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Global Commons Stewardship Index Measures Countries' Impacts on the Environment Beyond Domestic Concerns

By Zach Wendling

Pilot project incorporates the latest developments in international metrics to assess how countries are impacting Planetary Boundaries and offers guidance for multilateral environmental governance.

Update : As a companion to the Pilot Global Commons Stewardship (GCS) Index, SDSN and its partners conducted a methodological review published as a Working Paper. This Working Paper provides additional transparency about the Pilot Index and discrete guidelines for improving further iterations. In particular, we address the categorization of the metrics, describe imputations and outliers, recommend the use of geometric means for aggregation, note areas needing greater data availability, and suggest new ways of interpreting this work in the narrative of the report.

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With pressures on Earth systems pushing them toward or beyond their tipping points, countries must act quickly. Biogeochemical processes provide stability and resilience for ecosystem services that serve the entire planet; therefore, multilateral efforts are necessary to protect and preserve these global commons. Good metrics serve as the foundation for such policies, but these data are currently missing or obscured in current policy discussions. The recent release of the Pilot Global Commons Stewardship Index at the Tokyo Forum in December 2020 provides critical support for a new era of sustainability efforts.

Launched in August of 2020, the Center for Global Commons at the University of Tokyo provides a new platform for in-depth study and science-based transformations of key socio-economic systems. Among several workstreams, the Global Commons Stewardship Index (GCS Index) is the first major product of the Center, prepared in collaboration with the SDSN and the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy. Drawing on the expertise behind SDSN’s SDG Index Reports and Yale’s Environmental Performance Index , the GCS Index avails itself of the latest developments in international sustainability metrics.

In the inaugural report , the research team writes:

"Our initial work suggests that an integrated perspective on the Global Commons is necessary and will support better policies at national and global levels. In the GCS Index, we therefore seek to aggregate different indicators from many different sources into an overall picture of how each country is affecting the Global Commons. To this end the Pilot GCS Index provides a composite index that aggregates the best available data on countries’ impacts on Global Commons."

As a composite index, the framework uses multiple dimensions of the Global Commons to provide a comprehensive overview of the pressures countries put on Earth systems. For the pilot version, the team identified six dimensions: aerosols, biodiversity, climate change, land, oceans, and freshwater. Because the index is focused on global impacts, it is necessary to account for both impacts within territorial borders, or “domestic” impacts, as well as transboundary impacts, or “spillovers,” that cross borders through physical flows or embodied in traded goods and services. Rather than accruing to the countries in which these impacts happen, these spillovers can be attributed to the country of final consumption.

Committed to using the best available data, the research team assembled 34 indicators from data partners that provide globally relevant, statistically valid and reliable, up-to-date metrics that are collected according to internationally approved methods. The Pilot GCS Index contains results for those countries accounting for the greatest portion of impacts on the Global Commons, including the G-20, OECD, those with populations over 100 million, for a total of 50 countries. To allow for cross-country comparisons, indicators were standardized, usually in per capita terms.

Results in the Pilot GCS Index assign a rating to each country, both overall and for each of the sub-components of the index. These ratings denote whether countries have fully mitigated their impacts on the Global Commons (“AAA”) or fall among the most harmful (“CCC”).

The Pilot GCS Index generates four initial findings:


  1. Most countries generate large negative impacts on the Global Commons, but variations across countries are substantial. This variation generates opportunities for poor performers to learn from countries that generate lower per capita impacts on the Global Commons. Many developing countries have better ratings, but no country achieves the best or second-best rating on the index or within any of its sub-pillars. Small, rich countries with high trade-intensities rate worst on the Pilot GCS Index.
  2. International spillovers account for a large share of countries’ impacts on the Global Commons, particularly in relation to greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity threats, and water scarcity embodied in imports.
  3. In absolute terms, the greatest negative impacts arise from the world’s largest economies: China, the United States, India, Japan, the EU, and Russia.
  4. There are major gaps in availability and coverage of data for the Global Commons, particularly in relation to biodiversity loss at the genetic and population levels; disruptions to the phosphorus cycle; land degradation, especially from agriculture; hazardous waste; and water quality and scarcity.


Further work remains to refine the GCS Index. As a prototype, the Pilot Index is meant to illustrate the scope and usefulness of a composite indicator for identifying successes and challenges for protecting the Global Commons. Yet the results are not final, and the research team, including the SDSN, invites feedback on how all aspects of the design can be improved. Many more consultations are needed, and in anticipation of further iterations later this year, the team will engage with scientists, policymakers, and other experts. Soliciting critiques and disseminating progress on the methods will be on-going efforts of this project.

Ultimately, we hope that the GCS Index becomes a prominent fixture in global discussions around how to protect and enhance multilateral protection of the Global Commons. Cutting-edge research into tracking trans-national impacts on planetary boundaries will propel sustainability efforts to greater levels of ambition and success.

The Global Commons Stewardship Index gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Center for Global Commons at the University of Tokyo.

Contact us at GCSIndex@unsdsn.org

About SDSN:

The UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) has been operating since 2012 under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General. It mobilizes global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical solutions for sustainable development, including the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement. SDSN works closely with United Nations agencies, multilateral financing institutions, the private sector, and civil society. www.unsdsn.org

About the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy:

The Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, a joint undertaking between Yale Law School and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, advances fresh thinking and analytically rigorous approaches to environmental decisionmaking across disciplines, sectors, and boundaries. In addition to its research activities, the center aims to serve as a locus for connection and collaboration by all members of the Yale University community who are interested in environmental law and policy issues. The center supports a wide-ranging program of teaching, research, and outreach on local, regional, national, and global pollution control and natural resource management issues. These efforts involve faculty, staff, and student collaboration and are aimed at shaping academic thinking and policymaking in the public, private, and NGO sectors. envirocenter.yale.edu