UN: Countries must cover US$4 trillion deficit for development goals

Countries around the world must take decisive action to close a $4 trillion annual financing gap to ensure that sustainable development goals set just over a decade ago can be achieved by 2030, according to a new United Nations report.

While the report mentions major advances towards some of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), providing access to electricity, water and healthcare for billions of people, it warns that simultaneous crises and a widening financing gap pose major challenges.

Main conclusions of the report
The report shows that progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals remains insufficient and uneven.

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Official development assistance suffered a record drop of 23.1% in 2025, returning to levels close to those of 2015. The reduction was driven, among other factors, by the end of the United States aid agency, USAID.

Of the 139 SDG targets, only 36% are on track or show moderate progress. Another 49% are advancing at a very slow pace, while 15% have regressed to levels lower than those recorded in 2015.

Currently, around 10% of the world's population lives in extreme poverty, surviving on less than US$3 a day - just three percentage points below the 2015 rate. Without new measures, this percentage is expected to remain at around 9% until 2030.

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Food insecurity also remains at high levels. Around 2.3 billion people - equivalent to 28% of the world's population - face moderate or severe food insecurity, without regular access to adequate food throughout the year. Additionally, 673 million people suffer from chronic hunger. In both cases, the numbers exceed those recorded in 2015.

Although most regions of the world are close to eradicating extreme poverty by 2030, this goal still seems distant for Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Oceania, excluding Australia and New Zealand.

In the areas of education and work, there have been advances, but challenges remain significant. Child labor decreased by more than 20 million cases between 2020 and 2024. Still, 273 million children and young people remain out of school, and young people are almost four times more likely to be unemployed than adults.

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Forced displacements have also increased. By mid-2025, the global refugee population reached 440 people per 100,000 inhabitants, more than double the level observed in 2015.

In the economic field, the external debt of low- and middle-income countries reached a record US$8.9 trillion in 2024.

In the environmental area, indicators continue to deteriorate. In 2025, the global average temperature was 1.43 °C above pre-industrial levels, while the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached the highest level in the last two million years.

Commenting on the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that the data demonstrate that, although progress is possible, it is still occurring at an insufficient pace. According to Guterres, this scenario is worsened by obstacles such as the collapse of development aid, the increase in debt, the intensification of conflicts, the slowdown in global economic growth and the worsening of the climate crisis.

Source: CNN