This edition of Unctad's Development and Globalization: Facts and Figures is dedicated to the Sustainable Development Goals that were adopted by the United Nations in September 2015 (2030 Agenda Declaration) (United Nations General Assembly, 2015).

At the time of writing (June 2016), the indicators for measuring progress towards these Goals that have been proposed by the Inter-agency Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDG) and accepted by the United Nations Statistical Commission (United Nations Statistical Commission, 2016) have not yet been endorsed by the General Assembly.

Nevertheless, we think it is useful to give an early or preliminary assessment of progress for a selection of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets.