Poverty: Why the SDGs aren’t As Good as they Sound

Heard of the SDG’s (Sustainable Development Goals) on your Twitter feed recently? Or perhaps the Millenium Development Goals made popular by Western economists and advocates like Bill Gates, Jeff Sachs and Bono? The SDGs, essentially MDGs 2.0, are the newest lineup of worldwide goals adopted by the U.N. and others to end poverty throughout the globe on an impressively short timeline. While there is no harm in this desire, we learn from economist William Easterly that the “goals” themselves as listed out in the SDG document aren’t what they’re made out to be. Unmeasurable and with a continued emphasis on the power, influence and money of the West, the SDGs should be scrutinized before adopted. He summarizes:

“For this generation of young idealists in rich countries, development should still be a cause worth fighting for. The many humanitarian programs that have been doing good things should continue, even if they are not quite the transformational things that the MDGs promised. But the decline and fall of the pretensions of foreign aid only tell us to not put our hopes in U.N. bureaucrats or Western experts. We can put our hopes instead in the poor people we support as dignified agents of their own destiny.”

Read Easterly’s full op-ed in The Financial Times >