The Hill: Optimists and pessimists on global development
Homi Kharas, interim vice president and director of the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution

“…Progress is not [a] sufficient reason to be satisfied. It has to be both sustainable and rapid enough to meet the targets. … Against this backdrop, the United Nations recently hosted a high-level political forum on progress towards the [Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)], with an emphasis on the financing needed to accelerate change. There, … the mood was serious. There is a growing realization that accelerating change will require more funding in the neediest places, and that this additional funding is not yet forthcoming. … Should we be optimists or pessimists? Probably both. Celebrate success for the very real gains that have been achieved. Worry about the sustainability of those gains, the slowness of progress in the poorest parts of the world, and the seeming inability of donors to respond to the challenges of global poverty in a responsible fashion” (8/1).