The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as a shared blueprint of countries in addressing critical problems that are interconnected, such as poverty, health, education, economic growth and the environment. Despite its importance, there is a dearth of research weighing costs associated to meeting SDG targets against the economic benefits, especially with regard to natural capital gains.
Using the methodology in Markandya (2020) and Markandya and Galinato (2021), this report provides estimates of natural capital gap and its financial costs and benefits in meeting selected targets of the SDGs that are linked to natural capital. Considering that natural capital is an asset that generates goods and services amounting to an economic value, this report estimates both how much natural capital would have to be increased to meet selected SDGs as well as the associated costs.
The study has been conducted on 20 countries belonging to both developed and developing regions, with a high representation to countries from sub-Saharan Africa.