HOMI KHARAS and JOHN W. MCARTHUR
Any reader of the daily news could be forgiven for thinking the world is in decline. Amid so many conflicts and societal strains, the United Nations regularly warns that only 17% of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the economic, social, and environmental targets all countries set in 2015 – are on track to be met by 2030, as agreed, leading many to wonder whether such goals still serve any purpose. But rather than succumb to pessimism, we would do better to examine where the world is making sound progress, where it seems stuck on autopilot, and where things are indeed moving backwards or approaching a tipping point for the worse.
This is what we set out to do in a recent study, with our colleague Odera Onyechi, estimating country-level progress around the world. One of our topline findings is that “business as usual” aptly describes many trends since 2015. Yet the SDGs must be evaluated remembering the nature of their ambition. They were not established merely to perpetuate longer-term patterns of progress toward more prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable societies. Instead, they sought to hasten such progress dramatically. SDG 5, for example, does not just call for a secular continuation of the centuries-long journey toward gender equality. It calls for rapid, transformational change to achieve full gender equality by 2030 – and rightly so.
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