Natural capital protection indicators: Measuring performance in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals for green growth transition

Natural capital protection is critical to humanity because biodiversity and ecosystem provide not only goods (e.g., food, energy, water) but also services (e.g., climate regulation, cultural amenities). The article discusses the performance on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for natural capital protection, by framing the green growth concept into four pillars (i.e. environmental quality, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction, ecosystem and biodiversity protection, and cultural and social value). Natural capital protection is one of the four dimensions of the Green Growth Index developed by the Global Green Growth Institute to measure country performance in green growth transition. The indicators selected for natural capital protection are either SDG indicators or directly contributing to SDG targets. Benchmarked against sustainability targets for the SDGs, Aichi Biodiversity, and the Paris Climate Agreement, the performance scores directly measure the distance to achieving the SDGs. Because the indicators for natural capital protection have not been explicitly framed in other global green growth indices and benchmarked against sustainability targets, hence, the article fills in an important research gap. The results revealed that many regions are performing better in environmental quality and GHG emissions reduction, but struggling to improve the low performance in biodiversity and ecosystem protection as well as cultural and social values. Many countries in Asia and Oceania face an enormous challenge of improving performance in the share of Key Biodiversity Areas covered by protected areas and the potential level of soil biodiversity. If biodiversity loss due to deforestation and intensive farming will continue, the countries will lose the ability to achieve sustainability targets in reducing GHG emissions and environmental quality. The highest average performance scores for the regions are only about 80. Thus, there is still a significant gap in achieving sustainability targets (i.e. 100) in natural capital protection, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa region.