Rachana Jaiswal
Shashank Gupta
Abstract
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations aim to solve global challenges such as poverty, hunger, inequality, climate change, etc. Blockchain technology has gained increasing attention as a potential solution for achieving these goals. This paper reviews the literature on how blockchain is helping to achieve the SDGs. Based on an analysis of 251 studies from 2016 to 2023; results indicate that USA, UK, China, and India are the most productive countries in blockchain research related to SDG goals. Furthermore, blockchain has contributed significantly to fostering SDG goals 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 17, while it has not been able to expedite the achievement of goals 4, 5, 6, and 16. This study finds multiple roadblocks to blockchain technology for SDG goals, such as regulations, interoperability, the energy cost of the technology, needing to learn how to govern it, technical and scalability problems, etc. This study outlines two future research agendas, the first being to achieve goals 4, 5, 6, and 16. The second is to explore the potential of blockchain to enable more efficient data collection, storage, and sharing, as well as its potential to help more efficient fundraising and resource allocation.
Keywords- Blockchain, Sustainable Development Goals, Sustainability; digitalization, RStudio