The SDGs Provide Limited Evidence That Environmental Policies Are Delivering Multiple Ecological and Social Benefits.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aiming for global targets by 2030, are tracked by a monitoring framework comprising 231 environmental, social, and economic indicators. The framework provides data to assess whether, across countries, environmental policies are: (a) Addressing environmental pressures, (b) Linked to environmental improvements, and (c) Linked with social benefits delivered by healthy environments. While several studies have analyzed the implementation and impacts of the SDGs, there remains a critical research gap in assessing the linkage between environmental policies and their potential to deliver multiple ecological and social benefits. This study examines the efficacy of environmental policies and their implications for global environmental health and social wellbeing. We use a generalized linear modeling approach to test for correlations between SDG indicators. We show that some environmental policies, particularly protected areas and sustainable forest certification, are linked with environmental improvements, mainly in forest and water ecosystems. However, we find no evidence that environmental improvements are linked with positive social impacts. Finally, environmental pressures, including freshwater withdrawal, domestic material consumption, and tourism, are linked with environmental degradation. Environmental policy responses are generally increasing across countries. Despite this, the state of the environment globally continues to decline. Governments must focus on understanding why environmental policies have not been sufficient to reverse environmental decline, particularly concerning the pressures that continue to degrade the environment. To better track progress toward sustainable development, we recommend that the SDG monitoring framework is supplemented with additional indicators on the state of the environment. Plain Language Summary: Governments implement environmental policies to reduce ecological degradation and sustain environmental benefits to humans, such as food and clean water. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) commit all countries to adopt sustainable development pathways. Progress toward achieving the SDGs is reported by governments using 231 indicators. The SDG indicators track the implementation of environmental policies, the state of the environment, and environmental benefits such as food security and drinking water access. Using the data underlying the SDG indicators reported by governments to date, we investigate whether the implementation of environmental policies correlates with improvements in the environment and the provision of environmental benefits to humans. Results show that most environmental policies are not associated with environmental improvements; worse, we find no evidence that environmental policies lead to wider social benefits. However, we see two types of environmental policies, protected areas and sustainable forest certification, that lead to increasing the size of forest and water ecosystems which are essential for sustaining the lives of plants, animals, and humans that rely on them. Our findings highlight that governments must improve their use of environmental policies to achieve environmental improvements and the wider social benefits that humans derive from the environment. Key Points: The state of the environment globally continues to decline despite increasing environmental policy responsesThe Sustainable Development Goal indicators provide no evidence that environmental policies deliver secondary social benefitsProtected areas and sustainable forest certification are linked with environmental improvements, mainly in forest and water ecosystems [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]