The Sustainable Development Report 2020 contains a comprehensive analysis of the current state of each index towards achieving the SDGs, past history, forecasts for 2030, and SDG outlook amidst the COVID-19 among member countries of the United Nations. Japan is ranked 17th among 166 countries, down by 2 places from the previous report.

Based on the SDG indicators set for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the achievement status was ranked on a scale of 100 points. Japan was ranked 17th with 79.2 points (out of 166 nations that can be ranked among UN member states). Despite a slight increase in points from last year (78.9 points), Japan has dropped two places this year.

Among other Asian countries, Korea is ranked 20th (78.3), Thailand is 41st (74.5), China is 48th (73.9), Vietnam is 49th (73.8) and Malaysia is 60th (71.8).

Japan received high rating for SDG 4 (Quality education), SDG 9 (Industry innovation and infrastructure), and SDG 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions). However, several major issues remain to be addressed as reflected in the low the rating for SDG 5 (Gender equality), SDG 13 (Climate action), SDG 14 (Life below water), SDG 15 (Life on land), SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). 

The top 10 countries are as follows:

Rank                Country                       Score                 Previous rank (2019)

   1                   Sweden                        84.7                              2

   2                   Denmark                      84.6                              1

   3                   Finland                         83.8                              2

   4                   France                          81.1                              4

   5                   Germany                      80.8                              6

   6                   Norway                         80.8                              8

   7                   Austria                          80.7                              5

   8                   Czech Republic           80.6                              7

   9                   Netherlands                 80.4                              9

 10                   Estonia                         80.1                             10

Reference

Sachs et al. (2020): The Sustainable Development Goals and Covid-19. Sustainable Development Report 2020. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sustainabledevelopment.report/2020/2020_sustainable_development_report.pdf

SDG Dashboard

https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/

Contributor: KANAMORI Norihito