China has surged up the global sustainability league tables over the past decade, but its rise comes with steep environmental trade‑offs, showed an annual assessment that tracks and ranks United Nations member states based on their progress toward achieving the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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China has climbed 14 places in the global rankings since 2015, when the report was first launched, moving significantly faster than most large economies in improving its overall sustainability score. It now ranks 49 out of 169 countries according to the SDG Index 2026, backed by nonprofit UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), which was launched in 2012 to promote the implementation of the sustainability goals.
The United States, at 45th place, still ranks above China, but has fallen five places since 2015. If current trends continue, China is on track to surpass the US in the coming years, according to the analysis. The index is topped by Scandinavian and Western European countries.
The Asian superpower’s advance has been driven by rapid gains in socio‑economic indicators – from poverty reduction and health outcomes to education and urban services – under its push for what Beijing calls “high‑quality development”, where long-term economic resilience and self-reliance is prioritised over indicators such as gross domestic product growth figures.
In 2020, it declared absolute rural poverty eradicated after a targeted programme that channelled tailored support to hundreds of poor counties and villages, allowing it to meet its poverty goal ahead of schedule. China has also expanded programmes like publicly-funded basic medical insurance schemes for almost the entire population and has compulsory free education that has pushed primary schooling completion and literacy rates close to universal coverage. Together, these improvements have lifted China’s SDG scores and helped propel it up the global ranking, the study found.
The country has notched up infrastructure‑linked goals through its Five-Year Plans that have focused on expanding and upgrading metros, high-speed rail, roads and public transport to support urban development. At the same time, it has emerged as a central player in the green transition, dominating the supply of key clean‑tech hardware and adding more wind and solar capacity than any other country.
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China’s marine and terrestrial ecosystems remain under stress, but [the country] is taking many important remedial actions, so the prospects for future improvement are significant.
Jeffrey Sachs, president, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
But the SDG report card underscored that this progress rests on development models that still strain planetary boundaries. China remains the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter, and its environmental goals – particularly those tied to life below water, life on land and more sustainable consumption and production – are marked as off‑track or facing significant challenges in the SDSN report. Rapid industrialisation and infrastructure expansion have driven persistent air, water and soil pollution, as well as mounting pressures on ecosystems and biodiversity.
However, Jeffrey Sachs, president of UN SDSN and one of the lead authors of the report, argued that China’s progress remains “remarkable in most SDG areas,” despite environmental setbacks.
“China’s marine and terrestrial ecosystems remain under stress, but China is taking many important remedial actions, so the prospects for future improvement are significant,” Sachs, a senior global sustainable development expert and Columbia University professor, told Eco-Business.
He noted that the air in China’s cities is “vastly cleaner than a decade ago and forest cover is expanding, though he stressed the need for stronger protection of biodiversity hotspots on land and at sea.
Pollution levels in many Chinese cities still top the World Health Organization’s (WHO) limits, but they have fallen dramatically since more than a decade ago. The turnaround follows a years-long state‑led drive that shifted factories and accelerated vehicle electrification, significantly improving what had been some of the world’s most polluted air.
China’s marine ecosystems were described as “seriously degraded” by a 2025 academic study, because specific coastal habitats and fisheries have been heavily damaged by pollution, reclamation, overfishing and intensive aquaculture, all driven by rapid economic growth that discounts marine natural capital.
Coral reef systems in areas such as the Xisha Islands and South China Sea have also been degraded by overfishing, destructive fishing methods, coastal development and tourism, compounded by climate‑driven bleaching and disease.
China’s large and historically fast‑growing population has been one of the drivers of intensified demand for land, water, energy and infrastructure, magnifying the environmental impacts of its development model and making environmental stress more acute than in many smaller or less densely populated countries. China historically has had about 20 per cent of the world’s population but only around 7 per cent of its arable land and below‑average freshwater resources per person.
But China’s population decreased by about 2 million between 2022 and 2023, and again by about 1.4 million to around 1.408 billion in 2024, marking a clear turning point from growth to decline, based on latest data.
“With its population already peaking, one of the drivers of environmental stress has been relieved,” said Sachs.
East and South Asian neighbours follow similar trend
The report also noted that China is not alone: rapid improvers such as India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam have similarly made their biggest gains by advancing socio‑economic SDG indicators rather than environmental ones.
Like China, these emerging Asian economies have moved quickly on poverty reduction, health, education and infrastructure, while still struggling to reverse biodiversity loss, curb pollution and shift to more sustainable consumption and production patterns.
Elsewhere in the world, Finland topped this year’s SDG Index, followed by Sweden and Denmark. However, even these top performers face significant challenges on responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, and life on land, partly due to unsustainable consumption patterns and negative international spillover effects, said the study.
