EU Sustainable Development Goals: 2024 Monitoring

• Study notes for reasearch seminar weeks 1-4

Sustainable Development in the European Union Monitoring report on progress towards the SDGs in an EU context 2024 edition

• The report, produced by Eurostat for the 2024 edition, monitors the European Union's progress toward the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• It uses roughly 100 indicators aligned with the UN's global framework to capture phenomena and policy impacts specific to the EU context.
• Document provides both a long-term assessment spanning 15 years and a focused short-term review of the most recent five-year period.
• It is organized into 17 chapters—one for each SDG—supplemented by sections on the policy context, methodological notes, and annexes listing the policy targets.
• High-frequency data are used to analyze how recent events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions, have affected progress toward the goals.

Significant Progress

• Reducing Inequalities (SDG 10): There has been notable improvement in income equality, convergence among Member States, and the integration of non-EU migrants into the labor market.
• Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG 8): Indicators like GDP per capita and employment rates have improved, although the pace of progress shows some signs of slowing.
• Poverty Reduction (SDG 1): Positive trends have been observed up to 2019, though recent years show mixed results and emphasize the need for intensified efforts to lift millions out of poverty.

Mixed or Challenging Areas

• Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6): While access to sanitation has improved, water quality remains a concern, with issues such as rising phosphate concentrations and increasing water scarcity.
• Affordable and Clean Energy (SDG 7): The energy crisis—exacerbated by geopolitical events—has led to setbacks in energy affordability despite some gains in renewable energy shares.
• Good Health and Well-Being (SDG 3): The COVID-19 pandemic had a marked negative impact, with declines in healthy life expectancy and increased unmet needs for medical care.
• Life on Land (SDG 15): Biodiversity and ecosystem health are deteriorating, evidenced by persistent trends in land degradation and biodiversity loss.

Other Notable Areas

• Quality Education (SDG 4): Although participation in education is strong, there are concerns about deteriorating educational outcomes and digital skills.
• Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure (SDG 9): Most indicators show favorable trends, though sustainable transport continues to lag behind.
• Climate Action (SDG 13): The EU has reduced greenhouse gas emissions significantly compared to 1990 levels, yet further measures are needed to reach the 2030 targets.
• Global Partnerships (SDG 17): The report shows improvements in development assistance and digital connectivity, although challenges remain in mobilizing private financing for sustainable development.
• Findings are situated within a broader EU policy framework that includes the European Green Deal, Circular Economy Action Plan, Farm to Fork Strategy, and other initiatives aimed at promoting sustainability.
• These policies have been integrated into the European Semester and other mechanisms, highlighting the EU's “whole-of-government" approach to embedding the SDGs in its policymaking.
• The monitoring effort guides further action and policy adjustments as the EU continues to work toward the 2030 Agenda.
• The report serves as a vital tool for policymakers, researchers, and citizens by objectively tracking progress, identifying strengths and weaknesses in current strategies, and setting the stage for future interventions for a sustainable and inclusive future in the EU.

The Problem with Saving the World BY JASON HICKEL

• Article examines the United Nations' new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), arguing that they are fundamentally flawed.
• Hickel points out that the SDGs aim to "save the world" without challenging the underlying economic system is causing global crises.

Internal Contradictions:

• The SDGs mix progressive environmental and social objectives with a commitment to continuous economic growth.
• While the goals call for reducing environmental degradation and achieving harmony with nature, they also demand high rates of GDP growth, which is incompatible with long-term sustainability.

Flawed Approach to Poverty:

• The strategy for eradicating poverty relies on trickle-down benefits from overall economic growth.
• Historical data shows that such growth has not significantly improved the incomes of the poorest.
• Extrapolations suggest that eliminating poverty through this method would require implausibly high levels of global economic expansion and further strain the planet's resources.

Corporate Influence and Neoliberal Agenda

• The article criticizes the SDGs for embedding the interests of large corporations into the global development framework.
• By promoting partnerships with the private sector and avoiding direct regulation of corporate practices, the SDGs risk reinforcing the current neoliberal economic model rather than driving transformative change.

Avoidance of Structural Change

• The SDGs skirt around the need to address the root causes of poverty and environmental degradation which are overconsumption and wealth accumulation characteristic of capitalist systems.
• Instead of proposing measures to reduce consumption by the wealthy or reshape production methods, the SDGs offer only superficial adjustments that fail to challenge the status quo.
• Hickel concludes that while the SDGs are presented as a comprehensive blueprint for global development, the reliance on traditional growth models and corporate partnerships renders them ineffective.

Week 3 The economics of valuing ecosystem services and biodiversity

• Chapter examines methodologies and challenges in economically valuing ecosystem services and biodiversity.
• Emphasizing the Total Economic Value (TEV) framework and its applications, and discusses key concepts, valuation techniques, and policy implications.
• Considerations alongside uncertainty, resilience, and scaling.
• Total Economic Value (TEV): Combines use values (direct, indirect, and option values) and non-use values (bequest, altruistic, and existence values).
• TEV reflects both current benefits and the insurance value of maintaining ecosystems to avoid irreversible losses.
• Resilience and Insurance Value: Ecosystems' capacity to absorb shocks (resilience) contributes to their insurance value and safeguards against regime shifts.
• Valuing resilience requires understanding thresholds and non-linear ecological dynamics.

Valuation Methods

• Market-Based Approaches: Use prices from existing markets or costs of replacing services.
• Revealed Preference Methods: Infer values from observed behavior.
• Stated Preference Methods: Simulate markets via surveys to capture non-use values, with challenges like hypothetical bias and scope insensitivity.
• Biophysical Approaches: Quantify physical costs but lack compatibility with preference-based methods.

Challenges in Valuation

• Uncertainty: Three types—supply uncertainty, preference uncertainty, and technical uncertainty. Hybrid methods and data enrichment improve reliability.
• Thresholds and Resilience: Near ecological tipping points, traditional marginal valuation fails, and precautionary principles and "safe minimum standards" are advised.
• Benefit Transfer (BT): Scaling values from studied to unstudied sites faces errors and adjustments for income, substitutability, and equity are critical.

Contextual and Equity Considerations

• Stakeholder Involvement: Values vary across cultural, economic, and spatial scales, and participatory methods improve legitimacy and reduce conflicts.
• Developing Countries: Face unique challenges, and deliberative approaches and non-monetary metrics are often more effective.
• Equity Weighting: Adjusts values to reflect higher welfare losses for marginalized groups dependent on ecosystem services.

Conclusions and Policy Implications

• Monetary valuation aids decision-making but has limitations, especially near ecological thresholds or under radical uncertainty.
• Recommendations: Combine valuation with precautionary approaches, integrate resilience metrics, and prioritize hybrid methods; Improve data availability.
• Scaling Values: Requires acknowledging non-constant marginal values and avoiding double-counting with enhancement of Meta-analyses and spatial tools accuracy.
• This chapter underscores the need for transparent, context-sensitive valuation practices that balance economic metrics with ecological complexity and ethical considerations.

Bulldozing biodiversity: The economics of offsets and trading-in Nature

• Article critiques the growing reliance on market-based mechanisms, such as biodiversity offsets and monetary valuation, in conservation policy.
• Spash argues that these approaches, promoted by initiatives like The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), prioritize economic efficiency over ecological integrity and ethical considerations.

Commodification of Nature

• Biodiversity offsets reduce ecosystems to tradable commodities, enabling developers to "compensate" for habitat destruction through financial transactions.
• Metrics for offset equivalence oversimplify ecological complexity, ignoring unique site-specific values and promoting substitutability where none exists.

Ethical and Theoretical Flaws

• Economic valuation frameworks assume commensurability, neglecting intrinsic values, rights-based ethics, and non-utilitarian motivations for conservation.
• The Pareto efficiency criterion prioritizes developer profits and ignores power imbalances, equity, and the irreversible loss of biodiversity.

Neoliberal Governance

• Market-based approaches align with corporate interests, streamlining development by reducing regulatory barriers. Initiatives prioritize liquidity and profit over ecological outcomes.
• Regulatory capture by corporations marginalizes public participation, replacing democratic deliberation with technocratic decision-making.

Ecological and Practical Failures

• Offsets often lack additionality and fail to achieve "no net loss" due to poor equivalence measures and long-term enforcement challenges.
• The mitigation hierarchy is eroded, allowing offsets to become a first resort rather than a last option.

Political and Social Implications

• Offsets disproportionately harm marginalized communities through land grabs and inequitable compensation, reflecting broader neoliberal trends of resource extraction and privatization.
• Conservationists adopting market logic risk complicity in ecological degradation and abandoning their ethical mandate to protect nature for its own sake.
• Conclusion: Spash warns that embracing economic frameworks undermines conservation by entrenching a growth-oriented, human-dominated worldview, rejecting market governance.

Week 2: Abolishing GDP

• Critiques use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of social welfare and economic progress, due to its continued reliance constitutes a significant marker and government failure.
• Synthesizes theoretical critiques, happiness studies, and alternative welfare indicators. It evaluates GDP's shortcomings and examines its influence.

GDP's Fundamental Flaws

• GDP conflates costs and benefits, doesn't account for degradation, inequality, and informal activities.
• It doesn't reflect subjective well-being, and relative income renders growth a zero-sum game.

Impact of GDP Information

• Data drives decisions, creating a "self-fulfilling prophecy" detrimental to welfare.

Evaluation of Alternatives

• Adjusted indicators correct costs but face methodological problems, while composite indices improve but remain arbitrary.
• Study concludes GDP is a poor proxy and should be abolished and limitations cause alternatives to still be imperfect albeit preferable.

Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress

• Critiques GDP as an insufficient measure of sustainable development. Fails to account for environmental degradation, unpaid labor, inequality, and long-term welfare.

Adjusting GDP

• Modifies GDP by incorporating monetized (social and environmental factors)
• Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI): it is comprehensive and tracks trends, albeit with subjective valuation.
• Strengths: Comprehensive, tracks long-term trends.
• Weaknesses: Subjective valuation, data reliability issues
• Green GDP: it highlights ecological costs, and can be Limited/Contentious.

Replacing GDP

• Metrics new focusing on well-being or ecological impacts.
• Human Development Index (HDI): Combines life expectancy, education, and income with strengths in emphase of social factors, and weaknesses excluding environ.
• Ecological Footprint (EF): Measures resource use against Earth's capacity with strengths in visualizes consumption, with weaknesses that ignores economics.
• Happy Planet Index (HPI): Balances satisfaction, lifespan, and efficiency. Can integrate factors BUT is subjective.

Supplementing GDP

• Adds data without replacing GDP;
• System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA): Integrates environmental and economic data.
• Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs): Tracks 150+ metrics across domains.

Key Recommendations

• Supplementing GDP is viable.
• Adjusting faces challenges.
• Replacing is less practical.

Our phony economy

• Challenges GDP because the framework is fundamentally flawed.

GDP's Flawed Foundation

• Activity Over Outcomes: Quantifies monetary transactions without distinguishing between beneficial and harmful activities.
• Perverse Incentives: Activities harming society boost GDP.
• Ignoring Non-Market Value: Excludes unpaid labor and ecosystem services important to well-being.

Historical Context

• Origins in Control, Not Welfare: GDP's roots trace to 17th-century Ireland with william Petty's land surveys.
• Developed national accounts during great depression but advised SHOULD NOT measure welfare.
• Kuznets argued WWII misuse despite warnings being made that GDP should not measure economic prosperity.

Critical Shortcomings

• Destructive = Productive
• Distributional Blindness: Wealthy spending inflates GDP.
• Human and Ecological Costs: Ignores burnout, skill depreciation, and depletion.

Reform

• urges evaluation via Quality, Not Quantity by accounting for externalities and prioritizing people, and not transactions.

Alternative progress indicators to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as aims towards sustainable development

Report highlights GDP's failures due to issues like environmental degradation.

Limitations of GDP and Classical Economic Measurement

GDP: Shortcomings focus on measuring productivity while lack key factors in mind

• Recommendations for Shift Focus of Measurement to be more household centric indicators for economic situations.

Measuring Quality of Life

• Quality life indicators should be combined utilizing
• Multidimensional Framework
• Subjective and objective Metrics

Quality of Life Recommendation (Track Inequalities)

Must assess disparities based on social and financial classes.

Sustainability and Environmental Measurement

• Sustainability as Stock Maintenance: Future well-being depends on preserving stocks of capital.

Critique of Existing Indicators

• Dashboards : are overly broad so prioritization cant be gauged.
• Composite Indices : are arbitrary.
• Adjusted GDPs: offers limited sustain insight.

Week 1: The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth by Kenneth E. Boulding

Transition in Human Self-Perception essay explores shifting with Earth, from unlimited plane to closed sphere.

Open System Vs Closed System

• Open system= maintain strutter with inputs to outputs.
• Closed System= all outputs link, practically unknowable.

Knowledge System

• Is the most key system from a humna perspective.
• Capital can be "knowledge".

Entropy in Open Systems

• Applies differently
• Fossi fuel input

Cowboy Economy vs. Spaceman Economy

• Cowboy economy= symbolizes reckless production.
• Spaceman economy= earth limited capacity.

Rethinking Welfare

• Consumption isn't desirable with states.
• Posterity, Ethics, and Time-Discouting.

THE CONCEPT OF A STEADY-STATE ECONOMY

Overview and Context challennges growth but focuses on maintaining a balance with the environment.

Defining A Steady-State Economy:

• Daly argues Such an economy relies on both stability and fluctuation in resource consumption.
• The main focal points should be the quality and sustainability or both mankind with nature,

Appraising Weak and Strong Sustainability: Searching for a Middle Ground

• Advocates for a middle ground.

Capital Concepts in Sustainablility

• Stock = current of utility
• Nature = providing human needs
• Physical Assets = machines and industrial

Reconcilling Weak and Strong Approaches

• Cannot be unamiously resolved
• Reconcile is that the commodifcation of nature is a protection against its consumption.
• Reconsitution and direction of ecosystem resilence.

The Tragedy of the Commons

• Hardin's article examines inherent conflict between individual self-interest and the collective well being with shared resources.
• In order to avoid tragedy is to impose restriction on commom resources (privatization and governmental regulation).