With the MDGs ending in 2015, we have to ask - what is next?

Devex, a media platform for the global development community which aims to connect and inform on issues like development, health, humanitarian, and sustainability, has recently featured an article written by Bjorn Lomborg. The article is entitled “Smarter targets for the UN: The best thing any of us can do.” In the article Bjorn discusses the research being conducted for the Post-2015 Consensus project and how it can help inform the debate surrounding the post-2015 development agenda. 

Imagine taking the U.N. document and overlaying it graphically with economic evidence. Highlight the very best targets with green — the targets that will cost little but do more than 15 times as much economic, social and environmental good. Paint the fair targets yellow — targets that still do more good than they cost. And color the poor targets red — the targets that will cost more than the good they provide for the world. Backed by thousands of pages of peer reviewed economic research, such simplistic traffic light markings could crucially help the world’s busy decision-makers focus on picking the most effective targets. And that’s exactly what we’ve done with the final document of the U.N. Working Group on the SDGs that proposes 169 targets. 

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