorenzo & Bukin, Eduard & Felbermayr, Gabriel & Kalkuhl, Matthias & Koch, Johannes & Marcolino, Marcos & Pothen, Frank & Steckel, Jan , 2024. "Macroeconomic structural change likely increases inequality in India more than climate policy," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 302045, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    17. Immervoll, Herwig & Linden, Jules & O'Donoghue, Cathal & Sologon, Denisa Maria, 2023. "Who Pays for Higher Carbon Prices? Illustration for Lithuania and a Research Agenda," IZA Discussion Papers 15868, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Vona, Francesco, 2023. "Managing the distributional effects of climate policies: A narrow path to a just transition," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    19. Håvard Hegre & Kristina Petrova & Nina von Uexkull, 2020. "Synergies and Trade-Offs in Reaching the Sustainable Development Goals," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-24, October.
    20. Cathal ODonoghue & Beenish Amjad & Jules Linden & Nora Lustig & Denisa Sologon & Yang Wang, 2023. "The Distributional Impact of Inflation in Pakistan: A Case Study of a New Price Focused Microsimulation Framework, PRICES," Papers 2310.00231, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:32:y:2024:i:6:p:6836-6863. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1719 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.