The New York Times Editorial Board. 

In the last 15 years, the world has made great progress in reducing poverty, in part because of eight targets known as Millennium Development Goals that the United Nations committed to in 2000. Each carried a 2015 deadline. One goal — of cutting extreme poverty by half as measured by the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day — was in fact met five years ahead of schedule. Maternal mortality was not cut by three-fourths, as the U.N. wanted, but it was cut nearly in half, no small achievement.

Now, the U.N. is doubling down and setting even more ambitious development goals for the next 15 years. But this time it faces a very big obstacle: a slowing global economy, which will require the leaders of developing countries, especially those in Africa and Asia, where most of the world’s poorest people live, to make big policy changes.

The Millennium Development Goals coincided with a period of very rapid growth in developing economies, especially in places like Brazil, China and India, making it easier for those countries to generate jobs and invest in health, education and other public services. All of those countries are growing at slower paces now, and their leaders do not seem to have credible strategies for dealing with their problems. Each country has a unique set of problems, but they all need to make their economies more productive and inclusive.