Country Sustainability Rankings: A focus on France and Benin

DPAM has updated the country sustainability rankings, for emerging countries and OECD member states, drawn from DPAM’s proprietary country model. This edition of the reports focuses on two countries, France and Benin.

France

These rankings show that France’s performance has declined slightly from the last edition in May when it ranked seventeenth, now it is twentieth. The country performs relatively well in areas such as the environment, education, and democratic values but struggles with population, healthcare, and wealth distribution.

Lina Arrifi, Responsible Investment Specialist, comments: ‘In terms of environmental efforts, France has made strides with a 23% reduction in emissions since 2005 and significant investments in green energy, but it still faces challenges in meeting EU climate goals. The country is committed to biodiversity protection and renewable energy development, with ambitious targets for 2030 and 2050’.

Socially, while France provides universal healthcare and ranks high in maternal health, it faces challenges with housing affordability and homelessness. France is however taking measures to improve the affordability of housing and a French bill aimed at developing affordable housing was presented to the Council of Ministers in May 2024, with the goal of creating a supply shock to address the housing crisis. The country’s unemployment rates, particularly among youth, and the increasing number of retirees further impact economic stability and life satisfaction. Education remains a key area and efforts are being made to reduce inequality by improving early childhood education and supporting disadvantaged students.

Governance-wise, France scores high on rights and liberties but faces press freedom challenges due to high media concentration. Gender equality and immigrant integration remain areas of concern. The OECD data indicates that the employment rate for foreign-born individuals in France lags behind the average, particularly for non-EU immigrants, who often face language barriers, challenges in the recognition of foreign qualifications and discrimination.

Benin

In the newly updated ranking, Benin is positioned 53rd among emerging market countries, showing consistent improvement from its 66th place in 2020. While Benin's overall performance currently falls in the bottom quartile of emerging markets, the country is actively working to address its remaining challenges on the social topics.

Responsible Investment Specialist Julie Gossen comments: ‘In addition to an improving performance in DPAM’s proprietary ranking, Benin’s efforts to reduce poverty and inequality as well as its progress towards climate change have resulted in an improved performance for the country on the SDG Index, where the country moved from 153rd place in 2022 to 139th place in 2024. Moreover, the country’s significant efforts are also being recognised, as the 2023 edition of the Sustainable Development Report ranks Benin fifth globally, ahead of France, Norway or Denmark, on the SDG Effort Index, which measures government commitment and policy actions to achieve the SDGs’.

However, there is still room for improvement in a variety of areas including literacy, maternal mortality and health coverage. In 2021, Benin issued the first African euro-denominated SDG bond of which a majority of the proceeds have been allocated to projects targeting SDGs related to health, education, housing, and access to clean water, which are major challenges for the country.

Compared to peers, Benin clearly stands out in terms of biodiversity and energy efficiency. Benin’s protected areas cover the most important areas in need of protection and Benin’s energy mix consists largely of biofuels and biowaste.

The rankings and DPAM’s model

Since the 2008 sovereign debt crisis, countries are increasingly scrutinised from an ESG perspective and credit rating agencies now include climate change risk in their assessments. DPAM has been a pioneer in assessing country sustainability since the development of the model in 2007.

DPAM regards a sustainable country as one that is committed to fully ensuring the freedom of its citizens and which invests in their personal development and welfare. It respects the environment and is reliable in terms of international responsibilities and commitments. It ensures its future and invests in future generations.

While the design of DPAM’s model differs between OECD member states and emerging countries to reflect the different challenges faced, we strive to align models.

For both OECD and emerging countries the model is based on four key drivers of sustainability: transparency and democratic values, the environment, education and innovation and population, health and wealth distribution. Different criteria and indicators are chosen to represent these drivers.

Authoritarian and non-free countries are excluded from investment.

The model is dynamic and reviewed twice annually.

DPAM is a sustainable actor, investor and partner and we use these rankings to inform our investment approach. We engage with countries on how and why we develop the rankings.

Please take a look at the Sustainability ranking for Emerging Countries and the Sustainability ranking for OECD countries to find out more.