Global Responsibility & the Spillover Score
A country can perform well internally while creating negative impacts elsewhere. A high score on health, education, or income at home says nothing about what a country’s trade, tax system, or finance sector does to people and ecosystems beyond its own borders.
That is the question Global Responsibility exists to answer. Where our Global Development pages track how a country is doing, Global Responsibility tracks what a country’s success is costing others — and what it is doing, diplomatically and financially, to help carry a shared global burden.
Most platforms measuring “sustainability” stop at the border. This page is where RYB doesn’t.
Madrid, Spain (España) | photo Daiana Seeck
Global Development
What is the Spillover Score?
The Spillover Score — formally the International Spillover Index — is published annually by the Sustainable Development Report (the research initiative behind the SDG Index). It measures the cross-border effects of a country’s economic activity: the environmental, social, financial, and security consequences that fall on other countries, rather than on the country generating them.
A handful of examples make the idea concrete:
- The Netherlands ranks strongly on domestic SDG indicators, yet falls to among the lowest positions on spillovers — driven by red scores on plastic waste exports and arms exports.
- Finland tops the overall SDG Index, but drops to roughly 144th place worldwide once its spillover footprint is counted.
These aren’t contradictions in the data. They’re the entire point of measuring spillovers separately: doing well and doing right by the rest of the world are two different achievements, and a country can score highly on one while scoring poorly on the other.
Every country’s own Spillover Score, and its trend over time, lives on its Global Development page alongside its SDG scores. This page is the global companion to that number: it explains what the score is actually built from, indicator by indicator.
The Spillover Score is built from thirteen indicators grouped into three dimensions. Below, we introduce each one, linking to RYB’s own reporting, where we have it, and to the original source data, where we don’t yet.
Global Responsibility Rankings
Environmental and social impacts embodied in trade
What a country consumes and exports doesn’t stop at its border — the environmental cost of it does.
- Imported deforestation — Land cleared abroad, elsewhere in the world, to grow the goods a country imports. Tracked by the Global Sustainable Consumption and Investment (GSCI) initiative.
- Plastic waste exports — Plastic waste shipped abroad for disposal or recycling, often to countries with weaker environmental oversight. Tracked in the UN Comtrade database.
- GHG emissions embodied in imports — Greenhouse gases emitted in other countries to manufacture the goods a country consumes. Based on research by Lenzen et al., hosted on the UNEP Life Cycle Initiative’s SCP Hotspots Analysis Tool.
- Scarce water consumption embodied in imports — Water drawn from water-stressed regions abroad to produce imported goods. See the UNEP SCP Hotspots Analysis Tool.
- Air pollution associated with imports — Health-damaging air pollution generated elsewhere by production for export. See the UNEP SCP Hotspots Analysis Tool.
- Nitrogen emissions associated with imports — Nitrogen pollution, largely agricultural, generated abroad to supply imported food and goods. See the UNEP SCP Hotspots Analysis Tool.
- Marine biodiversity threats embodied in imports — Pressure on ocean ecosystems elsewhere caused by imported seafood and marine products. Based on research published in Nature.
- Exports of hazardous pesticides — Pesticides banned or restricted at home but still manufactured for export and used abroad. See the FAO for the underlying data.
- Exports of major conventional weapons — The volume of tanks, aircraft, and other major arms a country sends abroad, tracked by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Arms Transfers Database since 1950.
Economy and finance
Money moves faster than accountability. This dimension tracks whether a country’s financial system helps other nations raise the revenue they’re owed, or helps drain it away.- Corporate Tax Haven Score — How much a jurisdiction’s laws help multinational corporations underpay tax owed elsewhere, published by the Tax Justice Network. (See our Tax Havens reporting.)
- Shifted profits of multinationals — The scale of corporate profits moved on paper into low-tax jurisdictions, away from the countries where the underlying economic activity actually happens. Tracked by the Atlas of the Offshore World.
- Official Development Assistance (ODA) — Concessional public finance a country provides to support development elsewhere, as defined by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. (See our ODA reporting.)
UN-based multilateralism, peace and security
Responsibility isn’t only economic. This dimension asks whether a country backs the international institutions built to keep the peace, or works around them.- Index of support to UN-based multilateralism — How consistently a country ratifies, funds, and votes in line with UN treaties and institutions, versus acting outside them. Explore the UN-Mi Dashboard from the SDG Transformation Center.
- Exports of major conventional weapons — Arms exports appear here too: the same flow of weapons that carries an environmental and social footprint also carries security implications for the regions receiving them. See the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database.
2026 Spillover Score by Country
Countries are ranked by their spillover score. Each country’s actions can have positive or negative effects on other countries’ ability to achieve the SDGs. A higher score means a country causes more positive and fewer negative spillover effects; a lower score means its footprint on the rest of the world is heavier.
| Rank | Country | Spillover Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Trinidad and Tobago | 97.84 |
| 2 | Sierra Leone | 97.68 |
| 3 | Zambia | 97.40 |
| 4 | Maldives | 97.39 |
| 5 | Mozambique | 97.21 |
| 6 | Brazil | 96.59 |
| 7 | Malawi | 96.46 |
| 8 | Madagascar | 96.36 |
| 9 | Nigeria | 96.26 |
| 10 | Uganda | 96.26 |
| 11 | Senegal | 96.19 |
| 12 | Philippines | 96.07 |
| 13 | India | 95.74 |
| 14 | Bangladesh | 95.66 |
| 15 | Mali | 95.66 |
| 16 | Ethiopia | 95.65 |
| 17 | Suriname | 95.56 |
| 18 | Ecuador | 95.50 |
| 19 | Sri Lanka | 95.41 |
| 20 | Togo | 95.41 |
| 21 | Colombia | 95.33 |
| 22 | Cambodia | 95.31 |
| 23 | Cabo Verde | 95.23 |
| 24 | Benin | 95.09 |
| 25 | Cuba | 95.08 |
| 26 | Fiji | 94.95 |
| 27 | Argentina | 94.91 |
| 28 | Haiti | 94.90 |
| 29 | Angola | 94.90 |
| 30 | Burkina Faso | 94.85 |
| 31 | Guinea | 94.82 |
| 32 | Indonesia | 94.81 |
| 33 | Bolivia | 94.74 |
| 34 | Zimbabwe | 94.65 |
| 35 | Lesotho | 94.61 |
| 36 | Niger | 94.61 |
| 37 | Tanzania | 94.51 |
| 38 | Peru | 94.48 |
| 39 | Cameroon | 94.44 |
| 40 | Nepal | 94.42 |
| 41 | Gambia, The | 94.38 |
| 42 | Tajikistan | 94.29 |
| 43 | Pakistan | 94.24 |
| 44 | Morocco | 94.21 |
| 45 | Papua New Guinea | 94.18 |
| 46 | Paraguay | 93.92 |
| 47 | Myanmar | 93.88 |
| 48 | Algeria | 93.88 |
| 49 | Kyrgyz Republic | 93.78 |
| 50 | Congo, Dem. Rep. | 93.71 |
| 51 | Ghana | 93.64 |
| 52 | Central African Republic | 93.60 |
| 53 | Uzbekistan | 93.54 |
| 54 | Burundi | 93.50 |
| 55 | Nicaragua | 93.37 |
| 56 | Chad | 93.20 |
| 57 | Mongolia | 93.06 |
| 58 | Uruguay | 93.06 |
| 59 | Egypt, Arab Rep. | 93.04 |
| 60 | Rwanda | 93.00 |
| 61 | Belize | 92.90 |
| 62 | Honduras | 92.84 |
| 63 | Eritrea | 92.78 |
| 64 | Cote d’Ivoire | 92.73 |
| 65 | Yemen, Rep. | 92.70 |
| 66 | Mauritania | 92.68 |
| 67 | Gabon | 92.62 |
| 68 | Namibia | 92.50 |
| 69 | Sudan | 92.26 |
| 70 | Kenya | 92.03 |
| 71 | Timor-Leste | 91.94 |
| 72 | Barbados | 91.80 |
| 73 | Moldova | 91.61 |
| 74 | Dominican Republic | 91.55 |
| 75 | Azerbaijan | 91.34 |
| 76 | Liberia | 91.26 |
| 77 | Tunisia | 91.25 |
| 78 | Ukraine | 91.20 |
| 79 | Armenia | 91.01 |
| 80 | Bosnia and Herzegovina | 90.93 |
| 81 | Kazakhstan | 90.92 |
| 82 | South Africa | 90.63 |
| 83 | Syrian Arab Republic | 90.62 |
| 84 | Comoros | 90.60 |
| 85 | Lao PDR | 90.56 |
| 86 | Sao Tome and Principe | 90.14 |
| 87 | Afghanistan | 89.90 |
| 88 | Thailand | 89.69 |
| 89 | Mexico | 89.49 |
| 90 | Albania | 89.45 |
| 91 | Vietnam | 89.04 |
| 92 | Guinea-Bissau | 89.01 |
| 93 | China | 88.92 |
| 94 | Venezuela, RB | 88.81 |
| 95 | South Sudan | 88.54 |
| 96 | Congo, Rep. | 88.39 |
| 97 | Belarus | 88.14 |
| 98 | Jordan | 88.14 |
| 99 | Georgia | 87.89 |
| 100 | Somalia | 87.87 |
| 101 | Botswana | 87.34 |
| 102 | Turkiye | 87.32 |
| 103 | Eswatini | 87.22 |
| 104 | Iraq | 87.03 |
| 105 | Chile | 86.89 |
| 106 | Guatemala | 86.38 |
| 107 | Iran, Islamic Rep. | 86.32 |
| 108 | Jamaica | 86.16 |
| 109 | Malaysia | 86.16 |
| 110 | Serbia | 85.63 |
| 111 | Russian Federation | 84.96 |
| 112 | Montenegro | 84.74 |
| 113 | Turkmenistan | 84.45 |
| 114 | North Macedonia | 82.96 |
| 115 | Costa Rica | 82.39 |
| 116 | El Salvador | 81.92 |
| 117 | Bhutan | 81.18 |
| 118 | Guyana | 81.10 |
| 119 | Djibouti | 80.30 |
| 120 | Oman | 77.91 |
| 121 | Bulgaria | 77.08 |
| 122 | Romania | 76.04 |
| 123 | Saudi Arabia | 75.93 |
| 124 | Mauritius | 75.15 |
| 125 | Hungary | 75.05 |
| 126 | Bahrain | 74.97 |
| 127 | Poland | 74.38 |
| 128 | Japan | 73.53 |
| 129 | Lebanon | 73.06 |
| 130 | Bahamas, The | 71.78 |
| 131 | Croatia | 71.75 |
| 132 | Brunei Darussalam | 71.16 |
| 133 | Australia | 69.74 |
| 134 | Portugal | 69.40 |
| 135 | Italy | 69.08 |
| 136 | Kuwait | 68.92 |
| 137 | Greece | 68.72 |
| 138 | Spain | 68.36 |
| 139 | Canada | 68.36 |
| 140 | Korea, Rep. | 68.11 |
| 141 | Malta | 67.77 |
| 142 | Panama | 67.62 |
| 143 | Slovak Republic | 67.47 |
| 144 | Finland | 66.88 |
| 145 | New Zealand | 65.50 |
| 146 | Czechia | 65.06 |
| 147 | Slovenia | 64.96 |
| 148 | Austria | 63.60 |
| 149 | Germany | 63.27 |
| 150 | Sweden | 62.45 |
| 151 | Latvia | 62.33 |
| 152 | France | 61.87 |
| 153 | United Arab Emirates | 61.54 |
| 154 | United States | 61.31 |
| 155 | Lithuania | 59.95 |
| 156 | Iceland | 59.11 |
| 157 | Denmark | 58.77 |
| 158 | Israel | 58.62 |
| 159 | Norway | 56.99 |
| 160 | Estonia | 55.14 |
| 161 | United Kingdom | 54.91 |
| 162 | Qatar | 53.84 |
| 163 | Cyprus | 52.99 |
| 164 | Belgium | 51.28 |
| 165 | Ireland | 47.91 |
| 166 | Switzerland | 42.08 |
| 167 | Netherlands | 41.22 |
| 168 | Luxembourg | 40.53 |
| 169 | Singapore | 28.99 |
| – | Andorra | – |
| – | Antigua and Barbuda | – |
| – | Dominica | – |
| – | Equatorial Guinea | – |
| – | Grenada | – |
| – | Kiribati | – |
| – | Korea, Dem. Rep. | – |
| – | Libya | – |
| – | Liechtenstein | – |
| – | Marshall Islands | – |
| – | Micronesia, Fed. Sts. | – |
| – | Monaco | – |
| – | Nauru | – |
| – | Palau | – |
| – | Samoa | – |
| – | San Marino | – |
| – | Seychelles | – |
| – | Solomon Islands | – |
| – | St. Kitts and Nevis | – |
| – | St. Lucia | – |
| – | St. Vincent and the Grenadines | – |
| – | Tonga | – |
| – | Tuvalu | – |
| – | Vanuatu | – |
Why this matters
Most “sustainability” platforms stop at the border: they show how a country is doing, not what it’s doing to everyone else. RYB believes citizens deserve both halves of the picture. Global Responsibility is where we hold governments accountable for the second half — clearly, with sources, and with room to keep improving as the data does.
This page is a working draft and will be corrected and expanded as new child pages are built.