These 17 goals will guide efforts to reduce poverty and increase well-being, without destroying the Earth. “And I don’t want to think about what the end-game looks like in 15 years if we don’t get this right”.

With the announcement of ninety eight aspirants for India’s smart cities and the federal government incorporating sustainability as a key element of the venture, worldwide consulting agency PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) feels “the pillars of a smart sustainable metropolis” are utterly aligned with the proposed UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“The MDGs end-point report chronicled the gains recorded in the implementation of the 15-year development framework as well as challenges and gaps requiring attentions in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will be adopted by world leaders at the 70th Session of the United Nations General Assembly as the replacement for the MDGs”, the statement said.

If that sounds like a lot of targets, it is, because the goals represent a very big agenda and the culmination of extensive input from countries, non-government organisations, business and millions of ordinary citizens around the world.

The earlier Millennium Development Goals relied more on wealthy nations helping poorer ones, and were devised by people working for then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

“Good governance serves as a strong inspiration for selling reforms in insurance policies and programmes for sustainable improvement”, PwC stated. Real successes have been achieved in the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and there has been substantial progress in reducing child and maternal mortality.

Germany may have won an worldwide reputation for being environmentally aware and a leader in clean energy, but the world’s fourth largest economy faces challenges in establishing a sustainable way of life at home.

“We must increase the focus on the social and economic dimensions of sustainable development”, the spokeswoman said in emailed comments to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Despite significant progress, the only one of those original goals achieved before this year was halving the number of people living in extreme poverty. In some areas the world has gone backwards.

They were the work of a long process involving most countries as thousands of people came together in many gatherings to hash out the new agenda.