Data Update: This release updates 42 indicators across the ESG Data Portal, including 37 core indicators and one country key statistic. Two updates stand out: the six Worldwide Governance Indicators have been refreshed under a revised methodology, and the Human Capital Index has been replaced by the broader Human Capital Index Plus as a country key statistic. Other updates extend time series with more recent years, improving the timeliness of data available across the Portal's country profiles, indicator views, tools, and downloads. Curious about the details? Read on to discover what's new in this data story.

A broad refresh across key development indicators

This update strengthens coverage across nature conservation, climate adaptation, jobs, social resilience, and institutions indicators. On nature conservation and climate adaptation, nine indicators have been updated, including measures of energy use , fossil fuel consumption , protected areas , tree cover loss , and temperature-related climate indicators such as cooling degree days , heating degree days , and heat index .

On jobs and social resilience, 17 indicators were updated, covering education, health, poverty, inequality, labor markets, and demographics. These include school enrollment , government expenditure on education , child mortality and life expectancy , poverty headcount ratios , the Gini Index , and fertility .

The update also strengthens coverage of institutions and public-sector performance, with 11 indicators refreshed. These include research and development expenditure , internet use , women’s representation in national parliaments , net migration , and the six Worldwide Governance Indicators.

Skills, jobs, and inclusion: tracking human capital in practice

A notable part of this release is the update of many indicators linked to skills, jobs, and labor market participation, including the most recent International Labour Organization (ILO) Modelled Estimates. These indicators help users assess not only whether people are in school or work, but also how education, connectivity, and labor markets shape long-term development outcomes. Updated skills-related indicators include:

• School enrollment, primary
• Primary completion rate, total
• Individuals using the Internet
• Wage and salaried workers, total and female
• Labor force participation rate, total
• Ratio of female to male labor force participation
• Share of youth not in education, employment or training, total and female
• Unemployment, total

The Portal’s Feasibility and Ambitiousness (FAB) tool lets users explore target setting for indicators such as Wage and salaried workers. It compares potential targets across two dimensions: feasibility, based on precedents achieved by peer countries, and ambitiousness, measured against business-as-usual projections. This supports users in identifying targets that are both grounded in historical evidence and meaningfully more ambitious than current trends.

This update also replaces the Human Capital Index with the Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) as a country key statistic. While the original HCI focused on health and education outcomes, the HCI+ broadens the measure to include job-relevant dimensions, including employment and on-the-job learning. It measures the expected future productivity of a child born today relative to a benchmark of full health, complete education, and full wage employment.

Where the original index combined five indicators on a 0–1 scale, the HCI+ brings together eleven outcomes into a 0–325 score, with data from 2010 to 2025 in five-year intervals. Point differences in the HCI+ can be read as approximate percentage differences in expected lifetime earnings: for example, a 10-point increase corresponds roughly to a 10 percent increase in expected adult wages and, over the long run, GDP per worker. For more information, visit the Human Capital Data Portal .

Land cover transitions tool: now covering data through 2022

The Land Cover Transitions tool has been updated to European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI) Land Cover version 2.0.7 , extending coverage of land cover transitions through 2022. The tool visualizes country-level transitions between 1992 and 2022, aggregated to IPCC land cover classes, making it straightforward to track how land use has changed over time between forests, croplands, settlements, and other land cover classes. For users who need greater granularity, the full set of 37 underlying land cover type transitions is available for download directly from the tool page .

 

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Updated governance indicators with a revised methodology

This release incorporates the 2025 methodology revision of the six Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI): Voice and Accountability, Political Stability, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. The WGI provides a comparable view of governance quality across more than 200 economies, drawing on perception data from household surveys, firm surveys, and expert assessments.

The 2025 methodology revision introduced several changes, including a stricter protocol for screening data sources, the addition of new qualified sources, refinements to how indicators are mapped across the six governance dimensions, and revisions to the aggregation model. Historical estimates have been recalculated back to 1996 under the revised methodology, so the full time series remains consistent. For a full description of these changes, see the WGI documentation .

All data from the Sovereign ESG Data Portal is available for download . Want to stay informed? Sign up for the newsletter to be notified about future data updates and releases.