Sustainable development and gender well-being

In the open access journal Environmental Research: Climate, Caren Grown, Maria Sagrario Floro and Odera Onyechi compare gender differences across both the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI) and Jason Hickel’s Sustainable Development Index. Their empirical analysis reveals that countries that exceed ecological boundaries, notably through elevated CO2 emissions and material footprints, often experience reduced levels of sustainable well-being, disproportionately impacting women. The authors call on policymakers to explicitly target the drivers of gender inequality through climate finance and climate projects, which can improve climate outcomes for all.

Caren Grown is a Senior Technical Advisor in the Macroeconomics and Trade Global Practice at the World Bank, and a member of the Care Economies in Context advisory board.

Maria Sagrario Floro is Professor Emerita of Economics at American University and a researcher with the Care Economies in Context project.

Citation

Grown, C., Floro, M. S., & Onyechi, O. (2025). Sustainable development and gender well-being. Environmental Research Climate. https://doi.org/10.1088/2752-5295/add363

Abstract

This paper examines the intersections between planetary boundary transgressions—specifically material footprint and CO2 emissions— and gender disparities in human well-being. By extending the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), which measures a country’s achievements in health, education and income per capita, and Hickel’s Sustainable Development Index (SDI), which examines the ecological efficiency of human development, this study proposes a novel sex-disaggregated measure to assess the well-being of women and men after accounting for each country’s ecological impact across 151 countries. The empirical analyses reveal that countries that exceed ecological boundaries, notably through elevated CO2 emissions and material footprints, often experience reduced levels of sustainable well-being, disproportionately impacting women due to existing disparities in education and income earnings. Gender differences in SDI outcomes reflect both ecological overshoot consequences and baseline gender inequalities in human development. The analysis further reveals that gender disparities in SDI values are minimal in low- and lower-middle-income countries due to low ecological footprints but pronounced in high-income and fossil fuel-dependent countries that have significant ecological impacts. Due to the paucity of sex-disaggregated data for all countries on the well-being effects that can be attributed to planetary boundary transgressions, the paper also examines whether or not ambient and household air pollution affects the mortality rates of women and men differently. The results may be useful for climate change modeling efforts and quantitative analysis that links the effects of climate change hazards to gender inequality, as well as for policymakers seeking to implement equitable climate policies.