Measuring environmental sustainability in Colombia and South Africa: application of the ESGAP framework

South Africa’s overall environmental sustainability gap score is 42/100. Major challenges remain for indicators related to human health: CO₂ emissions, ambient air pollution and microbiological water pollution. However, South Africa scores well on indicators related to biodiversity conservation, indoor air pollution, groundwater use and consumption of ozone-depleting substances.

Key institutional actors – the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and the Ministry of Environment – welcomed the research findings at a seminar organized by the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) to present and discuss the results. The 60 or so participants discussed ways to integrate these results into national strategies (biodiversity strategy, nationally determined contribution and municipal climate plans); they also stressed the need for a formal collaborative process to adapt and operationalize the framework.

Download the ESGAP research report for South Africa 

Colombia’s overall environmental sustainability gap score is 32/100, showing considerable room for improvement. Good scores are achieved in areas where the country has made international commitments and set clear targets, such as the consumption of ozone-depleting substances. However, the ESGAP framework highlights critical vulnerabilities that require urgent attention: exploitation of forest and fishery resources; CO₂ emissions; surface water pollution; coastal ecosystem health; conservation of endemic biodiversity; and conservation of natural World Heritage sites.

In Colombia, the indicator was built from assessments carried out by the Ministry of Environment. The ESGAP framework could only be applied to 17 of its 23 components, highlighting major data availability issues in some areas (such as groundwater resources, monitoring of chemical pollution in terrestrial ecosystems and ecosystem health indicators).

A workshop with several ministries provided an opportunity to present and discuss the results, leading to exchanges on the quality of the data and reference values used, and on how to make better use of these results to formulate concrete public policy recommendations. A summary for decision-makers was written specifically for the Colombian case.

This research project deepened reflection on how to operationalize the ESGAP framework, particularly its complementarity with other international indicator frameworks.

• The limitations of the SDG framework

The research team showed that the framework for monitoring progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the environmental ones, does not ensure that progress toward environmental sustainability is properly measured: most indicators do not refer to critical environmental functions, and only a minority come with sustainability reference values.

Read the research paper: The SDGs Provide Limited Evidence That Environmental Policies Are Delivering Multiple Ecological and Social Benefits, Earth’s Future, vol. 12 (May 2024)

• The potential of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA)

The team recommends that public decision-makers make better use of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). Although recommended by the United Nations, it has so far been little used to monitor progress toward the SDGs or the Global Biodiversity Framework. The solution would be to integrate science-based sustainability reference values (such as those of the ESGAP framework) into the SEEA ecosystem accounts. This would make it possible to quantify gaps relative to ecological thresholds and thus make the SEEA more useful for monitoring progress toward the SDG sustainability targets or biodiversity targets.

Read the policy brief: Mobilizing strong sustainability indicators to achieve global durability goals

Read the research paper: Strong sustainability in the SEEA and the wider indicator landscape, One Ecosystem (May 2025)

While other research has developed the ESGAP approach in several developed countries (notably in Europe and Japan), the research supported by AFD through the ECOPRONAT program has shown that the ESGAP analytical framework can be adapted to countries of the Global South (Kenya, Vietnam, Colombia and South Africa). It thus provides an innovative and meaningful overview of the degree of environmental sustainability in a country.

As not all the data needed for the ESGAP analysis are systematically available, indicators adapted to each country can be developed. The downside is that countries cannot be compared with one another. AFD will launch new research to propose a standardized ESGAP framework that will allow countries’ environmental performance to be compared. This would be a kind of Human Development Index (HDI), but for nature.

In countries of the Global South, the picture of environmental sustainability is often incomplete because the data may be:

• Missing: there are blind spots in the environmental statistics system;
• Available but hard to access (not compiled, scattered, not public, etc.), so they cannot feed into the dashboard needed by public authorities, researchers or the general public;
• Available and accessible, but without a science-based sustainability reference value, which prevents a rigorous assessment of the sustainability of these functions. 

Conducting an ESGAP analysis therefore reveals blind spots in some countries’ monitoring of the state of the environment and, consequently, in their assessment of the effectiveness of environmental public policies. This can help a country identify concrete actions to ensure that knowledge is available and accessible to guide action on biodiversity (Target 21 of the Global Biodiversity Framework). More broadly, investing in better environmental data collection systems is essential to accurately assess the state of the environment and the effectiveness of the policies implemented, thereby supporting better decision-making

Testing ESGAP in Colombia and South Africa also made it possible to assess its usefulness in initiating dialogue on environmental policies. The results were discussed between researchers and public decision-makers, and public policy recommendations were formulated for both countries. These discussions showed that, even though the ESGAP analysis is partial due to the lack of data, it can help integrate biodiversity into decision-making (Target 14 of the Global Biodiversity Framework).

The project demonstrated how ESGAP complements other indicators. In particular, it can be integrated into the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) recommended by the United Nations, and it can improve the monitoring framework for the SDGs and the Global Biodiversity Framework.