The National Development Goals of Russia and key sustainability indicators

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) constitute a framework of guidelines including social, environmental, and economic aspects of development on a global scale. Their effective implementation at the national level requires adaptation in accordance with national development strategies and priorities. There is a lack of research addressing the prioritization of specific SDGs for Russia under the current circumstances. This article focuses on assessing the degree of alignment between Russia`s National Development Goals (NDGs), revised in the spring of 2024, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, as well as on developing a system of key national sustainability indicators. The research methods include comparative analysis, statistical analysis, a classification method based on ranking, economic and legal analysis. The results indicate that although the level of correspondence between the NDGs and SDGs is increasing, just over half of the 169 SDGs align with Russia’s NDGs. This is due to the fact that some globally oriented SDG targets are either not adapted to the national level or not considered as Russian priorities. A detailed analysis shows that within the “core” of the overlapping SDGs and NDGs, the economic aspect of development tends to prevail over environmental and social aspects. Among the specific gaps between the SDGs and NDGs are the lack of attention to energy efficiency and the development of renewable energy in Russia. The proposed set of 14 key sustainability indicators will allow us to move on to the scenario modeling of the joint implementation of the SDGs and NDGs. Additionally, an extra “cross-cutting” indicator—energy intensity of gross domestic product — is proposed. This indicator reflects important aspects of sustainable development and can contribute to achieving several NDGs simultaneously