Adopted in 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 goals that provide a blueprint for achieving equality, reducing poverty, and seeking universal human rights for all by 2030. All the 193 UN member states have agreed to achieve 169 goals by 2030. Although the purposefully ambitious SDGs have achieved some success, there is a high risk that most of the goals designed for people’s prosperity, peace, harmony, and partnerships will remain unfulfilled.
The goals were set nine years ago, in 2015, to address the pressing environmental, political, and economic challenges facing our planet in dire straits. For instance, Pakistan, which is mired in low economic growth, high inflation and unemployment, declining investment, excessive fiscal deficits, and a deteriorating external balance, will plunge the country into a deeper crisis if it fails to meet its targets.
Political Instability and Economic Stagnation: A Vicious Cycle for PakistanThe Sustainable Development Agenda was supposed to be met by 2030. However, the 2023 SDGs report shows that progress on more than 50 percent of the goals is insufficient, while it has reversed for 30 percent. The most important reason cited is the neoliberal fiscal and monetary policy environment created by the outdated, dysfunctional, and inequitable international financial architecture of the Bretton Woods institutions in the 1940s. Inequalities between rich and poor countries are widening, and the gap between North and South is widening. According to the report, the SDGs are........