UNITED NATIONS' SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS REVIEW – DUAL ANALYSIS OF ROMANIA AND DENMARK

Abstract

The present paper aims to highlight the discrepancies between two countries of the European Union, Romania and Denmark, in the perspective of the Sustainable Development Goals. As Denmark is seen as a primer European and Global nation in achieving the United Nations' targets, Romania can use this example as a guideline on how to act and to obtain the most notable ash; " results. The article proposes some key principles that Romanians could follow in order to successfully fulfill the 2030 Action Plan having, as an example, the strategies and indicators reached by Denmark. The current work paper is structured as a review of the two reports that voluntarily each state, followed by a statistical analysis of investment behavior and concluded with an analysis of the most notable differences between the states based on the dataset published by Eurostat. Keywords: Romania, Denmark, SDG, investment Introduction UDC

Headnote

ABSTRACT

The present paper aims to highlight the discrepancies between two countries of the European Union, Romania and Denmark, in the perspective of the Sustainable Development Goals. As Denmark is seen as a primer European and Global nation in achieving the United Nations' targets, Romania can use this example as a guideline on how to act and to obtain the most notable ash; " results. The article proposes some key principles that Romanians could follow in order to successfully fulfill the 2030 Action Plan having, as an example, the strategies and indicators reached by Denmark. The current work paper is structured as a review of the two reports that voluntarily each state, followed by a statistical analysis of investment behavior and concluded with an analysis of the most notable differences between the states based on the dataset published by Eurostat.

Keywords:

Romania, Denmark, SDG, investment

Introduction

The Concept of sustainability recalls human efforts in building a future that is comprehensive and optimistic for the planet and its people.

Sustainability came to light as a peripheral of business ethics, as an answer to general displeasure of the virtually permanent damage caused by a continuous focus on immediate profits.

In 2000, 189 countries agreed on a plan for the new millennia, they planned to end extreme poverty in all its forms, together with other ambitious and necessary visions and therefore, a list of several goals was created, Millennium Development Goals, counting in total 8 goals that aspired to eradicate extreme hunger, to improve maternal health, to achieve universal primary education, to combat diseases, to promote gender equality and to empower women, to ensure environmental stability, to reduce child mortality and to develop global partnership for improvement (U.N., 2015). These goals were to be reached in 15 years. With the help of several global organizations, notable progresses have been registered but efforts still had to be made, so that in September 2015, a new set of goals had been agreed, to help finish the work that was started in year 2000, the new goals were called the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-s) that formulate the plan up to the year 2030 (U.N., 2020). In today's technological society, it is known more on how to balance the three pillars of sustainable development, consisting in social progress, economic growth and environmental protection.

Year 2015 stands as a beacon of hope in our way to achieve a prosperous and sustainable world where everyone can have a productive, vibrant and peaceful life in a healthy environment through the introduction of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. All the new Goals are unparalleled since they recall global input, regardless of economic, social or political status. The goals come to encourage expansion and growth without harming the planet, this is why the leaders identified the need of a hand-in-hand strategy for the quest of ending poverty with the ability of building economic prosperity addressing the classical social needs of health, social responsibility, labor and education whilst undertaking the most urgent need of our world (climate change and environment protection).

Since the inception ofthe 2030 United Nations'(UN)Agenda for Sustainable Development, mankind has decided to further focus on quintessential aspects for a sustainable world. In the foreseen future of the next fifteen years, with the seventeen goals, UN's Agenda will assemble the world's efforts to put an end to poverty and inequalities and to deal with climate change making certain that not a single community is marooned.

As this paper will make a comparison of the Danish and Romanian strategies in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations' Agenda 2030, it can be identified that Denmark is a primer nation according to the SDG Index Report (Sachs, Shmidt-Traub, Kroll, Lafortune, & Fuller, 2019). What does Romania misses? Where is Denmark exceeding in? What Romanians must do to catch up or at least follow the Danes? Those are the questions that this article aims to give answers to.

According to the Sustainable Development Report (Sachs, Shmidt-Traub, Kroll, Lafortune, & Fuller, 2019), Denmark together with all the Nordic countries top up the SDG Index. Challenges have been faced even by Denmark implementation process of the SDG-s. Not a single country is progressing on the path of achieving all the 17 goals. Important gaps on the following SDG-s have been registered even for Denmark: SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production); SDG 13 (Climate Action); SDG 14 (Life Below Water) and SDG 15 (Life on Land).

On the one hand, Romania's Voluntary National Review would be revised (Ministry of Environment, 2019), a key document for this article, that was completed under the guidance of the Ministry of Environment with its Inter-Ministerial Committee assisted by other governmental institutions and representatives of civil society and academic area. SDG-s management is in the attributes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as main coordinator and the respective ministry for each goal; and Romania's mission to enclose the Agenda in nation's core strategy represents an inter-institutional cooperation effort. In 2017, local governmental bodies with their Sub-Committee for Sustainable Development assumed the responsibility of the 2030 Agenda's implementation at a national level. The National Voluntary Review is mainly focusing on 6 SDG-s (SDG 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation; SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy; SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities; SGD 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production; SDG 15 - Life on Land; SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goals). The document has as a foreword the chapter "Leave no one behind" that summarizes the recent GDP growth for Romania 4.8% in 2016, 6.9% in 2017 and 4% in 2018 (World Bank, 2020); the Review also tackles the demographic decline of current times (a yearly decrease of population of an average of 0.56% over years from 2007 through 2018 and a decrease of 2.5% in 2018 compared to 2013). This classical structure of the report based on the targets set up by the UN is a poor method of presenting the strengths of a nation, that is why Denmark's model has been chosen as to complete the comparative analysis.

On the other hand, Denmark's Review (Ministry of Finance, 2019), for the initial part presents a national commitment defining the necessity of SDG-s incorporation into the national legislation. The SDG-s act as protagonists on the domestic landscape and all the highlighted points in this report, are a guidance for global development moving forward to year 2030, as Denmark being a primer country in the 2019 SDG Index Report, on account of its governmental delivery. In Denmark, the Ministry responsible for the SDG-s coordination is the Foreign Affairs' and the Finance one. The governmental plan to turn SDG-s into tangible and actionable items is entitled "The Action Plan" and is centered around 5 main topics, the same "P"-s as the ones in the Agenda 2030. For each individual "P" of Denmark, excluding "Partnership", the government formulated several targets (in total 37 of them) that come to merge some of the SDG-s, each of the target above has multiple national indicators which can be quantifiable and measurable, highlighting the fact that the SDG-s formulated by the UN do not solely represent a strategy, proof that each nation needs to adapt and translate the universal guide to its needs and specifications.

Materials and methods

The following lines represent the review of the reports presented as a dual analysis of the SDG Voluntary Reviews, shown in Table A1, as a presentation enforced by indices that are not linked to the Eurostat's SDG-s dedicated analyses, showing the following: Denmark's status according to what has been published in its National Voluntary Review (first column); in the next column it is presented the Romania's status on the respective SDG in the similar document; the last column focuses on what Romania could do in order to progress in achieving the respective SGD.

The SDG-s represent a multitude of assortments that investors can opt to use in order to flavor this delightful journey towards a better world. Looking into the historical data and past decisions, the work of all of SDG-s' stakeholders is to lead to an improved understanding on defining an idealistic investment strategy. The SDG-s also represent 17 guidelines for the investors to take into consideration, while the evolution of the progress, at this point of time, can be properly recorded grace to the SDG reporting framework (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2017).

The present paper aims to emphasize the importance of SDG improvement; a regression model will be used in analyzing both Danish and Romanian progress in this journey, by looking at the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) evolution, as suggested in the specialized literature (Cruceanu, Anghel, & Diaconu, 2016; Glass & Newig, 2019). Subsequently, a separate analysis on each SDG will be conducted to obtain additional detailed results.

The main data source for this study is Eurostat; in order to perform the comparison between the two countries, all indicators were converted in euro/capita. The correlation of the indices to the respective SDG can be seen in Table A2. Next, both models will be addressed, and the datasets will be analyzed with the EViews 11 Student Version software.

The dependent variable is represented by the GDP of the respective country while the independent variables are as follows, for each individual state: Business Research Expenditure, Governmental Environmental Expenditure, Governmental Education Expenditure, Governmental Research and Development Expenditure, Governmental Agricultural Research and Development Expenditure, Governmental Health Expenditure, Governmental Social Protection Expenditure and Total Investment, the selected time interval being from 2000 to 2018.

The results highlight the importance of sound investment strategy that thrives economic boom together with SDG-s implementation improvement using econometric modeling. Additional statistical methods, based on official data, will be used to complete the policy and paper reviews, as a base for the final conclusions.

In the datasets for both countries, shown in Table A3 & A4, can be observed that Denmark recorded an ascending trend over the years for the GDP index but at a slower pace, situation matching the general SDG-s improvement, situation similar for Romania. For the econometric model to have validity, the datasets will be subjected to multiple tests as described in the following section.

Results & Discussions

Descriptive statistics and econometric models

The first series of tests, presenting the descriptive statistics and the normalization distribution of the series - as shown in Table 1, relate that all the indices present a normalized structure, the distribution recorded normal values for all indices, Kurtosis recorded values lesser than 3, representing a platykurtic distribution; assuming a normal distribution for the indicator, the following hypotheses have been formulated H0: representing a normal distribution with the respective probability higher than 5%; H1: representing an abnormal distribution for the opposite probability; in this case, looking at the table, H0 is confirmed for all of the indices. In order to test the individual stationarity, the datasets were assessed to evaluate the unit root existence and it was calculated that data was not stationary and following the statistical process, the first difference was needed to be implemented causing all the variables to modify, the descriptive statistics being tested again. The process of differentiating represents the reduction of the database with one year due to the variance across the years and consists in the stabilization of the series removing the seasonality and trend. Summarized, in Table 2, it can be observed what variables remained normalized after the respective operation and the following hypotheses have been considered H0: where data is stationary and does not have a unit root for the probability lesser than 5% and the absolute value of t-Stat being above the critical value in the 1, 5 and 10% moments and H1: where data is not stationary and has a unit root for the opposite probability and critical value, including in the test's equation the trend, intercept, none or both at the same time as observable in the table. The probability presented values below 5% for all variables with two exceptions for Romania and considering that the t-statistical was above the critical value, H0 could be confirmed. The probability for the group testing is 0% for both Levin, Lin & Chu and ADF & PP - Fisher Chi-square tests, indicating the stationarity of the data and the absence of the unit reconfirming that the variables can continue the statistical process.

Using the correlogram analysis, shown in Table 3, the variables fit between the autocorrelation dotted lines, meaning that the seasonality of the series was not registered validating that the variables are statistically representative.

Covariance analysis of the GDP indicator can be observed in Table 4, where the probability registered a value above 5% for most of the variables but for the following differentiated indices for Denmark: Gov. Social Protection Exp. (Social) and Total investment (Inv) displaying a strong relationship between the GDP of Denmark and the last two indices, while the others show a percentage of the probability above 10% representing their independence from the GDP indicator. In the Romanian case, the probability registered a value above 5% for most of the variables except Gov. Education Exp. (Educ), Gov. R&D Exp. (GovR&D) and Total investment (Inv), the low percentage of the probability displays a strong relationship between the GDP of Romania and the respective indices, while Gov. Environment Exp. (Env) and Gov. Agricultural R&D Support (AgriR&D) show a percentage of the probability above 40% representing independence from the GDP indicator.

The linear model for Denmark represents an equation, using the least squares method where the probability for the F-statistic test registered a value of 0.00217 which is below the 0.05 statistically accepted threshold and it correlates with the great impact of the exogenous variables over the endogenous ones. The R-squared value of the model is 0.8822 representing an increased capacity of the independent variables to explain the GDP of Denmark. The equation can be noticed at Equation 1 and the coefficients can be noticed in Table 5 for both countries showing what is required in order to have a 1 differenced euro/capita increase in the GDP of Denmark. For Romania, the probability for the F-statistic test registered a value of 0.00206 which is below 0.05 reconfirming the great impact of the exogenous variables over the endogenously one. The R-squared value of the model is 0.8837 representing an increased capacity of the independent variables to explain the GDP. In the same table can be observed what is required in order to have a 1 differenced euro/capita increase in the GDP of Romania.

Next, the database will be investigated to get the homoscedastic diagnosis using White's heteroskedasticity test; the probability for this test records a value above the 5% statistically accepted margin for all of the indices, Denmark recorded for F(8,9) 20.99% and for Chi-Square 20.36%. Another test that further analyses the residual correlation of the database is the LM Breusch-Godfrey that registered for the current dataset a statistically probability of 99.8% that strongly confirms the validity of the model. In Romanian's case, the probability for F(8,9) is 81.93% and Chi-Square is 68.69%. The residual correlation of the database verified with LM Breusch-Godfrey test, registered for Romania, a value of 96% confirming once again the validity of the model.

With all the multiple tests presented above it can be confirmed that for both Denmark and Romania, the multiple sector investment influence the GDP of the country and represents an accurate indicator for the socioeconomic level. The strong existing correlation further indicates the need of public and private investment to increase the general SDG-s improvement.

Sustainable Development Goals - a comparative analysis

How is the EU answering to the SDG-s in general? The European institutions have assessed that sustainable development is a core objective in the general policy, aspect fastened in the European Treaties and highlighted in key projects, policies and frameworks. The Agenda with its 17 Goals is the culmination of global efforts to achieve sustainable development.

Eurostat, in this case, is the governmental body in charge to regularly oversee improvement of the SDG-s in the EU and for this specific aspiration, the EU bodies created a set of a indicators to closely monitor the EU Member States progress.

GOAL 1: No Poverty

The first subject touched by the SDG guideline is the poverty and the aspiration of ending it in all its forms, all over the planet. The data shown in the previous part of the paper suggests how unacceptable it is from an EU Member State as Romania to have such high discrepancies, both when compared to the primer position and to the average of the Member States (as it could be observed in the following analyses). Even though the decreasing trend is a sign of improvement throughout all the indices, local government needs to focus its efforts into improving the life quality of Romanians. The disparity is caused mainly because of the unbalanced rural life where, as shown earlier, not even the sewerage and fresh water supply reach the entirety of the population. The essence of this SDG should not only be identified with the economic situation, that was shown to be precarious, but should also highlight the conditions and solutions for poverty diminishment.

GOAL 2: Zero Hunger

The situation presented in Figure 1 where the agricultural research field can reveal the importance of the research, can be said that Romania is not offering enough credit to research in any field as the country is having a real agricultural potential that could be fully achieved with a proper funding in this area. The most important year for Romania where the largest funding recorded peak values was 2010, with almost EUR 60 million while Denmark registered values above this maximum of Romania throughout the whole period, with the largest value in 2006 EUR 93.89 million. The most alarming fact is that the numbers are going down, opposing to the ascending trend of both EU average and Denmark.

Organic farming as presented in Figure 2 should represent a priority for Romania, as it matches the developing profile of the country's agriculture and the small average farm area, Romania recorded a descending trend over the years as opposed to the ascending trend in both EU and Denmark. Aspects, if properly advised, could increase the percentage of organic farms in this traditionally agricultural oriented member state of Romania, and could provide better opportunities through higher added value crops. The increasing trend of the EU average shows a growing interest for organic farming across Europe, with huge potential for countries like Romania to obtain increasing support.

The next objective is to confine the hunger, to supply the population with enough food that fits the nutritional needs of each individual and to do so in a sustainable way. Even though Romania is known for the numerous small farmers, it is not a focus point in the Voluntary National Review as Denmark is doing for its small-scale farmers. Methods to encourage the cooperation between farmers in order to increase the agricultural output, together with smart investment, could improve the agricultural situation in Romania. It is a shame that agriculture is not a top research topic, but the immense potential of Romanian agriculture, should not be altered by other technological industrial niches and should coexist in a prosperous economy. Even though Romania, together with all the EU Member States, don't focus around national hunger, they are focusing on achieving the food security and what is foreseen to happen in the future, situation that might cause some large disturbances, due to the negligence over the nutritional security, especially in Romania where not enough lobby is made, and that the national food security could be in danger if the agriculture is not sustainable treated through clever crop management.

GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being

The death rate index alone, as observed in Figure 3, can't reveal the true situation of Romania, but it can highlight the fact that the health-care system does not benefit at its maximum of how it should be when compared to both EU average and Denmark. The most important thing is that even for Romania it can be observed a decrease in the trend over the last 10 years. The variance for Romania over the years is around negative 20% while the improvement for Denmark reaches 29%, this meaning that in absolute values, Denmark recorded a more significant decrease over the years.

The focus on ensuring a healthy life and promote the comfort for all ages should be attractive for each nation and additionally, each state should adapt this SDG on its specificities, an interesting aspect of this SDG is the fact that Romania's National Review has a more complex analysis of the health situation than what is presented in the Eurostat database, meaning that the disease-tracking is of high importance. Denmark's health situation looks a little better, but it is an absolute must to point out the dreadful state of public hospitals and the insufficient treatment points in Romania.

GOAL 4: Quality Education

Figure 4 is highlighting that in the last 3 years Romania has registered a decrease of early leavers from education, whereas Denmark recorded a slight increase and therefore, Romanian authorities should make a real effort into further decreasing the numbers to meet the European average. Romania recorded the lowest percentage of early leavers from training and education in 2008 with 15.9% while Denmark recorded its lowest in 2016 with 7.2%. Denmark is a leading example and both Romania and the EU Member States should follow the Danish model in education where both investment and research are key objectives for the general wellbeing.

According to what has been analyzed from both the National Review and the Eurostat database, Romanian efforts are not significant when compared to Denmark, where a greater GDP percentage is allocated for education and children are taught with top end technologies and up to date information. Meanwhile, Denmark succeeded in defining a minimum of learning that will assure each child's success in the current labor market. The Eurostat indices, unfortunately, place Romania lower than both Denmark and the EU average, a worrying trend that should be immediately reversed.

GOAL 5: Gender Equality

The situation presented in Figure 5, is a real problem in Romania due to the large percentage of the population that is not willing to either work or train. It is a terrifying situation knowing that for all variables the situation got worse over the years, of course Denmark registered lesser young people unemployed or involved in education, but even in this case, an ascending trend can be noticed over the years. This situation should be changed with a proper organizational movement that demands the unemployed to get trained and then to automatically be inserted in the labor market.

Gender equality and women empowerment, a subject where Romania is overcoming the counterparts, it was also highlighted previously that on average women earn more than men, but the monthly income can't be compared to Denmark which is around 6 times higher. Notably is also the case signaled in the Danish National Review where efforts are made to eliminate violence.

GOAL 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

The position presented in Figure 6 is, unfortunately, the representation of rural Romania and the consequence of poor provincial management, situation mostly caused by political instability. While Denmark has more than 88% of the population connected to wastewater treatment, Romania still struggles to secure for 50% of its population the basic wastewater connection. Situation that needs urgent act, even though in 2017 connections increased by 136% over 2009.

The illustration at Figure 7 is again representing rural Romania, where a significant part of the population is unable to meet their heating necessities. The decreasing trend over the years is signaling good conditions for Romania while Denmark recorded a small increase over the last years. In Romania, the lowest percentage was recorded in 2018 with around 10% of the population being unable to maintain their homes adequately warm, while Denmark recorded its lowest in 2010 with 1.5% of the population. Will be an impressive improvement for Romania if the EU average could be overtaken.

While Denmark clearly overcame this aspect in entirety, Romania still struggles to supply its population with fresh water and sanitation access. The numbers have grown in the last couple of years but still, a continuous effort should be made to allow the entirety of the population to have access to essential services.

GOAL 7: Affordable and Clean Energy

The seventh goal relates to modern and reliable energy supply for everyone, Romania is clearly recording some issue in this aspect, whilst Denmark is increasingly focusing on clean energy and managed to frame a clear investment plan for sustainable energy. What should be highlighted is that Romania, a country with such significant resource possibility should not rely that much from energy imports and could frame a multiple organizational layer plan to frame a resource-energetical-efficient plan focused on sustainability and local resources abundance.

GOAL 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

As shown in Figure 8, Denmark's GDP per capita overtakes with a significant margin both the EU average and the Romanian one. The variance for Romania recorded in 2018 a 55% increase over 2006, while for Denmark and the EU, recorded only a 3% and respectively a 11% increase. The ascending trend is good for all countries, but the large gap between Romania and the EU average should diminish.

The inclusive and economic prosperity together with great work conditions lack guidance in Romania's Voluntary Review, but it could be improved with the economic growth registered in the last couple of years and what is great to be pointed is that, percentual, Romania is investing more and more yearly, an excellent method of improvement.

GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

As it can be noticed in Figure 9, Romania is not focusing enough on the R&D, an important factor for improvement and growth in a adding value sector. On the opposite pole, Denmark recognizes the importance of R&D and surpasses the EU average. Romania is not spending enough, below 1% of the GDP, the highest value being recorded in 2017 with 0.4% of GDP spent on R&D.

This goal translates for countries like Denmark, into clear volumetric measurements of the passengers' numbers and the small and medium enterprises labor force. Transportation and motorways are a weak point of Romania and together with a lack of political involvement, it can't be easily reinforced. The EU database focuses on industries like R&D, high-end technology manufacturing and public transportation where innovation should drastically improve the quality of the services delivered, sectors that need realignment with the western society, especially for Romanians.

GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality

Tenth goal focuses on inequalities reduction among nations, where Denmark focuses on household expenditure and general incomes, Romania showed political instability and room for improvement. Inequality can be notified even within the EU borders where most of the imports and exports happen within the EU customs but do not extend to outside developing areas. Importing from developing counties helps the local community and promotes growth to the respective economical actors.

GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

The interesting rate shown in Figure 10 is representing a fair view of the recycling rate in Romania, this aspect of a circular and sustainable economy has not had the chance to develop yet, leaving room for improvement. On the opposite pole, there sits Denmark with a rate that matches the EU average, showing the incredible efforts of the municipalities to recycle. It is good to note the Romanian variance over the years and the visible improvement but only a 14% recycling rate in 2017 is not meeting the EU standards and it should represent an urgent matter for all the stakeholders.

In the National Reviews, Romania showed the decreasing of poor people over the last couple of years where Denmark showed the investment into the urban air, culture and environment in the same report section. What was previously noted is that Romania needs to take Denmark as an example and to encourage the corporate sector to invest more into the environmental protection and not to rely only on the governmental efforts in order to have a clean air to breathe. In a crowded world, it is very relevant to show the area where a person or family successfully carries out their day-to-day activities and it could be observed that Romanians lack many square meters when compared to the EU average. Cities, represented by the citizens, together with the municipalities, private and public sector should focus more on achieving the recycling quotas imposed by the EU Environmental Agency of 50% for the household materials by 2020 through the Waste Framework Directive.

GOAL 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

The next SDG, relies on sustainable consumptions patterns, both countries framing relevant lines but Denmark is one step ahead of other nations especially of Romania when it is measuring its own efforts with unique indices. This aspect can be translated into a growth in production sector especially where the respective country bears sustainable resources.

GOAL 13: Climate Action

Goal thirteen focuses on urgent actions taken to counter the climate changes, it was shown before that both analyzed countries did not publish any data in the voluntary review in this category. Romania should consider the international commitment for climate change and with a greener focus of the governmental bodies, could take real action in order to retaliate the climate emergency status declared by the EU officialities.

GOAL 14: Life Below Water

The fourteenth goal in Denmark focuses on the fish catch that should always be preserved under sustainable levels while Romania is not highlighting enough about this SDG, even though fishing is having a real importance for the coastal counties of Romania. Romania should describe more of its efforts under the Operational Programme for Fishing and Maritime Businesses.

GOAL 15: Life on Land

The fifteenth goal stands for actions against desertification and features sustainable forest management. Denmark points the efforts in this regard and the importance of anti-desertification measures while Romania is presenting the rich landscape of the forests and not a significant action against the massive deforestation that left scars for the present and future generations. Big efforts should be considered for Romania to restore the original forest area and to rapidly increase the forest area.

GOAL 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

The sixteenth SDG promotes justice, peace and inclusiveness. Romania is not showing suggestive data in the voluntary papers while Denmark is open to help the international detainees but where Romania is lacking initiative is in the homicide death rate where major investigations should be realized. The judicial system of Romania could be more independent and should absolutely be out of political influences, situation related in the last couple of years for Romania and together with the general corruption status could represent a key focus of every governance.

GOAL 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal

The seventeenth SDG targets the global partnership and both countries focus on international cooperation. Governmental debt could represent a diminishable objective for all the EU member states in order to regain more economical independency on the one hand, but on the other hand, taxes needs to charge more its citizens (both individuals and legal entities) for the negative environmental impact in order to encourage positive attitude towards the environment.

Conclusion

Romania as previously observed, has the potential to improve its sustainable development path and the respective goals, if a proper investment strategy is applied. Denmark is for sure an example, not only for Romania but for all the EU Member States.

The SDG-s brought new clarity towards the overall strategy and defined the universal and interconnected layers of their applicability. It is essential to understand that success can only be achieved through cooperation, clear funding schemes and effort recognition even at individual level.

Romanian policies and practices need to consider the multiple signs and international trends as the ones highlighted in the present paper (extensive public and private growth mechanisms) in order to outline the most up-to-date priorities for the country. Statistical background and strong reporting capabilities indicate a data-collective national system of Romania, that points out pluses and minuses in this SDG-s achievement journey. To formulate the clear commitment of the government, even though it is already backed up by legal frameworks, it could be noted how the authorities would deliver satisfactory results not only through standardized yearly reports. Romania, a country that triples the population of Denmark but is hardly achieving one fifth of the Danish GDP in euro/capita, is having room for improvement. Socioeconomic disparities, potential maximization, innovation & research focus, cooperation promotion, public health state, education improvement, young people unemployment, waste management, responsible consumption, climate action and international cooperation represent urgent needs .

Essential to acknowledge that policies, especially global frameworks as the SDG-s, can't be applied uniformly at large scale, they are implemented according to the national, regional and local peculiarities as Denmark proceeds even from the first chapter of the National Review.

Paper limits

All data analyzed above and structured as multiple suggestions for Romania may represent a starting point for reaching all the SDG-s; nevertheless, one should remember that these suggestions are based on the official data and documents available at the current date. The main objective of this paper has been reached but there is still plenty of data that needs to be analyzed for further alignment with the Agenda 2030 goals.

The strategies presented above are strictly tied to the analyzed database and should be considered as being theoretical because it is needed a more complex study that perfectly tailors national needs as a part of a well-defined action plan. The datasets used in the regression models do not reach present time, 2020, but match the Voluntary National Reviews time span.

Further studies

Could the SDG-s be within our reach by 2030? How could progress be marked if not by replicating the efforts and results of the top performing States across the globe? The progress of the least SDG achieving countries could represent, together with a more in-depth plan for each state, the objective of future studies.

Other nations' approach that are situated in the top of the SDG index could also represent an interesting and different point of view then the one of Denmark. Romania's progress beyond year 2020 and what changes would be recorded during the next Voluntary Review cycle is also a possible subject of interest.

Sidebar

A R T I C L E I N F O

Review Article

Received: 24 April 2020

Accepted: 25 August 2020

UDC 502.131.1(1-544)(498)(489)

Conflict of interests

The author declares no conflict of interest.

References

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