Land 2022, 11, 1963. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11111963 www.mdpi.com/journal/land Article Impact of Implementing Constructed Wetlands on Supporting the Sustainable Development Goals Marwa M. Waly 1, *, Slobodan B. Mickovski 2 , Craig Thomson 2 and Kingsley Amadi 1 1 College of Engineering, Australian University, Kuwait City 13015, Kuwait 2 School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow G4 0BA, UK * Correspondence: m.waly@au.edu.kw Abstract: The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals’ (UN SDGs) action call promotes worldwide social, environmental, and economic prosperity. Each country developed a local plan to achieve the SDGs’ objectives and targets. The UN presents an annual global SDG progress re- port, based on an international indicator framework and regional available data. Wetland ecosys- tems contribute to the SDGs; however, more research is required to evaluate wetlands’ impact on sustainable development. This study investigates how implementing constructed wetlands (CW) at a local scale can contribute to achieving and promoting the SDGs with application in Kuwait. A preliminary design of a constructed wetlands wastewater treatment system is proposed alongside a local scoring framework based on regional information to assess the future projection of the SDGs in Kuwait. Overall, CW implementation plans contributed positively to improving the level of achievement of SDG 2: Zero Hunger, SDG 3: Good Health, SDG 6: Clean Water, SDG 7: Afford- able and Clean Energy, and SDG 15: Life on Land. The analysis also highlights synergies that need to be considered for integrated environmental governance and enhanced policy coherence for Kuwait’s sustainable development management. Keywords: sustainable development goals; circular economy; nature-based solutions; constructed wetlands; produced water treatment 1. Introduction The sustainable use of water and wetlands, by protecting the services they provide, is critical to enable society to achieve sustainable social and economic development, adapt to climate change, and improve social cohesion and economic stability [1,2]. Wet- lands have great potential to be used as nature-based solutions (NBS) due to their vital physical and social components of a country’s natural capital, as well as providers of ecosystem services to local and national communities [3–6]. The development of con- structed wetlands (CWs) has a variety of advantages, including water treatment, reduc- ing air pollution, carbon sequestration, recreation, and biodiversity support [7,8]. How- ever, despite all their promising benefits, there are limited CW applications, especially in the Middle East and Gulf countries. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) is the national company bringing together all of the state-owned elements of the Kuwait oil sector under one corporate umbrella. KPC activities are focused on petroleum exploration, production, petrochemicals, refining, marketing, and transportation. Kuwaiti oilfields produce about 7% of the world’s total crude oil [9]. Produced water is a mixture of injected water, formation water, dissolved hydrocarbons, and treating chemicals, and the amount of produced water production increases as the oilfield ages [10–12]. Kuwait oilfields consist approximately of 40% wa- ter with a steady increase in water production due to maturing oilfields, which gener- ates the problem of dealing with the increased rate of produced water. Oilfields are re- Citation: Waly, M.M.; Mickovski, S.B.; Thomson, C.; Amadi, K. Impact of Implementing Constructed Wetlands on Supporting the Sustainable Development Goals. Land 2022, 11, 1963. https://doi.org/10.3390/ land11111963 Academic Editor: Richard C. Smardon and Krish Jayachandran Received: 4 October 2022 Accepted: 28 October 2022 Published: 2 November 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neu- tral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and insti- tutional affiliations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/license s/by/4.0/).