Do environmental protection investments contribute to environmentally-oriented SDGS?

  • Received October 16, 2022;
    Accepted November 28, 2022;
    Published November 30, 2022
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ee.13(1).2022.12
  • Article Info
    Volume 13 2022, Issue #1, pp. 141-154
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The most vital problems of humanity mentioned in SDGs are the consequences of climate change and biodiversity loss and problems with access to water and forest resources. Although there is a deep understanding of the problems, there are reasons that do not allow finding swift solutions, and the increasing funding gap for the relevant SDGs is one of them. This study aims to establish the connection between environmental protection investments and the achievement of environmentally oriented sustainable development goals across 31 European countries (26 EU Member States, 3 EFTA Countries, and Ukraine as a Candidate to EU). The paper employed the PLS-SEM approach. The obtained results proved that the accumulated amount of environmental protection investments does not have a statistically significant relationship with the integral indicators of SDG 6 “Clear water and sanitation,” SDG 13 “Climate action,” and SDG 15 “Life on land” (the coefficient of determination, the path coefficient, and the reliability coefficients were insignificant). The study of a similar relationship between the level and the directions of SDGs 6, 13, and 15 achievements also did not reveal any significant results. As the last step of the analysis, the hypothesis about a relationship between environmental protection investments and Environmental Performance Index components was also rejected. Therefore, the statistical significance and relevance of the analyzed indicators were not confirmed. Based on this, a conclusion was made about the insufficiency of investment resources for environmental protection to overcome the gap in achieving environmentally-oriented SDGs.

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    • Figure 1. SDG 6, 13, and 15 for the selected countries in Europe for 2019
    • Figure 2. Path diagram measuring the relationship between environmental protection investments and SDGs 6, 13, and 15 scores
    • Figure 3. Path diagram measuring the relationship between environmental protection investments and the level and direction of SDGs 6, 13, and 15 achievements
    • Figure 4. Environmental Performance Index for the selected European countries in 2020
    • Figure 5. Path diagram measuring the relationship between environmental protection investments and Environmental Performance Index
    • Table 1. Scale for assessing the level and direction of SDG achievement
    • Table 2. Descriptive statistics of environmental protection investments and SDGs 6, 13, and 15 scores
    • Table 3. Reliability coefficients for H1
    • Table 4. Reliability coefficients for H2
    • Table 5. Reliability coefficients for H3
    • Table 6. Statistical significance and relevance of indicators
    • Table A1. Description of the input data
    • Table A2. List of countries analyzed in this study
    • Table B1. Results of the level (L) and direction (D) assessment of SDGs 6, 13, and 15 achievements
    • Conceptualization
      Anna Vorontsova
    • Methodology
      Anna Vorontsova
    • Supervision
      Anna Vorontsova
    • Writing – original draft
      Anna Vorontsova, Zhanna Oleksich
    • Formal Analysis
      Oleksandra Rieznyk, Alla Treus
    • Validation
      Oleksandra Rieznyk, Alla Treus, Nataliia Ovcharova
    • Visualization
      Oleksandra Rieznyk, Alla Treus
    • Writing – review & editing
      Oleksandra Rieznyk, Alla Treus
    • Data curation
      Alla Treus, Zhanna Oleksich, Nataliia Ovcharova
    • Investigation
      Zhanna Oleksich, Nataliia Ovcharova
    • Project administration
      Zhanna Oleksich, Nataliia Ovcharova