Evaluating The Global State of Ecosystems and Natural Resources: within and beyond The SDGs
Open accessPreprint — published as 10.3390/su12187381 · Paper page
Abstract
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) purport to report holistically on progress towards sustainability and do so using more than 231 discrete indicators with a primary objective to achieve a balance between the environment, social and economic aspects of development. The research question underpinning the analyses presented in this paper is: are the indicators in the SDGs sufficient and fit-for-purpose to assess the trajectory of natural resources towards sustainability? We extracted the SDG indicators that monitor the state of natural resources, or alternately support policy or governance for their protection, and determined if these are adequate to provide the essential data on natural resources to achieve the aims of the SDGs. The indicators are clustered into four natural resource categories; land, water (both marine and freshwater), air and biodiversity. Indicators for monitoring land resources show that the most comprehensive land resource indicator, for degraded land, is not fully implemented and that missing from land monitoring is an evaluation of vegetation health outside of forests and mountains, the condition of soils, and most importantly the overall health of terrestrial ecosystems. Indicators for monitoring water resources have substantial gaps, unable to properly monitor water quality, water stress, many aspects of marine resources and most significantly, the health of fresh and salt water ecosystems. Indicators for monitoring of air have recently become more comprehensive, but linkage to IPCC results would benefit both programmes. Monitoring of biodiversity is perhaps the greatest weakness of the SDG Agenda, having no comprehensive assessment even though narrow aspects are monitored. Again, deliberate linkages to other global biodiversity programmes (e.g. CBD and the Post 2020 Biodiversity Framework; IPBES; Living Planet, etc.) are recommended on condition that data can be defined at a country level. While the SDG list of indicators in support of natural resource is moderately comprehensive, it lacks holistic monitoring in relation to evaluation of ecosystems and biodiversity to the extent that these missing but vital measures of sustainability threaten the entire SDG Agenda. In addition, an emerging issue is that even where there are appropriate indicators, the amount of country-level data remains inadequate to fully evaluate sustainability. This signals the delicate balance between the extent and complexity of the SDG Agenda and uptake at a country level
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Ecological footprint: a bibliometric analysis
Anjum, W., Ghufran, B., & Abbas, M. (2024) · Environment, Development and Sustainability · doi:10.1007/s10668-024-05463-y · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Wu, W., & Adam, J. (2025) · Sustainable Development · doi:10.1002/sd.70453 · Cited by 3
Zhang, H., Zhou, Q., Yang, J.-Z., & Xiang, H. (2025) · Frontiers in Environmental Science · doi:10.3389/fenvs.2025.1551156 · Cited by 3
Experimental investigation of dehumidification process regulated by the photothermoelectric system.
Almutairi, K., Irshad, K., Algarni, S., Ali, A., & Islam, S. (2021) · Water Science and Technology · doi:10.2166/wst.2021.368 · Cited by 3
Protection and restoration of water-related ecosystems under SDG 6.6: a global systematic review
Acosta-Castellanos, P. M., León, K., Guerrero-Sierra, H., & Acosta-Castellanos, L. (2026) · Frontiers in Water · doi:10.3389/frwa.2026.1766735 · Cited by 2
Unravelling the natural resources and capital flight nexus: evidence from BRICS nations
Pathak, S., Pradhan, A. K., & Thomas, R. (2024) · Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance · doi:10.1108/jfrc-07-2024-0132 · Cited by 2
Native vegetation per capita revealing Brazil's socioeconomic-environmental scenario
Santiago, A., & Lisboa, I. P. (2024) · Journal of Cleaner Production · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.141409 · Cited by 2
The Coordination Effect of Marine and Land Resources Carrying Capacity of Coastal Areas in China
Zhang, M.-W., Gao, F., & Gao, J.-L. (2022) · Proceedings of Business and Economic Studies · doi:10.26689/pbes.v5i2.3706 · Cited by 2
“With the rapid development of the economy and society, as well as the rapid growth of people and the gradual depletion of land resources, the supply and demand for resources has become more apparent ([1]).”
BackgroundFajczak-Kowalska, A., Misztal, A., & Kowalska, M. (2021) · EUROPEAN RESEARCH STUDIES JOURNAL · doi:10.35808/ersj/2261 · Cited by 2
“Sustainable development aims to strive for environmental, socio-economic egalitarianism and create favourable living conditions for the present and future generations (Pezzey and Toman, 2002; Dickens et al., 2020).”
BackgroundWang, Q., & Chai, J. (2026) · Journal of Environmental & Earth Sciences · doi:10.30564/jees.v8i1.13044 · Cited by 1
“The framing of SDG strengthens the idea that effectiveness should be measured based on the ecological outcomes, including the trends in population, quality of the habitat, and integrity of the ecosystem, but not only on the amount of land or sea allocated [80] .”
Social Campaigns for Protecting Natural Resources: The Case of Poland
Latuszynska, M., & Borawska, A. (2022) · EUROPEAN RESEARCH STUDIES JOURNAL · doi:10.35808/ersj/2828 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“In contrast, another study (Dickens et al., 2020) indicates that only 16% of all SDGs unique indicators relate to natural resources, which is the sum of 7.”
BackgroundResultInfluentialAdvancing sustainable construction: A trust-enhanced model of AI adoption and realised use
Regona, M., Yiğitcanlar, T., Hon, C. K. H., & Teo, M. (2026) · Sustainable Cities and Society · doi:10.1016/j.scs.2026.107755
Emerging building technologies for a sustainable future: a review
Al-Ruwaishedi, M. (2026) · Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering · doi:10.1080/13467581.2026.2706263
Ndilanha, E., Jaensson, J., & Gwahula, R. (2026) · International Journal of Research In Business and Social Science · doi:10.20525/ijrbs.v15i4.4411
“…and government and (ii) how these outcomes are perceived and measured at multiple level including at the local, national, regional and even at global as well as at the individual level, organisation level and community level (Dickens et al., 2020; Pedroza-Arceo et al., 2022; Schulte et al., 2022).”
Jiang, J., Yao, Y.-S., Peng, J., Song, Y., Chen, J., Liu, B., & Chen, H. (2026) · 2026 International Conference on Intelligent Engineering and Next-Gen Healthcare Systems (IEHNS) · doi:10.1109/iehns68708.2026.11606617
“Studies focusing on renewable energy utilization and low-energy environmental equipment systems provide additional methodological insights for the development of energy-saving recycling devices [17][18].”
Zhu, Y.-T., Yan, Y., & Carrasco, L. R. (2026) · Sustainable Development · doi:10.1002/sd.71208
Integrating the Modern Environmental Governance and Index Evaluation Framework for China
Wang, D., Mei, J., & Zhao, Y.-W. (2026) · Environmental Development · doi:10.1016/j.envdev.2026.101486
From Coexistence to Mutualism: Mainstreaming Biodiversity in the Sustainable Development Goals
Suryawinata, A. B., Darmayani, M. T., & Suhargo, L. (2026) · BIOTROPIA · doi:10.11598/btb.2026.33.1.2652
Characterizing the Green Watershed Index (GWI) in the Razey Watershed, Meshginshahr County, NW Iran
Irani, A., Jahdi, R., Hazbavi, Z., Mostafazadeh, R., & Ouri, A. E. (2025) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su17156841
“These indicators are designed to monitor the natural resources supplied by land, air, water, and biodiversity [38].”
Automatic Urban Green Space Identification Based on GEE and Sentinel-2 Imagery
Zhang, D.-R., Man, W., Lin, T., Liu, Y.-Q., & Geng, H.-K. (2024) · EITCE · doi:10.1145/3711129.3711379
“The protection and management of urban green spaces have become more critical [ 3 - 6 ] .”
- Authors
- Dickens, C., McCartney, M., Tickner, D., Harrison, I. J., Pacheco, P., & Ndhlovu, B.
- Affiliations
- International Water Management Institute (IWMI) (LK)
- WWF-UK (GB)
- Conservation International (US)
- World Wildlife Fund (US)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Sustainability
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2020-08-07
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 18
- Pages
- 7381-7381
- ISSN
- 2071-1050 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3048099102
- Cited by
- 66
- References
- 87
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 10.04
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Sustainability (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Preprints.org (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- CGSPace A Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law › Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law › Sustainable Development and Environmental Management
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Keywords
- Sustainable Development Goals, SDG indicators, natural resource monitoring, ecosystem health, land degradation, water resources, marine ecosystems, freshwater ecosystems, air quality, biodiversity monitoring, terrestrial ecosystems, soil health, sustainability assessment
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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