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We need to get better at doing better on the SDGs

A man stands behind a podium on a stage surrounded by seats
John W. McArthur delivers remarks at the SDG Moment during the 2024 meetings of the U.N. General Assembly. Photo by Junjie Ren

At the 2024 meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, John W. McArthur—director and senior fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at Brookings—presented the global “stocktake” during the high-level SDG Moment. Describing humanity’s mixed scorecard toward the 2030 targets, McArthur distilled the challenge as, “We still need to get better at getting better, together.” Read his full remarks below or watch the video.


JOHN W. MCARTHUR: How is the world doing on the Sustainable Development Goals? Many people ask me this question with a tone of worry. There is so much bad news every day—so much suffering and so many rightful causes for concern—it can be hard to see sunlight in what feels like a cloudy moment of history. After a pandemic, so much violent conflict, so many economic strains, one can be forgiven for thinking things are only getting worse, every year.

Which is why it’s so remarkable that it’s not true.

Consider the universal priority of child survival. The latest official numbers tell us that over the seven years from 2015 to 2022, child mortality dropped by more than 20%. In human terms, more than a million extra children are surviving to celebrate their fifth birthday every year, thanks to global progress. Just think of how many more millions of family members get to share in the joy of those birthdays.

In fact, despite all that the world has been through—humanity has achieved many important gains since 2015. On marine protected areas. Women in parliaments. Access to water, sanitation, and the internet. In a recent study, my colleagues Homi Kharas, Odera Onyechi, and I looked at 24 SDG-relevant indicators around the world, and found humanity is doing better on 18 of them than it was back in 2015.

This is not to obscure the pains of backsliding where it exists—especially hunger and food insecurity, often linked to fragile political environments—nor the horrendous health and educational costs of the pandemic. But it is to clarify that one needs to look issue by issue, country by country, to understand how it’s actually going on the SDGs.

Of course, the SDGs call for more than just improvements.

Consider SDG 5 for gender equality. It doesn’t simply call for ongoing incremental gains on a centuries-long arc toward equality. It calls for rapid, transformational change to achieve full gender equality by 2030—and rightly so. No person should have to wait an extra day to enjoy equal rights anywhere. In this spirit, the SDGs are a call for justice as much as anything else.

No person should have to wait an extra day to enjoy equal rights anywhere.

It’s important to keep in mind the depth of these ambitions when asking whether the 2030 targets are on track for success. That isn’t a question of whether the world is getting better. It’s a much bolder question of whether the world is getting better fast enough to achieve what is right—with right jointly agreed by all 193 UN member states.

It’s an entirely different question to ask whether trend lines have changed since the SDGs were established. Here the results are more muted. In our study, only three indicators show the best news of clear accelerations in progress: HIV incidence, antiretroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS, and access to electricity. The AIDS treatment results include extraordinary breakthroughs in countries like Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. For an issue that had no systematic global effort a little more than 20 years ago, this represents an SDG success worth celebrating. It should also prompt us all to ask why—why have these efforts continued to succeed when other issues have not?

In a balanced scorecard for the world, we saw no change in underlying trends for eight indicators, and for nine we saw signs of a slowdown—including in the fight to end extreme poverty. Importantly, the slowdown on extreme poverty pre-dates global challenges of the 2020s. Poverty remains concentrated in countries that were already struggling to cut it.

… But for some SDGs, another question matters much more: Are we approaching a tipping point beyond which there is no imminent return? For many questions of planetary health, annual rates of change are less crucial than whether we are about to tip into catastrophe. If stuck in a car careening toward a cliff, one shouldn’t be obsessing over the number on the speedometer. The real question is whether we hit the breaks in time.

This is not to minimize progress in nature protection or climate action. And nature’s tipping points can’t be predicted with precision. But a growing body of science suggests we may already be passing several of Earth’s planetary boundaries. A lack of protected areas may risk the imminent collapse of many species. And the world is nowhere close to reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to meet its 1.5-degree Celsius warming target.

We need to get better at doing better.

So even though humanity has for the most part been doing better since 2015, it’s not without exceptions and not better enough—not enough of what’s needed, or enough to inspire more widespread hope.

We need to get better at doing better.

We need to get better at learning from successes like HIV/AIDS that not long ago were considered too hard to try solving. We need better approaches to mobilizing new energy technologies that create unprecedented opportunities for economic growth and prosperity. We need better platforms for digital technologies that can actually now help to end extreme poverty by 2030.

We need to better harness the contributions from entrepreneurial firms driving new forms of progress. To better connect universities, schools, and young people bringing generational efforts to the table. Better ways for local leaders and communities to chart their own paths toward the goals. Better and bolder better ideas to reboot collaboration across all the goals.

This Assembly is at its best when it provides hope. Not to shy away from the intensity of debates or deep differences of views, but to inspire more than 8 billion people around the world that better paths forward are possible.

What are the stakes? On top of the planet’s own needs, hundreds of millions of people grappling with deprivation, and billions more facing daily inequities in their lives, some stakes can be measured in the most basic terms possible—life and death. We estimate that over the coming years out to 2030, falling short on SDG ambitions translates to 34 million lives lost for good. For each of those lives and each of their families and communities, they all deserve … better.

So, it may be a miracle that so much of the world continues to get better amid all humanity has endured ….

But better isn’t good enough.

The moral standing and moral standards of success agreed by all countries back in 2015 force all of us to recognize—whether in government, business, civil society, or any other walk of life—we still need to get better at getting better. Together. This is the essence of our SDG moment.