Are we on the right path to achieve the sustainable development goals?

•The world is not on track to achieve many human-development related Sustainable Development Goals.•Some targets are especially challenging: access to safe sanitation, upper secondary school completion, and underweight children.•Twenty-eight most vulnerable countries (MVCs) are projected to not achieve any of the selected human development SDG targets explored here.•Population in MVCs is projected to grow from 751 million in 2015 to 1721 million by 2050.•Globally, nearly 1 in 4 youths are projected to live in an MVC by 2030. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call upon all countries to achieve 17 broad development goals by 2030. The SDGs are a central component of many national development plans and foreign aid strategies. While the SDGs have become a central aspect of development planning, how achievable are they under present conditions? This paper explores a dynamic “middle-of-the-road” baseline global development scenario (Shared Socio-economic Pathway 2) using an integrated assessment model (International Futures) to evaluate progress toward target values on nine indicators related to six human development SDGs. We find that, between 2015 and 30, the world will make only limited progress towards achieving those SDGs with our current set of policy priorities. Our study finds that across the variables explored here (nine indicators for 186 countries = 1674 country-indicators), 43 percent had already reached target values by 2015. By 2030, target values are projected to be achieved for 53 percent of country-variables. This paper highlights special difficulty in achieving targets on some SDG indicators (access to safe sanitation, upper secondary school completion, and underweight children) representing persistent development issues that will not be solved without a significant shift in domestic and international aid policies and prioritization. In addition, we highlight 28 particularly vulnerable countries that are not projected to achieve any of the nine human development related target values in a middle-of-the-road scenario. These most vulnerable countries (MVCs) must be the focus of international assistance.