Do you remember the heady days of promise and potential before the turn of the millennium? The Cold War was over and the new world order was humming to the tune of globalisation and multilateralism. Some proclaimed the end of history as liberal democracy and capitalism had prevailed and limitless human progress was assured.
Meanwhile, global meltdown from the Y2K computer bug never materialised, armed conflicts ebbed downwards and the world united to ban anti-personnel landmines. The 9/11 attack on New York’s Twin Towers had yet to happen, the climate was still well-behaved and pandemics like Covid-19 lurked only in the imagination of Hollywood script writers.
That provided the backdrop to the largest gathering of world leaders. The UN Millennium Summit in New York in 2000 promised peace, justice and prosperity for all through freedom, equality, tolerance and solidarity. Who could disagree?
Thus, the global goals era kicked off with eight Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, covering poverty, hunger, education, health, environment and partnerships.
The world accepted the top-down prescription because, at the century’s turn, a third of the world – 2.2 billion people across 63 countries – lived below the International Poverty Line ($3 per capita in adjusted 2021 international dollars). Lifting them up required large amounts of foreign aid through the dominant World Bank and International Monetary Fund. That necessitated signing up to the MDGs and aligning national development plans accordingly.
It worked as shown by assessments in 2015 when the MDG era ended. Extreme poverty declined from 47 per cent in 1990 to 14 per cent and under-nourishment by half. Primary school enrolment exceeded 91 per cent and under-five mortality tumbled from 90 to 43 for every 1,000 live births while dreaded maternal mortality fell by 45 per cent.
Ancient scourges were tamed with malaria incidence falling by 37 per cent, tuberculosis deaths by 45 per cent and even the new affliction of HIV reduced by 40 per cent. More than two billion people got improved water and sanitation, internet penetration increased from 6 to 43 per cent and 95 per cent of the global population got a mobile signal. Meanwhile, unprecedented multilateral co-operation eliminated 98 per cent of ozone-depleting substances that burnt holes in the stratosphere.
Never before in human history had so many people advanced so much. It could hardly be otherwise, considering the artful selection of the low point of 1990 as the comparison baseline. By the same token, it was unsurprising that least-developed Africa progressed most. Record aid levels contributed with official development assistance increased by 83 per cent since the millennium to reach $131.6 billion in 2015. The era believed in throwing enough money at problems, so that some would stick.
The UN’s final MDG assessment asserted that “global action works”. But the aggregate statistics obscured huge disparities between and within nations. Most of the overall improvement came from just two large countries, China and India. That swamped – statistically – the indifferent progress of most small, heavily aid-dependent countries.
Meanwhile, western donors were pressed by taxpayers to demonstrate measurable results within the short timescales of government budgets. The silo-like MDGs were perfect for driving investment into what could be counted easily such as diseases treated and classrooms filled.
Thus, the development vision narrowed, compounded by the challenge of rising aid volumes, including several new global funds, which neither beneficiary nations could absorb properly nor donor administrations could manage prudently. Resource misallocation and corruption flourished, and over-large projects turned into white elephants. Trust between donors and beneficiaries eroded, replaced by increasingly cumbersome monitoring, reporting and auditing. That did little to improve quality and impact while pushing up administration costs.
As the bang from the aid buck shrank, UN agencies and the World Bank stepped in, promising scale-up, efficiency and sustainability, by working through governments that should – in any case – take responsibility for citizen welfare. But recipients had feeble institutions and impatient aid givers were reluctant to invest in long-term capacity building.
Besides, rival theories of economic, social and governance development were experimented with across the developing world. Contested nation-building, with citizen disappointment and instability, was the norm in many places.
But aid had to be spent. I recall, as a donor official, my weekly target of disbursing £10 million ($13.4 million) in the early millennium. So, an implementation industry of consultants, contractors and NGOs responded to supply-and-demand forces. That increased bureaucratic transaction costs as the aid dollar went through a long chain of handlers with perhaps 60-70 cents reaching the intended beneficiary.
The booming aid business took agency away from recipient nations that, meanwhile, grew in consciousness. They began resenting neo-colonial approaches to assistance, spawning resentment between north and south, and undermining confidence in multilateral institutions seen as bought by western interests.
The global public caught on and a cynical anti-foreign aid movement grew. So, when the aid bubble burst recently and multi-billion-dollar aid agencies with well-paid functionaries retrenched – by 20-30 per cent in 2025-26 – there has been little sympathy.
But that was yet to come as 2015 dawned. The World Summit that rubber-stamped the Agenda for Sustainable Development ignored generalised distress, dissonance and discontent as the MDGs merged into the Sustainable Development Goals. If eight MDGs with 21 targets were good, surely 17 SDGs with 169 targets would be better?
Fast forward to the latest dismal stocktake as we count down to the 2030 SDGs deadline. Only a third of SDG targets show moderate progress, half of them only marginal improvements and 18 per cent have regressed. Health and education stagnate. More than 800 million people remain mired in extreme poverty, 10 per cent go hungry to bed and the forcibly displaced have doubled to 120 million.
Conflicts have increased in number, intensity and brutality with about 50,000 deaths last year. That was also the hottest year on record, with mean temperatures at 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels, exceeding the 2015 Paris Agreement limit. With several climate tipping points reached, disasters such as wildfires, floods and storms have intensified. Direct disaster costs exceed $200 billion annually and $2.3 trillion when secondary and ecosystem consequences are considered. Covid-19 will cost $15.8 trillion by the time it retreats into history, while we still debate over preventing the next pandemic.
The SDG financing gap has surged to $4 trillion annually while official development assistance declined by 7.1 per cent last year, with services for poor and vulnerable communities cut accordingly. Previous development gains are being lost with, for example, under-five child deaths rising this year – for the first time this century.
This does not shock a de-sensitised world enduring many simultaneous traumas. Despite the numbers of needy people approaching 300 million, the UN’s “hyper-prioritised” global humanitarian appeal cut its 2026 “ask” to $23 billion. What happens to the rest? Growing callousness is reflected in the trebling of violence against aid workers since 2015.
The stark conclusion is that poverty and suffering are here to stay for longer. Reiterating unheeded appeals to accelerate SDG implementation is pointless – as is continuing with the failing development assistance models of the first quarter century.
Humanity’s cause is better served by radically shifting course. Debating that is the priority for the period until 2030.
