European Week of Sustainable Development

This year the European Week for Sustainable Development is celebrated for the fourth consecutive year. In the centre of attention is once more the support for the projects, activities and events encouraging sustainable development and raising awareness among the population about sustainable development goals that originate from Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. This important document was unanimously adopted at the United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development on 25 September 2015. The agenda connects three dimensions of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental – in a balanced way. They are intertwined through 17 sustainable development goals that have to be realized by 2030. 

In December 2017 SURS prepared a website with sustainable development goals to inform the public about the progress in achieving sustainable development goals and at the same time raise awareness about the importance of this development. By monitoring the data and trends we can now follow how far we have come in achieving these goals. The indicator values among individual countries can now be compared on the Eurostat website. Selected sustainable development indicators for Slovenia are presented below. 
 

Goal 1: The at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion rate was 18.4% in 2016.
Goal 2: The share of utilised agricultural areas with organic farming was 9.1% in 2016.
Goal 3: Life expectancy for women born in 2016 is 84 years and for men 78 years.
Goal 4: 92% of children were included in pre-school education in 2017.
Goal 5: 8.1% was the gender pay gap in 2015.
Goal 6: 1.1% of the population below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold had neither a bath, nor a shower, nor indoor
              flushing toilet in their household in 2016.
Goal 7: Final energy consumption in households per capita amounted to 6,465 kWh in 2016.
Goal 8: Total employment rate among women in 2016 was 67%, among men 73%.
Goal 9: 135 patents were registered at the European Patent Office in 2014.
Goal 10: Real adjusted gross disposable income of households per capita in purchasing power standards (PPS)
               amounted to 17,372.
Goal 11: The recycling rate of municipal waste was 58% in 2016.
Goal 12: Resource productivity amounted to 1.35 EUR/kg in 2015.
Goal 13: 85.5 was the index of greenhouse gas emissions intensity of energy consumption in 2015 (reference year:
                2000).
Goal 14: The mass of caught marine organisms in marine fishing was 152 tons in 2016.
Goal 15: 62.5 was the farmland bird index in 2016 (reference year: 2008).
Goal 16: General government total expenditure on law courts amounted to 0.5% of GDP in 2016.
Goal 17: 78.5% of GDP was gross government debt in 2016.  


The European Week for Sustainable Development partly overlaps with the EU Sustainable Energy Week, which will take place from 4 to 8 June 2018. The main slogan of the EU Sustainable Energy Week is “Lead the clean energy transition.” The infographic below presents some data on energy supply in Slovenia with the emphasis on renewable energy sources, which are the most important in the process of transition to clean energy.


In the total Slovenian energy supply the share of renewable energy sources was 17% in 2016. Among those 54.1% were wood, followed by hydro energy (34.4%), geothermal energy (5.0%), biogas and liquid biofuels (4.8%), and solar and wind energy (2.1%).