SDG 17 Partnerships for the goals

SDG 17 is a different in character to the other SDGs. In order to achieve the SDGs, cooperation between countries, governments, businesses and civil society organisations is hugely important. It is difficult to measure that cooperation in statistical terms.

• The Netherlands did not achieve the OECD standard for development aid in 2024.
• Imports from low-income countries are increasing.
• The land use footprint is on a downwards trend and is low within the EU-27, but remains around three times the size the surface area of the Netherlands.

Dashboard and indicators

Colour codes and notes to the dashboards in the Monitor of Well-being

The focus here is on forming and maintaining partnerships to help achieve the other goals. Cooperation, especially in an international context, is essential in order to strengthen capacity and make the necessary resources available to implement the sustainable development agenda. This requires coherent policy, a cooperative environment and the willingness to enter into new global partnerships. SDG 17 concerns the effect that developments in the Netherlands have on other countries.

No properly measurable indicators are available for most of the SDG 17 goals. Statistical agencies around the world are grappling with the question of how we can measure SDG 17. For this SDG, CBS currently measures only a small number of sub-goals. As a result, unlike for the other SDGs, there is no breakdown by resources and opportunities, use, outcomes and subjective assessment. Nor is it possible to give a general picture of the direction of development with respect to this SDG. For this reason, we only describe trends and positions for the most important results of the individual indicators here.

In terms of the provision of official development aid (ODA), the Netherlands was towards the top of the EU ranking (5th out of 27 countries) in 2024. In that year, development aid stood at 0.6 percent of gross national income (GNI). In 1970, UN members agreed to spend 0.7 percent of their annual GNI on development aid (the OECD standard). Countries that achieve this OECD standard are Luxembourg, Sweden and Denmark. Wages and salaries earned in the Netherlands by people who do not live in the Netherlands (non-residents), combined with transfers by people who live in the Netherlands (residents) to non-residents amounted to 1.5 percent of GDP. Again, this puts the Netherlands towards the top of the EU ranking in 2024 (6th out of 27 countries). The actual effects on well-being ‘elsewhere’ depend on how the money is spent by the recipients. The assumption is that development aid and income transfers contribute to the livelihoods of people in the receiving countries.

With its major seaports, the Netherlands has historically maintained intensive trade relationships with other countries. In order to understand where the impact of this trade is felt, the countries that the Netherlands trades with have been divided into four groups: low-income countries, lower-middle-income countries, upper-middle-income countries and high-income countries. This classification is derived from the World Bank and is based on a country’s gross national income per capita. In SDG 17, the focus is on supporting low-income countries and lower-middle-income countries. Import values have been adjusted for inflation using a new method; all amounts in the dashboards are expressed in 2020 prices.

The trend for imports from low-income countries has changed from stable to rising. These imports also increased sharply in 2025, by 12.7 percent. For goods imports from lower-middle-income countries, the trend is stable. Imports from low-income countries and lower-middle-income countries are low compared to other countries. Elsewhere reveals that the lion’s share of goods imports actually come from high-income and upper-middle-income countries. Together, these two groups account for more than 90 percent of goods imports. These import figures also include re-exports: goods imported into the Netherlands that leave the country again in a (virtually) unprocessed state.

Besides contributing to the economy in other countries, the Netherlands can also transfer knowledge, for example via students. SDG 17 is specifically concerned with students from outside the European Economic Area (EEA: the 27 EU member states plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein). In 2025, some 15.6 percent of new university students came from non-EEA countries. This percentage is trending upwards. An increase in English-language study programmes and the number of international students is considered beneficial to well-being elsewhere in the world. The well-being effects can also be positive for the Netherlands itself: international students who stay and work in the Netherlands will contribute to the Dutch economy.

Footprints measure the quantity of resources used and the associated impacts on nature, climate and other aspects of well-being caused globally by the consumption of Dutch households and the public sector. Thus, the material footprint measures the quantity of raw materials (biomass, fossil fuels, metals and non-metallic minerals) used worldwide to sustain consumption in the Netherlands. The land use footprint measures the area of land needed worldwide for this purpose, and the greenhouse gas footprint measures greenhouse gas emissions worldwide (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide).

The land use footprint is trending downwards. In 2023, 0.6 hectares of land were required for the consumption needs of each inhabitant of the Netherlands. This equates to approximately three times the area of the Netherlands. This puts the Netherlands in 4th place within the EU-27; the Netherlands uses relatively little land for its consumption. The trend for the Dutch greenhouse gas footprint is stable. In 2023, 12.2 tonnes of CO2 equivalents were emitted per inhabitant. In 2023, the Netherlands’ resource footprint fell by 11.7 percent compared to 2022. In 2023, the global consumption of biomass, fossil fuels, metals and non-metallic minerals for Dutch use was 28 tonnes per capita. In 2023, the Dutch resource footprint was relatively low within the EU (7th out of 27 countries). This is consistent with the observation in DG12 that, compared to the EU, domestic material consumption per capita is relatively low and resource productivity is relatively high. Comparisons with other EU countries are probably misleading, however. Like the Netherlands, the other EU countries are high-income nations that have larger environmental and climate footprints than most other countries in the world.