Which Sustainable Development Goals and Eco-challenges Matter Most to Niger’s Farmers and Herdsmen? A Best Worst Scaling Approach

Abstract

The sustainable Development Goals proposed by United Nations are increasingly becoming integrated in socioeconomic and environmental projects. Eco-challenges have also been widely studied and documented. Several researchers have well defined and documented what is sustainable development and how can be it achieved. However, fewer studies have investigated farmers and herdsmen’ preferences and awareness for United Nations Sustainable goals and eco-challenge. Based on Previous studies reported by United Nations Development Agency, seventeen sustainable development goals and nine eco-challenges were included in this study. In this study, the authors use the balanced incomplete block design to collect data from 136 respondents. For each question, respondents were asked to select their best and worst sustainable development goals, while they were asked to select their three best and their three worst eco-challenges. The conditional logit model and the count-based methods were used to model the sustainable development goals and eco-challenges respectively. Results show that gender equality, followed by industry; innovation and infrastructures, no poverty, climate action, reduced inequalities, clean water and sanitation, zero hunger and quality education are the most preferred sustainable development goals. Results also suggest that water, health and food are the most preferred eco-challenges. These findings may be useful to plan and implement sustainable development goals and eco-challenges and thereby stimulating economic growth and prosperity in the study