Comparative Sustainability Under the 5P Framework: Construction and Evaluation of a Composite Index for Colombia, Mexico, and Economies and Territories of the Middle East and Its Regional Environment, 2020–2023

This article constructs and evaluates a composite sustainability index aligned with the 5P framework (People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnerships) to compare Colombia and Mexico with 14 countries and territories from the Middle East and its regional environment, using information available for 2020–2023. The design is quantitative, documentary, and comparative and integrates eight international indicators. The main specification is estimated for 16 comparable cases after verifying coverage, harmonizing directionality, applying a fixed bilateral p5–p95 treatment of extreme values, and normalizing the variables on a scale from 0 to 100. Uniform weighting by dimension constitutes the baseline scenario, while an expanded 32-case reference database is used for exploratory KMO and Bartlett diagnostics and to estimate alternative indicator weights through principal component analysis. The countries with the best aggregate performance are Colombia, Israel, Mexico, and Kuwait, although their results are not homogeneous across the evaluated dimensions. Spearman and Kendall coefficients, deterministic weighting scenarios, a direct indicator-level PCA composite, z-score standardization, geometric-mean aggregation, leave-one-dimension-out tests, reference-base re-estimation, constrained weights, and Monte Carlo simulations indicate high overall concordance under moderate perturbations but also reveal sensitivity in some individual positions when assumptions are relaxed. Comparison with the SDG Index yields moderate convergence (Spearman ρ = 0.503; Kendall τ = 0.367; Pearson r = 0.554), with wide confidence intervals due to the small sample. Under these conditions, the index is useful for identifying performance groups, characterizing national profiles, and detecting gaps between countries, but its results should be interpreted as an analytical approximation rather than as a definitive sustainability hierarchy.