Sustainable development goals: Why do we need them?

At the turn of the millennium, the human development on the Earth called for a structured approach. That is when 189 states agreed upon key areas of global cooperation to ensure well-being for all. These key areas then translated into eight Millennium Development Goals, each split into several targets, dealing with poverty, education, gender equality, health and environmental sustainability. For 15 years these have been the ultimate goals of the United Nations member states. There has been progress on many targets, but the environmental conditions have been consistently deteriorating. In response to this, the MDGs and the outcome of the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development have merged into Sustainable Development Goals, which will become the new guideline for the humanity until 2030. This article tries to answer what are the differences between these two sets of goals and what factors make the SDGs a more promising choice than the MDGs used to be.