The Sustainable Development Goals: Brilliant Propaganda?
The Sustainable Development Goals: Brilliant Propaganda?

Summary/Abstract: This text is a revised version of the Kapuscinki Development Lecture that the author delivered in May 2015 in Bucharest and later updated after the COP21 December 2015 summit in Paris. It presents a critical assessment of the new global agenda on development – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The most important criticism is that, like in the case of the Millennium Development Goals, there is insufficient specificity about who is supposed to do what in order to realize these goals. The other criticisms address the definitions and the measurement procedures, the sustainability of the SDGs, the SDGs’ treatment of inequality, and the SDGs’ lack of attention to structural or institutional reforms. Tying everything together, it finally argues why the SDGs may be understood as brilliant propaganda.

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