Although it has made significant progress in areas such as reducing inequalities, access to drinking water and sanitation or even renewable energy, Portugal still has a long way to go to meet the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda.
This global action plan, created by the United Nations (UN) in 2015, aims to respond to challenges such as poverty, inequality and climate change. Basically, mobilize countries to economic, social and environmental concerns.
The great ambition is that the nations involved can achieve, by 2030, the 17 SDGs – which, in the national case, are broken down into 179 specific goals. The National Statistics Institute (INE) evaluated Portuguese development in this matter in the period between 2015 and 2023 and published the results this Wednesday, which marks National Sustainability Day.
In a general portrait: in eight years, the country worked to make progress on 11 of the 17 sustainable development goals. And here stands out the reducing inequalities, drinking water and sanitation and affordable and clean energySDGs in which more than 80% of the indicators performed favorably.
Among the 179 indicators analyzed, 99 had a positive evolution and 23 have already achieved their goals. However, 33 recorded setbacks and six remained stagnant.
The statistics office goes deeper and details that SDG 10 was a “heavyweight”, with Portugal moving forward in reducing social inequality. The proportion of the population at risk of poverty fell from 19% in 2015 to 17% in 2022, for example, and There was also a reduction in the risk of poverty among children and the elderly.
In the energy sector (SDG 7), in turn, we exceeded the target of 31% renewable energy established for 2020, reaching 34.7% in 2022, which places us as one of the leaders in the transition to cleaner energy sources.
There is work to be done on gender equality and protecting ecosystems
Despite the progress, the statistical institute identified significant weaknesses in areas such as the eradication of hunger, gender equality, sustainable production and consumption, protection of marine and terrestrial life and peace and justice, which saw less than 50% positive evolution.
Regarding gender equality (SDG 5), the office says that, although there have been advances in the participation of women in leadership positions in public administration, where the female proportion exceeded 55%, inequalities persist in other sectors, such as the labor market and political representation.
Another critical point is marine life (SDG 14): the proportion of marine protected areas has increased to 7%, but is still below the 10% target set for 2030. The decrease in investment in marine research has also been observed, affecting the capacity of the country in promoting the sustainable use of ocean resources.
Within the scope of sustainable production and consumption (SDG 12), domestic consumption of materials increased from 161.9 million tons in 2015 to 162.7 million tons in 2022, according to INE, which points to an unsustainable trend of use of natural resources.
Portugal resilient after the covid-19 crisis
The document released today by the National Statistics Institute also contains a partial assessment of the effects of the pandemic on achieving the objectives of the 2030 Agenda.
According to INE, the health crisis impacted several indicators, especially those related to health, employment and education. However, since 2021, Portugal has demonstrated resilience and recovered in several sectors – and a clear example is the unemployment rate, which fell from 12.9% in 2015 to 6.5% in 2023, despite the temporary increase (to 7% ) in 2020 due to the pandemic.
On the other hand, indicators related to public health remained at low levels. Infant mortality in 2023, for example, was 3.2 per thousand births, demonstrating that health services continued to function well during the pandemic.
The results obtained by the statistics office thus show that although the country has made significant progress in several areas, it needs to put more effort into goals as important as gender equality, environmental sustainability and the protection of ecosystems.
