ANALYSIS | After dismal start, UN hosts ‘halftime summit’ in bid to save development plan | CBC News

It’s being billed as a halftime summit. And as world governments gather at the United Nations this week, the scoreboard at the half looks ugly.

The current UN General Assembly marks the midway point in a 15-year pledge to meet a series of human-development targets by 2030.

There’s no doubt humanity took its lumps in the first half. 

Since countries set out 169 targets in 17 areas under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in 2015, the results are uninspiring: 15 per cent are on track to succeed, 48 per cent are moderately or severely off track, and 37 per cent are stuck or getting worse.

“It’s abysmal. It’s a sobering fact,” said Amina Mohammed, the UN deputy secretary-general, told reporters.

“It is a failure of ours.”

And when UN officials say it’s a failure of “ours,” they mean it’s a failure of the 193 countries, rich and poor, that came here to make those pledges, and then didn’t back them up.

But it’s not all gloom. 

Internet access, one of the targets, is up 66 per cent since 2015. Extreme poverty was declining for decades, and it’s declining again after the pandemic wiped away three years’ worth of gains. New land and sea areas have been protected.