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After a decade of adoption and with only five years left to achieve the 17 UN-mandated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the world stands at a crossroads. On the one hand, progress has not been impressive enough to inspire confidence that the goals will be met by 2030. On the other, irrespective of SDG achievement, a larger question remains: what will the post-2030 scenario be? Since 2000, the world has committed to sets of development goals—first, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) until 2015, and then the SDGs. Will countries once again commit to a new set of goals and targets? Or will a different way emerge to carry forward the ambition of sustainable development?
At the UN Sustainable Development Summit in 2015, when the world adopted the 17 SDGs, comprising 169 targets, they broadly extended the ambitions set in 2000 under the eight MDGs. Eradication of poverty and hunger remains the prime goal, alongside others for wholesome human development in sustainable ways. But there is a difference between the two: MDGs were applicable only to developing countries, while SDGs are universal in scope. SDGs are the “first ever global strategy with quantifiable targets to be agreed upon by all UN member states and the world’s leading development institutions”.
Progress on SDG, however, has fallen far behind expectations. The UN’s latest “The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025” suggests that meeting the goals is nearly impossible. Some 35 per cent of the targets under 14 SDGs have either stalled or are moving backwards. Alarmingly, progress has stalled or deteriorated on more than half of the targets under five critical goals—zero hunger (SDG2), quality education (SDG4), clean water and sanitation (SDG6), decent work and economic growth (SDG8) and reduced inequalities (SDG10). By 2030, an estimated 8.9 per cent of the global population will still be living in extreme poverty; around the same percentage of the population will continue to face hunger. Only 18 per cent of the 169 SDG targets are on track to meet the 2030 deadline, while another 18 per cent have regressed below 2015 baseline levels.
As with MDGs, SDGs face a familiar set of challenges. MDGs were often viewed as an ambition imposed on poor and developing countries by developed ones, without adequate support. Many countries therefore created their own national goals, using MDGs as a guide for policies and resources. Although SDGs are universal in scope, their ambitions revived the fault line between developing and developed countries. Implementing and monitoring SDGs require US $17 trillion. Yet, as in the past, developed countries want developing and poor countries to bear their respective burdens despite limited resources. Still, SDGs have geared countries to mainstream development goals; shaped policies and programmes; and helped mobilise resources. In many countries, the goals have been localised to the lowest tier of government, such as panchayats in India. In that sense, SDGs have become a kind of global common minimum programme for development.
Hence the question: How will the world look like post 2030? Negotiations on this will begin in 2027. Already, there are discussions on whether the world needs a new approach to setting development goals. Will we abandon the goal-oriented global development agenda? Whatever the outcome, MDGs and SDGs have definitely forced countries to think and act on the development agenda for 25 years. “It took a long time to learn these goals, and I would like the framework to continue. But I would like the focus to be on the means of implementation,” says Jeffrey Sachs, president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. This seems to be the central lesson of both MDGs and SDGs and may shape the post-2030 development framework.
