The SDGs were designed to be much more encompassing than the MDGs and so cover a much broader range of topics with a much more diverse set of targets and indicators. The SDGs remain as limited as the MDGs by failing to close major gaps identified in the MDGs:

1. After Five Years https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/disaster-choice/202009/the-sustainable-development-goals-after-five-years

2. SDG18 https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/disaster-choice/202007/sustainable-development-goal-18

3. Connecting with disasters and climate change https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-02-2017-0043

4. Connecting with health http://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v4i4.729

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets which we are announcing today demonstrate the scale and ambition of this new universal Agenda. They seek to build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what these did not achieve

Launched at the Millennium Summit in 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were a historic effort at global mobilization. They were simple, consensual, numerical, and time bound. They galvanized global policy debates and national policy planning; more generally, they involved nongovernment and civil society organizations. They spread the use of statistics for monitoring and decision making, helped improve statistical capacity and data availability, and bolstered interagency. By 2015, substantial progress had been made—notably against poverty, hunger, and disease, although accomplishments varied highly across goals, regions, and countries and owed much to economic growth in the People's Republic of China and India. The shortcomings of the MDGs were that:

• With limited consideration of enablers but "shared responsibility" for implementation, the MDGs focused on a few aspects of development—viz. education, health, and poverty eradication (and only on certain forms of that if poverty is interpreted as multiple deprivation of economic, human, socio-cultural, political, and protective capabilities)—and environmental sustainability. Lack of consultation at the conception of the MDG framework led to perceptions of a donor-centric agenda.
• The MDGs neglected distributive issues. For example, a reduction in child mortality is more easily achieved by focusing on those who are already better-off in terms of child survival; in the eyes of policy makers, it might be easier, cheaper, and hence more attractive to invest in these rather than in those at the bottom of the pyramid.
• Some MDGs measured inputs or outputs, not outcomes (and even less impacts). MDG 2, for example, only measured the intake of education, regardless of quality or relevance to economic, social, and political life. Some MDGs could not be measured—either because no indicators or targets had been set or because no data was available.
• The MDGs were formulated as global goals but came to be seen as national objectives. Failure to account for differences in initial conditions posed a particular challenge to least-developed countries: they started out with much poorer performance indicators than others vis-à-vis all MDGs.
• Some MDGs were unrealistic. (MDG 2 sought total enrolment in primary education.) Others demonstrated little ambition. On top, many criticized the MDGs for focusing on the social sectors at the expense of economic and environmental concerns.

There is a different feel to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were agreed upon in 2015. The SDGs were arrived at after a three-year long inclusive and participatory process that involved governments, business, and civil society; they set goals and targets for all countries so all may work together for the global well-being of this generation and those to come. The SDGs are integrated and indivisible: they aim to stimulate action in five areas of critical importance to humanity and the planet: (a) People (SDGs 1–6); (b) Prosperity (SDGs 7–10); (c) Planet (SDGs 11–15); (d) Peace (SDG 16); and (e) Partnership (SDG 17).

The rationale behind the SDGs is that global economic growth per person led by emerging economies and a population that now tops 7.8 billion are putting great stress on the earth's ecosystems. Pressures are both global and local: they impinge simultaneously on such crucial earth systems as the carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles. De facto, mankind is pushing ecosystem functions past thresholds. The earth could suffer sudden, non-linear, and potentially devastating outcomes from climate change, environmental pollution, acidification of the oceans, loss of biodiversity, and depletion of fossil resources, including energy and groundwater. A shared focus on economic, environmental, and social goals is a hallmark of sustainable development: and so, the triple bottom line that the SDGs advocate represents a consensus on which the world can build.

PS: The material at https://www.researchgate.net/project/Understand-The-Sustainable-Development-Goals may be of interest.

The key difference is the approach that MDG emphasised on quantitative value while SDG on qualitative change. Moreover, SDG is inclusive approach to address the fundamental issues of development. It is also a comprehensive approach to sustain the development that clearly indicates goals, targets and strategies.

Thank you Ilan Kelman

Thank you Mohamed Salaheldeen

Great explanation & very clearly brief, thank you very much Olivier Serrat

Very clearly defined, thank you Mohammad Rezaul Karim

Sustainable Development Goals came up with the objective of producing a set of universal goals that meet the urgent environmental, political and economic challenges facing our world. The SDGs replaced the Millennium Development Goals, which started a global effort in 2000 to tackle the indignity of poverty. The Sustainable Development Goals apply to all countries whether rich, middle or poor countries. The SDGs are also nationally-owned and country-led, wherein each country is given the freedom to establish a national framework in achieving the SDGs. This is unlike the Millennium Development Goals, which only targets the developing countries.

Great explanation and very clear, thank you Mutahir Oluwafemi Mukhtar Abanikannda