External publications

MDGs and SDGs: are the concepts compatible?

Loewe, Markus
External Publications (2014)

in: Global Compact International Yearbook 2014, 10-15

For the last 20 years, the international development debate has been dominated by two trends that seem at first to be heading in a similar direction. However, under closer scrutiny they differ with respect to their focus and underlying philosophies. These are on the one hand the agenda of reducing poverty in developing countries that found their expression in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). On the other hand, there is the idea of sustainability that became popular at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and that at the Rio+20 summit in 2012 generated a parallel concept to the MDGs: the so called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The challenge is now for the world community to design a new agenda for the years after 2015 that fulfils the aspirations of both the proponents of the MDG concept as well as the proponents of the SDG concept. This article suggests that the post-2015 agenda should consist of two separate but mutually referring sets of goals – one concentrating on human development, the other on global public goods.