ESG Country Ratings for Investors

Sovereign ESG data for institutional investors, asset managers, and sovereign bond teams

The Challenge

ESG integration is now standard for corporate portfolios, but the sovereign side lags. Country ESG inputs are often built from opinion surveys, arrive with a one- or two-year lag, cover only the countries that are easy to measure, and mix methodology changes into the time series. For a team that needs to justify a sovereign bond tilt or report ESG integration to asset owners, that is a weak foundation.

The practical requirements are simple to state and hard to source: a country ESG signal that covers the whole investable universe, is built from hard data rather than perception, is comparable across income levels, has enough history to backtest, and updates fast enough to catch deterioration before it is priced in.

SolAbility has been building exactly that dataset since 2012, and pairs it with a daily media-sentiment layer so structural scores and current events can be read together.

How SolAbility Solves It

Country ESG Ratings & Rankings

The Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index scores 192 countries on more than 250 hard indicators across six dimensions, published annually since 2012. The full rankings are free to explore, and the underlying scores give you a like-for-like ESG signal for every sovereign issuer in your universe, developed and emerging alike.

Sovereign Bond & Risk Analytics

The GSCI Portal provides interactive access to the complete dataset: time series from 2000, outlooks to 2035, dimension and indicator drill-downs, and peer comparisons. Analysts use it to stress-test country allocations, document ESG integration for mandates, and identify sovereigns whose fundamentals are improving or deteriorating ahead of ratings actions.

Event & Sentiment Overlay

Annual statistics lag reality. The Global Sentiment Monitor adds a daily news-sentiment layer across 193 countries, scored from credible media in 110 languages. It surfaces political, economic, and ESG developments as they break, giving portfolio teams an early-warning complement to the structural GSCI signal.

Data Licensing & API Access

Both datasets are available for licensing: bulk data feeds, API access, and custom extracts for integration into internal risk systems, quant models, and reporting pipelines. Contact us to discuss coverage, delivery formats, and terms for your use case.

4
national governments use the GSCI
750+
academic publications cite the index
2012
publishing the GSCI annually since
FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

About sovereign ESG data and ESG integration for sovereign bonds

ESG country ratings score sovereign issuers on environmental, social, and governance performance, the same way corporate ESG ratings score companies. The Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index provides this signal for 192 countries, built from more than 250 quantitative indicators rather than surveys or analyst opinion. Investors use the ratings and their underlying dimension scores as an independent ESG input for sovereign bond analysis, country allocation, and mandate reporting.
Sovereign ESG data measures countries rather than companies: natural capital, resource efficiency, social cohesion, intellectual capital, economic sustainability, and governance. Coverage and comparability matter more at the sovereign level because a portfolio can hold debt from dozens of countries with very different disclosure regimes. The GSCI solves this by using the same quantitative indicator set for all 192 countries, so scores are directly comparable across developed and emerging markets.
Most investors integrate a country ESG score alongside credit ratings and macro indicators, either as a screen, a tilt, or an input to internal sovereign risk models. The GSCI supports this with overall and dimension-level scores, historical series from 2000, and projections to 2035, so the signal can be backtested and used forward-looking. The Global Sentiment Monitor adds a daily news-based overlay that reacts to events long before annual statistics do.
Yes. The GSCI is calculated exclusively from more than 250 quantitative indicators drawn from recognized international sources such as the World Bank and UN agencies. No opinion surveys or analyst judgments enter the score, which removes the perception bias that affects survey-based country rankings and makes the index reproducible and auditable.

Put Sovereign ESG Data to Work

Explore the full dataset in the GSCI Portal, or talk to us about data licensing and API access for your investment process.

Open the GSCI PortalTalk to Us