What Are the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

Introduction

In 2015, the seventieth UN General Assembly adopted an ambitious set of development goals for improving economic, environmental, and social conditions worldwide by 2030. The seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as the United Nations’ chief initiative for advancing basic living standards and addressing a wide range of global issues, including gender inequality, climate change, and a lack of universal, quality education.

However, accelerating climate change, the lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing major global conflicts in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East have jeopardized SDG progress. With the 2030 deadline fast approaching, only 35 percent of SDG targets are on track or making moderate progress towards completion, while nearly 50 percent are lagging, and 18 percent are regressing. Experts say that meeting the goals will require more work, including mobilizing trillions of dollars more in public and private financing for sustainable development.

What are the Sustainable Development Goals?

Also known as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the SDGs are a set of seventeen overarching goals encompassing 169 specific targets for reducing poverty and improving environmental sustainability. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Division for Sustainable Development Goals acts as the secretariat for the SDGs.

Then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in 2014 that the SDGs were organized around six essential elements: dignity, people, prosperity, the planet, justice, and partnerships. Many development experts have noted the ambitious sweep of the goals, which include:

• ending poverty in all forms everywhere;
• ending hunger;
• achieving gender equality;
• ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for people of all ages; and
• ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.

The SDGs build on the progress of the eight MDGs that launched in 2000 and expired in 2015. While the MDGs focused primarily on directing wealthy countries’ resources toward eradicating poverty and improving global health in poor countries, the SDGs are meant to apply equally to all countries and thus cover a broader swath of issues. Additionally, while the MDGs were drafted by a small team of technical experts at the UN headquarters, the SDGs were created over three years by an intergovernmental open working group that comprised representatives from seventy countries.

“The SDGs are a shift in the paradigm for international development,” Sarah Hearn, an adjunct professor and fellow at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, said after the goals were announced. “The MDGs were about resource transfer from rich countries. The SDGs are universal—they’re supposed to apply to all countries and try to overcome the ‘West lecturing the rest’ dynamic.”

How are they financed?

Funding for the SDGs comes from a mix of public and private sources. These include national governments, the private sector, multilateral development banks, and philanthropic organizations. In 2015, countries established a framework [PDF] for global financial practices aimed at generating more private investment in sustainable development.

The Joint SDG Fund, the United Nations’ flagship funding mechanism for accelerating SDG implementation, provides grants to bolster national financing strategies and advance development priorities such as social protection, employment, and food systems. The fund’s capital comes from UN member states—there were seventeen contributing states as of 2024—philanthropic organizations, and the private sector. Since its inception in 2018, the fund has committed more than $380 million across 350 joint programs and 122 UN country teams, as well as unlocked over $6 billion in additional financing. Country teams are overseen by UN-appointed “resident coordinators,” of which there are 130 globally; the coordinators also direct country-level funds.

How are the SDGs measured and monitored?

Progress on the SDGs is monitored using 234 unique indicators under the purview of the UN Statistical Commission. The UN Statistics Division (UNSD), in partnership with individual UN agencies, collects information provided by member countries and organizes it thematically in its database. This database includes basic demographics such as age, ethnicity, income, and race, as well as information tracking progress [PDF] on the specific targets. Some examples include the percentage of children whose height and weight are below average (to measure for child malnutrition) and the existence of legal frameworks protecting against sex discrimination (to gauge gender equality). Some countries also adopt specific national or regional-level indicators that measure SDG progress relevant to their unique concerns.

Ultimately, data collection is voluntary and countries are responsible for their own progress toward meeting the SDGs. The UNSD produces the annual progress reports that make cross-country comparisons, but governments are additionally encouraged to submit voluntary national reviews. These reviews are “country-led and country-driven”—with the United Nations providing some guidelines for conduct—and are meant to share successes, challenges, and next steps. Since the process began in 2016, three countries—the United States, Haiti, and Myanmar—still have yet to conduct and present a voluntary national review. 

What progress has been made toward meeting them?

At the launch of the 2025 SDGs report in July, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that the world is experiencing “a global development emergency” given the lack of progress towards the goals. “The world is not moving fast enough to achieve the SDGs,” he added. As it stands currently, none of the seventeen goals are on track to be achieved by the 2030 deadline.

Finland ranks first on the SDG Index—which compares countries on their overall progress toward achieving all seventeen goals—followed by Sweden and Denmark. These three countries have all achieved the SDG goals of ending poverty and building affordable and clean energy. Meanwhile, the United States and China—the world’s two largest economies—rank forty-fourth and forty-ninth, respectively, though the United States has not fully achieved any goals, while China has eliminated poverty and provided universal quality education. 

But the index does not tell the whole story, some experts say, because there is so much variation among the targets. Wealthier countries, many of which can easily achieve or have already achieved social development goals, score high on SDG rankings even if they are consuming natural resources at an unsustainable pace. This is because there are more goals addressing development than there are ecological sustainability. Sweden, for example, ranks second on the index but has one of the largest per capita consumption footprints in the world, using almost three times as much energy as the global average. It also scores poorly (coming in at 149 on the index) on “spillovers,” or areas that negatively affect other countries’ abilities to achieve the SDGs. 

In comparison, Cambodia ranks 101 on the SDG Index but rises to 23 for spillovers. The country has made rapid progress [PDF] on eliminating extreme poverty over the past two decades, including by tripling funding for education. But Cambodia and other developing countries face major funding shortfalls in their efforts to further reduce disease-related mortality rates, improve clean water and sanitation, and find solutions to climate change.

What are the main critiques of the SDGs?

Development experts have raised several criticisms of the SDGs, calling them too broad, too numerous, and too ambitious. “It is hard to imagine what the time-bound and quantified target is for harmony with nature,” New York University’s William Easterly wrote for Foreign Policy when the SDGs were launched in 2015. “Unlike the MDGs, the SDGs are so encyclopedic that everything is top priority, which means nothing is a priority.” 

Some experts have instead called for a more focused approach, such as identifying and investing in a smaller selection of the most cost-effective targets. On the other hand, proponents of the far-reaching global goals counter that they help to mobilize support and resources and that they galvanize leaders to act by creating peer pressure.

Another major criticism of the SDGs is their lack of accountability mechanisms for countries that fail to achieve the goals. Because the goals are not legally binding, there is little that the United Nations can do if a country chooses not to apply them. The United Nations itself has noted the difficulties of this arrangement [PDF], calling it a “basic failure” of the program and highlighting a dearth of coordination between national and local governments and a global financial system that is not geared toward sustainability.

Financing is another major challenge. According to a 2025 UN report [PDF], there is currently an estimated $4 trillion gap between current development financing and SDG needs. Some experts claim that blended financing, which combines private sources with grants or public funding, could help close the gap. Although blended financing has gained some traction in recent years, contributions to SDG projects remain underrepresented. 

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect SDG implementation?

Though progress toward the SDGs was already slow prior to 2020, the onset of the pandemic challenged decades of global development efforts, the United Nations reported [PDF]. Lockdowns, border closures, and trade disruptions upended basic services even as the pandemic unveiled the very disparities that the SDGs aim to tackle. “The pandemic put full focus on the SDGs because it brought home the need to care for the basic needs of people,” said Alice C. Hill, CFR’s senior fellow for energy and the environment.

The ensuing global recession meant that developing economies lost an estimated $220 billion in economic output, reducing their ability to invest in the SDGs. It also ballooned the financing gap in developing countries, which in 2020 increased by more than $2 trillion, while their debt burden hit a record $860 billion. In the years since, developing countries have faced difficulties overcoming the financial burdens magnified by the pandemic. Yet while the concurrent crises of the pandemic, worsening climate change, and escalating global conflicts have served as obstacles to SDG progress, UN members have reiterated their commitments to the goals.

What does the future hold?

Failure to achieve the SDGs could have significant consequences, experts warn. According to the United Nations, more than 800 million people currently live in extreme poverty, while global conflicts have displaced 122 million people. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in more than two million years. Without meaningful intervention, these figures will likely continue to rise in the coming years.

That isn’t to say the world hasn’t made remarkable progress. Malaria prevention efforts have saved nearly 13 million lives since 2000, more than 90 percent of the global population has access to electricity, and 110 million children and youth have entered school since 2015. 

Against the backdrop of these successes, global leaders have prioritized climate action over other SDG goals. Speaking at the Summit of the Future in September 2024, Guterres warned, “The climate crisis is destroying lives, devastating communities, and ravaging economies.” In 2024, Earth’s average temperature rose 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial levels for the first time, marking the hottest year on record. The global temperature increase is fueling climate-related threats, including droughts, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes.

Still, efforts to meet these ambitious goals continue. UN member states in attendance at the 2023 SDG Summit adopted a declaration [PDF] committing to accelerating progress towards all the SDGs by the end of the decade. The declaration also urged countries to scale up action to deliver on a UN initiative, known as the SDG Stimulus [PDF], that calls for an increase of at least $500 billion in sustainable development financing each year. (At the inaugural SDG Stimulus Leaders Group meeting in 2024, members reiterated the need to provide developing countries with access to financing.) Meanwhile, some conference participants, such as Brazil and Thailand, unveiled new, more ambitious emissions-reduction targets under the 2015 Paris Agreement, while others, such as Nepal, called for more climate adaptation financing for developing countries.

At the 2024 Summit of the Future, UN member states adopted the Pact for the Future [PDF], in which they committed to take accelerated action on climate change and the SDGs. This pledge was reinforced at the 2025 Financing for Development Summit in July, where world leaders endorsed the Sevilla Commitment, laying out a path to close the $4 trillion annual SDG financing gap in developing countries.