SDG 1: A Brief History of a Big Promise

Refugee children gather in a camp, surrounded by makeshift tents, as they navigate the harsh conditions of displacement. Their expressions reveal resilience and the challenging realities they face. (UN)

When world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in New York in September 2015, they elevated a simple but audacious commitment to the very first line of the global goals: end poverty in all its forms, everywhere. SDG 1 is the moral spine of the Agenda—a recognition that a life free from deprivation is the foundation on which every other goal must rest (United Nations General Assembly 2015a). (sustainabledevelopment.un.org)

That sentence in 2015 did not appear out of nowhere. Its political and intellectual roots reach back through decades of UN diplomacy and social policy. A major waypoint came at the 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, where governments called poverty eradication an “ethical, social, political and economic imperative,” elevating the issue from sectoral concern to global priority (United Nations 1995). Another hinge moment arrived at Rio+20 in 2012. In The Future We Want, Member States decided to launch a process to craft Sustainable Development Goals that would build on the MDGs and converge with the post-2015 agenda, ultimately paving the way for SDG 1 (United Nations 2012). (C-Fam, sustainabledevelopment.un.org)

The Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015) are the immediate precursor to SDG 1. MDG 1 aimed to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living in extreme income poverty and the share suffering from hunger. Globally, the headline poverty target was reached—though unevenly across regions—and the MDGs reshaped how the world measured and managed development progress (United Nations 2015). That achievement created both momentum and humility: momentum because mass poverty can fall rapidly with sustained growth, basic services, and targeted policies; humility because too many were still left behind. SDG 1 was designed to finish the “unfinished business.” (United Nations)

A distinctive feature of SDG 1’s history is how its metrics evolved. The World Bank’s international extreme poverty line—used widely to track global trends—has been periodically updated as purchasing-power data improve. After the MDG era’s $1.90 line (2011 PPP) and the SDG era’s $2.15 (2017 PPP), the Bank adopted 2021 PPPs in 2025 and revised the international line to $3.00 per person per day. The revision does not change the ethical claim of SDG 1, but it alters the statistical yardstick and—along with updated nowcasts—changes the counts and rates policymakers watch (World Bank 2022; World Bank 2025a; World Bank 2025b). The takeaway is simple: measurement matters—and it keeps getting better. (World Bank Blogs, World Bank, Open Knowledge Repository)

The architecture built to carry SDG 1 forward also has a history. In 2013, the UN General Assembly established the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) as the central platform for SDG follow-up and review, replacing the Commission on Sustainable Development. Through voluntary national reviews at the HLPF, countries report progress, share lessons, and face peer scrutiny—an innovation designed to keep goals like SDG 1 politically visible year after year (United Nations General Assembly 2013). (sdgs.un.org)

Financing that ambition got its own track. Two months before the SDGs were adopted, governments endorsed the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (A/RES/69/313), a framework to mobilize public and private resources, strengthen tax systems, curb illicit financial flows, and align finance with sustainable development. Addis did not earmark a poverty “war chest,” but it supplied the playbook for resourcing SDG 1—recognizing that ending poverty requires both cash and coherence across monetary, trade, investment, and social policies (United Nations General Assembly 2015b). (United Nations)

Within SDG 1, the targets reflect lessons learned. Eradicating extreme income poverty (Target 1.1) sits alongside reducing the proportion of people living in multidimensional poverty (Target 1.2), implementing nationally appropriate social protection systems (Target 1.3), ensuring equal rights to economic resources and basic services (Target 1.4), and building resilience to climate-, conflict-, and shock-related vulnerabilities (Targets 1.5 and 1.a–1.b). The design signals a step beyond income alone: poverty is about insecurity, exclusion, and exposure to risk—and progress must be resilient to crises (United Nations General Assembly 2015a).

Why the drama? Because SDG 1 is the keystone. If the world fails here, every other goal—health, education, climate action, gender equality—becomes harder and more fragile. Conversely, credible progress on SDG 1 compounds: better incomes and social protection expand choices; resilience dampens the shockwaves from pandemics, conflicts, and disasters; human dignity becomes policy’s north star rather than its afterthought. The history of SDG 1 is, in the end, a story of growing ambition paired with increasingly sophisticated tools to measure, finance, and review progress. What remains is the hardest part: sustained political will to turn a headline promise into lived reality for the people who need it most (United Nations General Assembly 2015a; United Nations General Assembly 2015b).

References

United Nations. 1995. Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action: World Summit for Social Development. Copenhagen: United Nations.United Nations. 2012. The Future We Want (Outcome of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development—Rio+20). New York: United Nations.United Nations. 2015. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2015. New York: United Nations.

United Nations General Assembly. 2013. A/RES/67/290: Format and Organizational Aspects of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. New York: United Nations.United Nations General Assembly. 2015a. A/RES/70/1: Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. New York: United Nations.United Nations General Assembly. 2015b. A/RES/69/313: Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development. New York: United Nations.

World Bank. 2022. “Updating the International Poverty Line with the 2017 PPPs.” World Bank Data Blog, May 2, 2022.World Bank. 2025a. “June 2025 Update to Global Poverty Lines.” World Bank Factsheet, June 5, 2025.World Bank. 2025b. Global Poverty Monitoring Technical Note 44: June 2025 Update to the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP). Washington, DC: World Bank.