From Introduction:

In this book we wanted the authors to present their understanding of their respective countries’ sustainability concepts without referring to a given and commonly accepted concept of sustainability a priori. (...) Unfortunately, these ‘degrees of freedom’ in describing different approaches in different Nordic countries may lead to the following situation: the concepts described by the respective authors might be so different that a common denominator, a comparison or even some kind of ranking between the countries becomes difficult, if not outright impossible. Hence the need for a safety is called for. This safety could be that a commonly known and accepted sustainability concept is introduced, against which the concepts of the Nordic countries are compared against ex post. (...) This commonly known and accepted sustainability concept will be the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The rationale for this choice as well as the introduction of the concept, including criticism to it, will be described in section two of this chapter. Section three will then look into an already existing comparison of sustainability performance of the Nordic countries within this framework of SDGs. The last paragraph of the chapter will then explain the above mentioned indirect approach of comparison.