Correlation between environment related SDGS 6, 7 and 15 indexes of 2018 and selected socio-economic and demographic indicators across various States in India - A cross section analysis

Abstract

Sustainable development shall no longer a concern of environmentalists or developmental organizations. It is now, has become an intrinsic thought process of every country's planning mechanism. Policy makers have to integrate every development indicator such as poverty, health, water & sanitation, environment, education, policy initiatives, innovation &industrial growth, etc. These are all the imperatives for development and growth for its sustenance. Research findings of many studies showed that every year millions of people, in which most of them children, die from diseases associated with inadequate water supply, sanitation, and hygiene. Land and forests are the foundation of sustainable development and the degradation of these resources is alarming. So in the process to understand the environment related sustainable development goals and its performance against the set targets, present study made an attempt to find the correlation among these indicators. There is a need to understand the issues, challenges and linkages among various SDGs index scores for the year 2018 for all states of India in the light of inter linkages. For this the study considered SDG 6 (Water & Sanitation), SDG7 (Clean energy) and SDG 15 (Life on Land) performance (SDG index score) 2018 of each state across India and few socio, economic and demographic variables such as SGDP, sex-ratio, literacy rates, population in rural areas and its density per sq.km., SDG 4 (quality education) and SDG 1 (No Poverty). In the present study researcher made an attempt to understand the correlation between SDG 6, SDG7 and SDG 15 index scores 2018 and independent socio-economic and demographic variables across various states in India. The study used correlation coefficient to find out the correlation between performances of SDGs under consideration. There is a strong impact of education; gender related socio-demographic factors like population in rural areas, sex-ratio, female literacy rates and the quality in education-SDG 4 on the SDGs performance index score. Role of women in environment related issues proved to be significant through statically significant outcomes of the study related determinants like female literacy and sex ratio impact on SDG 6, SDG 7 and SDG 15.