After tense negotiations, 193 countries have agreed the next set of development goals, which will seek to end poverty, achieve gender equality and ensure food security in every corner of the globe by 2030.
“This is the people’s agenda, a plan of action for ending poverty in all its dimensions, irreversibly, everywhere, and leaving no one behind,” said Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, after the targets were agreed on Sunday.
The new targets have been debated by civil society and UN member states for more than two years. The 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), which contain 169 targets, will replace the millennium development goals (MDGs), which expire at the end of the year. Implementation of the sustainable development agenda will begin on 1 January 2016.
The SDG targets must now be formally adopted by member states at a special UN summit from 25-27 September in New York. The UN said more than 150 world leaders are expected to attend.
Included in the final text of the SDG outcome document (pdf) are plans to ensure access to water and sanitation, reduce economic inequality and take urgent action to fight climate change. “We are resolved to free the human race within this generation from the tyranny of poverty and want, and to heal and secure our planet for the present and for future generations,” the outcome document said.
The MDGs, which encompassed eight goals including reducing poverty, improving gender equality and fighting HIV, are credited with galvanising global action to improve the livelihoods of the world’s poorest people. But they have been criticised for their narrow focus.
The agreement has been praised by civil society leaders. Barbara Frost, WaterAid’s chief executive, said: “We welcome the agreement, the work of member state negotiators to get here and, most significantly, the overarching commitment to end extreme poverty through sustainable development by 2030.”
Dominic Haslam, director of policy at Sightsavers, applauded the goals for including specific targets to improve access to employment, education and transport for people with disabilities. “We see this as a massive step forward; a wake-up call to the international community and to governments, that inclusion of people with disabilities is a principle, not an afterthought.”
Helen Morton, post-2015 lead for Save the Children, said: “These global goals, if adopted and then implemented, will represent a seismic shift in how the world tackles poverty. While the MDGs were judged on what they achieved for some, the new global goals will be judged on what they achieve for all. That will drive a real focus on the poorest and most marginalised groups.”
However, Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, secretary general of the civil society group Civicus, said that the true test of the goals’ success would lie in the approach to their implementation. “Without firm commitments by heads of state in September, this global roadmap may yet end up being nothing more than the MDGs plus, instead of a truly transformative plan to end poverty, inequality and environmental destruction.”
Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity, said the SDGs did not go far enough to reduce existing inequalities, and was critical of the outcome of a summit held last month in Addis Ababa to discuss ways to fund the SDGs. At the summit, developing countries committed to spending targets for essential services such as health and education. But the idea of creating an international tax body, which some nations saw as a means of improving tax collection, a crucial source of domestic revenue, was dismissed.
“In order for the SDGs to be met, implementation and financing plans must address inequalities and human rights, especially for women and girls. The financing plan being advocated by the US and other northern countries will merely uphold the world we have and not get us to the world we want,” said Sippel.
Others said improvements in the quality of data collection were vital. Diane Sheard, UK director of the ONE Campaign, said: “The monitoring of the goals needs a sharp focus on accountability, backed by investments in data collection and use so that citizens have the information they need to ensure that leaders keep their promises.”
The UN has estimated that the new goals could cost as much as $172.5tn (£110.67tn) over the 15-year timeframe.