Will the world achieve the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals for 2030? Or will the SDGs — with their targets for eradicating extreme poverty, ending preventable child deaths, expanding educational opportunity and averting a climate disaster — join the long list of enthusiastically endorsed global pledges that go unfulfilled?
That is the kind of big question that global political and business leaders must ask themselves at gatherings like this past week's World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Those suffering from early new-decade SDG blues might take comfort from Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. Building on the core theme of his influential book "Enlightenment Now," and citing a familiar barrage of statistics on human progress, Pinker has offered an upbeat assessment: "Progress toward (the SDGs) is continuing," he wrote. "It is unlikely to do a sudden U-turn."