Strategies to reach global sustainability should take better account of ecosystem services

Abstract Strategies for establishing priorities for the sustainability agenda by addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are prominent in the scientific literature. Some studies have suggested that sustainability will emerge from different backgrounds, such as through biosphere or societal transformations, whereas other approaches have searched for potential synergies and trade-offs between SDGs. Here, we analysed the main SDG database to investigate the caveats and cooperation opportunities to turn initiatives from local to global sustainability. We established an innovative conceptual framework to set up different sustainability trends for all SDGs and classified countries accordingly. We revealed that despite the significant advance in the last years, the sustainability agenda is still based on national rather than global performance. Consequently, the current efforts are promoting local sustainability trends with great spillover among countries. ‘Green’ SDGs 14 and 15 often had trade-offs or are uncoupled of social and economic SDGs. It suggests that the role ecosystem services play in connecting biodiversity and human wellbeing is not well incorporated into policies and practices. We argue that the world's shift towards global sustainability will depend strongly on cooperation among countries, strengthen existing synergies between SDGs and reduce negative externalities to other specific agendas.