The anticlimactic climax at Rio

The news as the principals meet:

• the UN Secretary General says progress in this area has been too slow.
• the BBC's Richard Black says "there is already a palpable feeling in the corridors that the serious business is over."
• Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs recommends (too late) concentrating on Sustainable Development Goals that mirror the highly effective Millennium Development Goals.
• some scientists think that the growing human population may be a problem. Whoa, really?

Sachs' call for SDGs is fine. The Millennium Development Goals have allowed donor nations to communicate effectively with recipient nations--"you achieve these minimum standards, we will provide grants that help you develop key projects." Sustainable Development Goals should take the same approach: measurable, consistent, implementable.

We know that the MDGs have been effective. Some nations, ineligible for Millennium Development Grants because of their low achievements in some areas, still worked to raise their performance so that they might be eligible some day! Now THAT's effective.

In fact, the conference agreement "The Future We Want" does call for the development of SDGs mirroring MDGs, but that will be an extensive process, much longer than the delegations had at Rio. But this is in fact where the serious work will have to take place. In particular, the conflicts and interactions between the myriad of Rio priorities and affirmations will have to be dealt with. The world, after all, has finite resources.