Despite some clear positives, the draft text of the Sustainable Development Goals does not fulfill its self-proclaimed purpose of inspiring and guiding a concerted international effort to eradicate severe poverty everywhere in all of its forms. We offer some critical comments on the proposed agreement and suggest 10 ways to embolden the goals and amplify their appeal and moral power. While it may well be true that the world's poor are better off today than their predecessors were decades or centuries (...) ago, to judge whether this is moral progress, we must bring into view what was possible then and what is possible now. We may well find that there have never been so many people avoidably subjected to life-threatening deprivations as there are today, and if this is the case, we should insist that our governments end this oppression immediately through appropriate institutional reforms to be prominently outlined in their post-2015 agenda. (shrink)

The debate about the Sustainable Development Goals, which are to replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015, is moving very quickly. Weighing in on this debate, we argue that if the SDGs are to be as effective as they can realistically be, concrete responsibilities must be assigned to specific competent actors, measurement methods involved in development targets must not be allowed to be changed midway, and the tracking of progress must be left to independent experts. New development (...) goals should aim for inequality reduction, a more comprehensive view of poverty, and, most importantly, systemic reforms of global institutions. The world will not make decent progress against poverty until the most powerful agents accept real action commitments, not only in the marginal area of development assistance, but in all their policy and institutional design decisions, at both the domestic and especially the supranational level. We end with eight examples of institutional reform goals – ranging from deterring trade barriers to mitigating the effects of lost corporate tax revenues on poor populations – that should be included in the new list. (shrink)

The debate about the Sustainable Development Goals, which are to replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015, is moving very quickly. Weighing in on this debate, we argue that if the SDGs are to be as effective as they can realistically be, concrete responsibilities must be assigned to specific competent actors, measurement methods involved in development targets must not be allowed to be changed midway, and the tracking of progress must be left to independent experts. New development (...) goals should aim for inequality reduction, a more comprehensive view of poverty, and, most importantly, systemic reforms of global institutions. The world will not make decent progress against poverty until the most powerful agents accept real action commitments, not only in the marginal area of development assistance, but in all their policy and institutional design decisions, at both the domestic and especially the supranational level. We end with eight examples of institutional reform goals – ranging from deterring trade barriers to mitigating the effects of lost corporate tax revenues on poor populations – that should be included in the new list. (shrink)

The debate about the Sustainable Development Goals, which are to replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015, is moving very quickly. Weighing in on this debate, we argue that if the SDGs are to be as effective as they can realistically be, concrete responsibilities must be assigned to specific competent actors, measurement methods involved in development targets must not be allowed to be changed midway, and the tracking of progress must be left to independent experts. New development (...) goals should aim for inequality reduction, a more comprehensive view of poverty, and, most importantly, systemic reforms of global institutions. The world will not make decent progress against poverty until the most powerful agents accept real action commitments, not only in the marginal area of development assistance, but in all their policy and institutional design decisions, at both the domestic and especially the supranational level. We end with eight examples of institutional reform goals – ranging from deterring trade barriers to mitigating the effects of lost corporate tax revenues on poor populations – that should be included in the new list. (shrink)

Though they improve upon the millennium development goals (MDGs), the new sustainable development goals (SDGs) have important draw-backs. First, in assessing present deprivations, they draw our attention to historical comparisons. Yet, that things were even worse before is morally irrelevant; what matters is how much better things could be now. Second, like the MDGs, the SDGs fail to specify any division of labor to ensure success. Therefore, should progress stall, we won’t know who is responsible to get us back on (...) track. We won’t “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” without an agreement on who is to do what. Third, although the SDGs contain a goal calling for inequality reduction, this goal is specified so that the reduction need not start till 2029. Such delay would cause enormous death and suffering among the poor and enable the rich to shape national and supranational design in their own favor. (shrink)

For the new development goals to be effective, it is necessary for institutional reforms to be implemented, as well as for a commitment to be made specifying who is in charge of what in order to achieve the objectives.