Later this month, the member countries of the United Nations will formally adopt the Sustainable Development Goals, a set of targets relating to future international development. The SDGs, as they are called, replace the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight targets passed by the UN in 2000, such as halving extreme poverty and hunger, promoting gender equality and reducing child mortality by the end of 2015. The SDGs, which include 17 targets goals, will commit countries to the next 15 years of action on sustainable development.

The results of the MDGs were uneven. The 189 signatories did succeed in halving the extreme poverty rate, but success on the others were spotty, to say the least.

The SDGs are even more ambitious. For example, they call not for merely to cut poverty in half, but to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere.” They also call to end hunger, achieve gender equality, reduce inequality, ensure sustainable consumption and halt biodiversity loss. Clearly, this is no small vision.