High stakes at the UN on the Sustainable Development Goals.

A special event at the UN General Assembly on Sept 25, 2013 marks a bridge between the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the end of 2015 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that presumably will run from 2016 to 2030.1 The special event will address urgent actions to accelerate progress to the MDGs over their remaining 2 years, while setting a timeline and diplomatic framework for creating the post-2015 development agenda. For many, the UN processes seems convoluted, or even irrelevant, but what is taking shape has the potential to help humanity make an urgent change of course to address the deep and interconnected economic, social, and environmental challenges the world faces. The MDGs have been the most successful global undertaking in history to coordinate action to fight extreme poverty in all its forms: income, hunger, disease, lack of schooling, and deficient basic infrastructure. Most importantly, they have helped sub-Saharan Africa to enter an era of economic growth and disease reduction by focusing domestic and international policies, expertise, and finance on recalcitrant challenges, such as AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, low farm yields, and children out of school.2 The MDGs have mobilised an unprecedented focus on the global poor by promoting the cancellation of unaffordable debts; prompting the establishment of new organisations such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and encouraging new technologies for diagnostics, medicines, supply chains, microfinance, and infrastructure. They will not be met in full, but the MDGs have made their mark despite the hurdles of wars, the global financial crisis, tax evasion, and debilitating corruption in rich and poor countries alike. It was in the context of this MDG-inspired progress that member states at the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, in June, 2012, committed to adopt global goals based on a holistic, sustainable development framework addressing the key challenges faced by all countries. On the 20th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit, world leaders contemplated a dire reality: the gains in fighting poverty, and indeed