Goalpost bad, goals worse

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a missed opportunity and are actively dangerous: they lock in the global development agenda till 2030 around a failing economic model that requires urgent and deep structural changes, and kick the hard challenge of real transformation down the road for the next generation - by which time it may be too late. Here are five reasons to think twice about the SDGs:

The contradiction of growth: The SDGs offer superficial responses such as reduce food waste, make resource use more efficient and 'encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices'.

Growth does not reduce poverty: We need to abandon GDP in favour of a saner measure of human progress - that does not rely on endlessly increasing extraction and consumption.


Inequality gets ignored: This is yet another monumental global challenge that has been handed down to the next generation.

Big drivers of poverty are left unaddressed: The SDGs are eerily silent on greater regulation of financial markets and big banks.

The mis-measurement of poverty: The SDGs stick with the discredited $1.25-per-day measure. If we measure poverty by the more accurate $5-per-day line, the total poverty headcount rises to 4.3 billion people, more than 60% of humanity.

The SDGs fail us. As Arundhati Roy put it, 'we are not fighting to tinker with reforming a system that needs to be replaced'.

From 'Five Reasons to Think Twice About the UN's Sustainable Development Goals', The London School of Economics and Political Science