SUSTAINABILITY THEMES
For this edition, the FISAB has assessed the different sustainability themes (within each driver) measured by the indicators and their respective importance. Following the SDG’s, the model is constantly reviewed to ensure the right balance among the sustainability themes.
ENVIRONMENT – Biodiversity: The poor relation between policies and investments
The Covid pandemic demonstrated the close link between health and environment. The different dimen¬sions are closely interconnected. Therefore, while policies have tended to organize a governance regime by topic (climate, biodiversity, and desertification), the three are interlinked and may involve conflicts across policies. Today, we face twin crises that must be solved in parallel: biodiversity loss and climate change.
SOCIAL – Population, health and wealth distribution
The European headlines speak about it every day: the new social “agreement” combining longer life expectancies with declining birth rates. Countries have started to increase the statutory retirement age and even to link this explicitly with the life expectancy like in Denmark, Finland or Sweden. The increasing age dependency ratio is also putting pressure on the fiscal sustainability of governments and the net pension replacement rate for workers.
SOCIAL – Education and innovation
Furthermore, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of key workers, who are essential to societies to operate, in both good and difficult situations. The countries must reevaluate the work of those workers and invest in key sectors to ensure that the economic and social contributions of these unvaluable workers are fully reflected.
GOVERNANCE – Transparency and democratic values
This year is the 50th edition of Freedom in the World report, from the NGO Freedom House, a key source on democratic requirements worldwide. It is also the 17th consecutive year the report highlighted the decline in democracy. However, we might be at a turning point as the number of countries registering a progress (34) is almost the same as those registering a decline (35). This gives some hopes whilst only 20% of the population live in considered fully free countries against 39% of the population in non-free countries.
Read more in the latest reports.
