By any standards, it was an eye-popping to-do list.
No poverty. Zero hunger. Quality education for all. Gender equality. Clean water and sanitation. Reduced inequalities. Peace, justice and strong Institutions.
In September 2015, these were just some of the 17 goals that global leaders set for themselves to accomplish in the next fifteen years. The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, broken down into 169 targets, were meant to transform the world by 2030.
A decade later, that deadline is closing in, but the world is nowhere near achieving much of what it promised. According to the U.N.'slatest assessment report"
- Just 15% of the targets for which sufficient data are available are on track.
- 21% are making moderate progress
- 32% are making marginal progress
- 17% are stagnant.
- And 15% have alarmingly slipped far below where they stood in 2015.
These numbers raise big questions. Were these goals just too unrealistic and ambitious in the first place? Can the world expect to tick some of those boxes before the deadline? And if none of the goals are met, is the enterprise a failure?
While none of the SDGs goals are literally impossible to achieve, many require rates of progress that would be "historically unprecedented" — far beyond what even the fastest-improving countries have previously achieved, says Charles Kenny, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. "In order to meet them, we'd have to see incredibly dramatic global policy change," he says.
Zero poverty, for instance, is a great goal to have, he says. "There is no moral excuse for [extreme poverty] at all. On the other hand, given the global system and political realities, the idea that we were going to get to zero by 2030 was really optimistic."
There's no point in blaming the goal, experts say, when the actions of the global community don't match up. "I don't want to let governments off the hook," Kenny says. "These SDGs were agreements between the planet's leaders." But he points out: "the heads of countries that signed these goals then went back home and didn't do any of the things that might have helped speed it up."
Wealthier countries could have accelerated progress by increasing development aid, expanding trade opportunities, increasing private investment in poorer countries, and allowing greater migration, Kenny says. Instead, several of these trends have either stalled or moved in the opposite direction.
But Kenny cautions that judging progress solely by whether countries are on track to meet those ambitious targets can obscure how much has actually changed. "One of the problems with setting really ambitious goals is you can be off track and yet making big progress," he says.
What's working?
This is especially true with some of the health goals, says Thoai Ngo, Professor and Chair of Population and Family Health at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, New York. "We do continue to see child mortality fall year after year, and life expectancy increase. We see more and more kids going to school. There is a lot of progress," he says.
Some goals, such as gender equality, have had a domino effect, says Ngo. "We've managed to keep more girls in school, which has helped prevent child marriage and has improved the health of women in general."
"In my view, the goals worked where money, technology and political will lined up," says Paul Spiegel, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health. Since 2015, he notes, roughly a billion people have gained access to safe drinking water, and 1.2 billion have decent sanitation. Electricity now reaches 92% of the world and 74% are connected to the internet. New HIV infections have fallen by 30%, and AIDS-related deaths by 35%. The proportion of births attended by a trained health professional is on track to reach 90%. "For the first time, more than half of humanity has some form of social protection [such as a pension, cash assistance, maternity or disability benefits, unemployment support or health coverage]," he says.
The goals have provided a universal direction of where we want to get, they have inspired new partnerships and collaborations among different sectors, they have facilitated data collection and measurement, says Shirin Malekpour, associate professor of sustainability governance at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. "I see all of the above as facilitators of change," she says.
Inadequate or ... more than adequate?
Measuring the SDGs solely by how many targets have been met may miss what the goals were intended to achieve, says Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, professor emerita of international affairs at The New School, New York. "It means that our actions have been inadequate to actually live up to our aspirations," she says. "But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have goals at all. It helps to think about these and to make an effort to take action."
On a visit to Okayama in Japan this month, she was struck by how universities and the wider community had embraced the goals as a framework for sustainable development.
In 2018, Japan designated Okayama an"SDGs Future City," recognizing its effort to put the sustainable development goals into practice in everyday life by building sustainable businesses and healthier communities and by encouraging greater citizen participation in community initiatives and decision-making. Schools, universities, nonprofits, businesses and local governments now work together to translate the broad goals into community action. "I think at that community level, the SDGs have been extraordinarily successful in bringing like-minded people together," she says. "It's not just a numerical scorecard but a political and social catalyst."
Crises don't help
Meanwhile, the world scene hasn't helped. Repeated global crises have put pressure on the SDGs.
"There has been one crisis after another, and some of these are global crises, like the COVID pandemic or the effects of certain wars leading to inflation and critical materials becoming much more expensive. Climate change, of course, has affected each region differently," says Andrew Shepherd, senior research associate at ODI Global, a think tank, and director of the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network in the U.K.
"While people have escaped poverty, other people have fallen into poverty. Or some of the people who've escaped poverty have fallen back into poverty as a result of these crises," he says.
Shepherd argues that policymakers need to anticipate crises better and focus more on preventing people from slipping back into extreme poverty, especially the large number whose lives are better but remain highly vulnerable to economic shocks. It can be much harder for governments and the international community to create economic growth that is genuinely inclusive and reaches those most often left behind, such as women, people with disabilities and other marginalized folk, he says.
For this, governments need a lot of foresight. "There isn't enough attention given to the resources and support for people to recover from crises," Shepherd says. He says governments and international agencies are generally better at responding to emergencies than at helping people recover from them. Support often tapers off quickly once the immediate crisis passes, he says, even though households may remain financially vulnerable for years.
What protects people?
Giving poorer people better access to loans and financial services can help, Shepherd says, but it can also create new problems. Microfinance has made it easier for many low-income families to borrow money, but without strong safeguards, people can end up taking on more debt than they can repay.
He points to Bangladesh, where microfinance first became widely established and where over-borrowing is now a concern. "Microfinance is definitely part of the solution," he says, adding that digital finance has also helped more people gain access to financial services. "But there are still some risks there which need to be addressed and governments should focus more on this."'
Health insurance, he says, offers another kind of protection. Rwanda's community-based health insurance system called the Mutuelles de Santé, developed in the late 1990s, is worth emulating, he says. Premiums are linked to income. Under the current system, those in the poorest category pay nothing because the government covers the entire premium, and people in higher income categories contribute increasingly larger amounts. Such systems, Shepherd says, can help prevent an unexpected illness from wiping out a family's savings or pushing people back below the poverty line.
That preventive approach is particularly relevant to the SDGs' pledge to "leave no one behind," he says.
Another area where the world could focus on more would be on environmental goals, says Ngo. "We need to invest more in climate resilience, increasing [disease] surveillance, community infrastructure, strengthening food, agriculture and social systems. Our ecosystems and biodiversity continue to be lost. War and conflict are wiping out our gains."
Although the narrower measure of chronic hunger has recently improved, 2.1 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025 —527 million more than in 2015. In conflict-ridden Western Asian countries like Palestine, Yemen and Syria , undernourishment is still increasing, says Ngo. Forced displacement reached 117 million people by mid-2025, while civilian conflict deaths remain well above post-2015 levels. The number of refugees relative to the global population hasmore than doubled since 2015.
The global risk of species extinction continues to worsen. More than48,600 species are now threatened, facing extinction.
We're also consuming more resources than ever before, with record levels of e-waste and hazardous waste, moving in theopposite direction of sustainable development objectives.
Collective policies can make a difference, says Kenny. Governments, and people working together make it worthwhile to strive toward these goals, even if many remain unmet, he says. "There's still much reason for hope."
Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, South India. She reports on global health, science and development and has been published in The New York Times, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on X: @Kamal_t.
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