SANEM is happy to present the New Year’s issue (January 1, 2017) of Thinking Aloud on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The first article on “SDGs: A paradigm shift?” highlights on three major changes that characterize the paradigm shift under the SDGs, which are related to the wide coverage of SDGs, universal application of the goals and the emphasis on domestic resource mobilization in achieving the goals. The article concludes that there is a need for generating political capital for SDGs, both at the country and global levels, to negotiate with a number of critical challenges in implementing SDGs over the next one and half decades. The second article on “What factors can help achieve SDGs? What do we learn from countries’ performance during the MDG period?” sheds light on the fact that, the successful implementation of SDGs depends on how countries performed during the MDG period. A cross country regression suggests that, economic growth, together with reduction in population growth, enhanced trade-orientation, public expenditure on both education and health and better institutional quality helped countries do well during the MDG period. These lessons can be very instrumental for a large number of countries in registering good performance with respect to achieving SDGs over the next 15 years. The third page consists of an interview with Dr. Nagesh Kumar, Director of Social Development Division of the UNESCAP, Bangkok on the challenges of implementing SDGs. Dr. Kumar identifies finance, technology, market access, capacity building, and systemic vulnerabilities as the key constraints for developing countries in implementing SDGs. The final page draws attention to the events that took place in the month of December.
