Transforming Our World--Aiming for Sustainable Development

Abstract

The year 2015 is pivotal in
 international development. In the lead-up to 2000, the
 global community came together at various conferences to
 agree on, for the first time in known history, shared
 development goals. The eight Millennium Development Goals
 (MDGs) set 18 targets that were aimed at significantly
 reducing disease, illiteracy, gender inequality, hunger, and
 poverty, and improving access to water and sanitation by
 2015. Leading up to this point where the era of the MDGs
 concludes, progress has been monitored and discussions
 started well ahead of this momentous year to define and meet
 the more ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),
 building on and bringing to fruition what has been started
 under the MDG agenda. Much progress has been made toward
 achieving the MDGs. The world reached the poverty reduction
 target five years ahead of schedule, and progress has been
 reported in a number of other areas. However, considerable
 challenges remain: even while declaring success on MDG1,
 roughly a billion people remained in poverty. A large number
 of MDG targets will not be met by the end of 2015, and
 progress remains uneven among the different countries.
 Moreover, new challenges to progress are emerging deriving
 from natural and manmade calamities. To deliver on the twin
 goals and the post-2015 agenda, the Bank Group would benefit
 from a clearly articulated role, approach, and expected
 contribution to the SDGs, both externally for enhancing
 partnerships and internally to facilitate prioritization and
 synergies. As this paper has shown, the World Bank Group
 works actively in many areas relevant to the SDGs, actually
 many more than covered here, but various evaluations have
 pointed to the importance of multi-sector integrated
 approaches that challenge countries and their partners to
 find new ways of working. The challenges that the SDGs aim
 to address, and the SDGs themselves, are complex, and
 solutions will have to be tailored to context, bring
 together multiple actors, and benefit from dynamic,
 constantly adjusted planning and execution that is informed
 by ongoing monitoring and evaluation.