What Goals Should the World Set for Itself Next?

The Economist has published a useful article on the efforts to set forth new global goals for development for the period following this year.

The United Nations is developing a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs: 17 have been proposed, with 169 associated targets). These replace the Millennium Development Goals, set forth in 2000 with targets for 2015. I personally wonder about the importance of such goals. Did China and India really need the incentive of targets put forth by the United Nations for their great development success over the past 15 years? Why did states fail, and why did some states that did not fail not achieve the stated targets? Still, the agreement about goals, targets and priorities did give many organizations their marching orders -- orders that were taken seriously.

Action/2015 is a coalition of more than 1000 organizations that have agreed to work together to help the world attain the SDGs.

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Post-2015 Consensus is a program of economic analysis that has begun to address anew the question of "What are the smartest targets for the post-2015 development agenda?"

The Sustainable Development Solutions Network is still another network, one that worked to help the United Nations Secretariat to develop its Sustainable Development Goals and related indicators and measurements so that goal achievement could be monitored and tested against the defined targets.