The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be dead by the end of this year (2015). There are many ways to write the obituary of this global endeavour. Irrespective of how you write it, one thing remains true and that is, the MDGs were (over) ambitious but they brought global attention to a number of issues. There has been mixed results all through with some great success and some great failures.

Between January-July 2014, I was involved as a research assistant on a research project undertaken by the Sheffield Institute for International Development known as ID 100. The ID (International Development) 100 was a project that sought to crowd source research and policy questions from academics, practitioners, policy makers, NGOs, students and a whole lot of other stakeholders with interest in international development who are based around the world.  In view of the MDGs dying and new ongoing discussions on a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the ID 100 project aimed to engage with the new debates on the SDGs by highlighting the 100 key questions that need to be considered.

I am very pleased to say that this week we’ve published a working paper based on the ID 100 project in conjunction with the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. This working paper describes in more detail what the project was about, the methodology used and the gives the list of the 100 key research questions we arrived at. These 100 key questions were sorted into 9 thematic categories:

1.Governance, Participation and Rights

2.Environmental Sustainability

3.Food Security, Land and Agriculture

4.Energy and Natural Resources

5.Conflict, Population Dynamics and Urbanization

6.Economic Growth, Employment and the Private Sector

7.Social and Economic Inequalities

8.Health and Education

9.Development Policies, Practices and Institutions

As is bound to happen, the sorting of the over 700 questions we received to a mere 100 means not everything is covered. We nonetheless believe that these 100 questions are key and need to be considered in the new SDGs. You can download the working paper for free by clicking here. You can also find out more information about ongoing stakeholder consultations on the SDGs here.