Uneven Progress Toward Sustainable Development Goals Reveals Urgency and Potential for Green Belt and Road Initiative

The “Green Belt and Road Initiative” (GBRI) is China’s international cooperation strategy aimed at expanding international collaborations between China, Asia, and Europe through regional trade, policy dialogue, and cultural exchange in order to promote the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Identifying the development characteristics and deficiencies of Belt and Road countries is critical to investment and policymaking decisions. Here, we incorporated progress evenness across SDGs based on biodiversity measurements to establish a comprehensive assessment system and evaluated the sustainable development status and trajectory of Belt and Road countries from 2017 to 2021. Our results suggest that, although most countries have experienced progress toward SDGs, disregarding evenness among goals tended to result in the overestimation of the current achievements and ignore regional gaps. Economically developed member countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) were more successful in achieving SDGs, but they also faced development bottlenecks owing to uneven development among the 17 goals, with particular shortcomings in goals related to climate actions. However, many countries with relatively poor economies, mostly in Central and Southeast Asia, performed well on eco-environment-related SDGs. Therefore, complementary collaboration among countries may provide a green development pathway to rapidly promote the achievement of SDGs in the Belt and Road region, which emphasizes the urgency and potential for the GBRI. In essence, while uneven development is a tremendous challenge for Belt and Road countries, it presents an opportunity to enhance regional cooperation in support of the GBRI.