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Showing posts from October, 2015

The UN's Sustainable Develoment Goals (SDGs) Are Not Smart

Several weeks ago on September 25, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs), 17 goals and 169 associated targets, thereby setting a new global agenda for the next fifteen years. On the one hand, the SDGs agenda promises to engage the whole world community, not only governments but also multinational companies, philanthropic foundations, civil society, scientists, non-government organizations, scientists, scholars and students around the world.   The new agenda was hailed by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as “a defining moment in human history.” On the other hand, critics claim that the SDGs are unmeasurable and unmanageable. The more limited “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs), which will expire at the end of this year, applied largely to poor countries and involved rich ones mostly as donors. The SDGs are broader and go much further than the MDGs; the latter are meant to be universally applicable to developing and developed countries al