SDGs: four years from 2030, where the world and Mexico stand

Bajío Ventures · October 2026 · From commitment to project, 2 of 6

On 25 September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda: 17 goals and 169 targets for the 193 Member States. Unlike the MDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) apply to all countries, not only to those that receive aid. And energy, which had no goal in 2000, now has one: SDG 7. The current monitoring framework has 234 unique indicators.

Four years remain. This post reviews the scoreboard.

In this series: 1. The MDGs · 2. The SDGs four years from 2030 (this post) · 3. What Mexico signed · 4. What the federal government is doing · 5. The Bajío states · 6. What Bajío Ventures can do

The global scoreboard

The 2026 UN report, published in July, assesses the 139 targets that have sufficient data:

Status	Share of targets
On track or met	15%
Moderate progress	21%
Marginal progress	32%
Stagnation	17%
Regression relative to 2015	15%

One in ten people lives in extreme poverty. The financing gap for developing countries is USD 4 trillion a year. The Sustainable Development Report 2026 from the SDSN network uses a different methodology and reaches a similar number: 16.5% of targets on track.

Political commitment holds up better than the results. According to the same report, the 2025 resolutions on the SDGs often had the support of more than 170 of the 193 States.

Mexico in the index

The SDSN index ranks countries on a scale of 0 to 100 according to their progress on the 17 goals.

Edition	Mexico’s rank	Score
2024	80 of 167	69.3
2025	72 of 167	70.8
2026	75 of 169	70.5

The SDSN warns that ranks are not strictly comparable between editions. Mexico’s 2026 profile is more useful than the rank:

• No goal achieved.
• Nine goals with “major challenges”: SDG 2 (hunger), 3 (health), 6 (water), 8 (work and growth), 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure), 10 (inequality), 14 (life below water), 15 (life on land) and 16 (peace, justice and institutions).
• Seven with “significant challenges”: SDG 1, 4, 7, 11, 12, 13 and 17.
• One with “challenges remain”: SDG 5 (gender equality).
• The lowest scores: SDG 16 (43.3), SDG 10 (47.4), SDG 9 (56.9) and SDG 15 (57.6).
• The trend: only SDG 16 is regressing. Eight goals are improving moderately. The rest are stagnant.

In the region, Chile ranks 33rd (78.5), Uruguay 38th, Brazil 53rd, Argentina 57th and Colombia 69th. The United States ranks 45th.

The indicators behind the index

SDG	Indicator	Mexico’s figure	Source
1	Multidimensional poverty	41.9% (2018) → 36.3% (2022) → 29.6% (2024); 38.5 million people	INEGI
1	Extreme poverty	7.0% (2018) → 5.3% (2024)	INEGI
3	Lack of access to health services	16.2% (2018) → 39.1% (2022) → 34.2% (2024)	INEGI
6	Water stress (withdrawal as a share of available resources)	44.95%	UN
7	Access to electricity	99.8% (2024)	UN
7	Renewables in final energy consumption	11.06% (2023); it was 13.45% in 2021	UN
7	Electricity from low-carbon sources	26% (2025); the world average is 43%	Ember
8	Informal employment	55.1% (second quarter of 2026)	INEGI
13	Fossil CO₂	479 Mt (2015) → 429 Mt (2020) → 461 Mt (2024)	Global Carbon Budget

Three readings. First: poverty is the strongest result of the period. It fell twelve points in six years. Second: in the same period, the lack of access to health services doubled. Third: in energy, Mexico has solved coverage and has not solved the energy mix. Electricity reaches 99.8% of the population. Three quarters of that electricity comes from fossil fuels.

Who tracks it

• The National Council for the 2030 Agenda was created by decree on 26 April 2017. Its executive secretariat is in the Ministry of Economy; the decree was last amended in July 2021.
• The last Council session that we could document is from September 2024, at the close of the previous administration. We did not find a later session.
• The Federal Audit Office (ASF) reviewed the 2024 fiscal year. It reported that operations were suspended from October to December of that year because of the transition. It reported that no national thresholds have been set for the SDGs. It also reported that the working group to define targets was not formed until November 2025.
• The information system of INEGI, the national statistics institute, had published 207 of the 249 committed indicators, according to the minutes of the technical committee of July 2025.
• Mexico has presented four voluntary national reviews to the UN: 2016, 2018, 2021 and 2024. It did not present one in 2026, the year in which the forum reviewed SDGs 6, 7, 9, 11 and 17: water, energy, industry, cities and partnerships.

The figure that offsets this is at the subnational level. Mexico has 35 voluntary local reviews from states and municipalities. That makes it the third country in the world, after Brazil (72) and Malaysia (44). The agenda moves more at the local level than at the federal level. We review this in the post on the Bajío states.

What comes next

The SDG Summit of September 2027 will open the formal discussion on what follows after 2030. Financing was negotiated in Seville in July 2025. The Sevilla Commitment was adopted by consensus. The United States withdrew from the negotiation before the text was agreed.

The takeaway

1. SDG 9 in red is the key figure for the Bajío. A country that exports manufactured goods has “major challenges” in industry, innovation and infrastructure. The region lives from that goal, and the region is where that goal can move the most.

2. SDG 7 is no longer about coverage; it is about the energy mix and the grid. With 99.8% access, what remains is the source of the electricity and the capacity of the grid to take new generation.

3. Nobody has set the national target. Without official thresholds, each actor defines what it means to “meet” a goal. That is a risk and also an opening: whoever measures first, and measures well, sets the benchmark.

This note is for information only and is not legal or investment advice.

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Sources: Ministry of Economy — 2030 Agenda · UN — list of SDG indicators · UN — The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026 · SDSN — Sustainable Development Report 2026 · SDSN — Mexico profile · IISD — States’ support for the SDGs, 2026 · INEGI — multidimensional poverty 2024, 13 Aug 2025 · UN — SDG indicators database, Mexico · Ember — Mexico · INEGI — ENOE, second quarter of 2026 · Our World in Data / Global Carbon Budget — Mexico’s CO₂ · Ministry of Economy — National Council for the 2030 Agenda · Ministry of Economy — Council bulletin, Sep 2024 · ASF — audit 2024-2201 · SNIEG — CTEODS minutes, 23 Jul 2025 · UN — Mexico’s voluntary national reviews · IISD — national reviews at the 2026 forum · IISD — discussions on the post-2030 period · UN — close of the Seville conference, Jul 2025 · IISD — Sevilla outcome document, Jun 2025

Bajío Ventures — a Mexican energy-infrastructure investment group based in Guanajuato: capital, a data platform on the region’s industrial base, and a German industrial channel, with its own advisory presence in Berlin.