Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service.

I'm Wesley Stevenson.

And I'm Charlotte McDonald.

Despite the cruelties of our world and the ravages of disease,

millions of lives can be saved if we are focused and if we work together.

It's exactly a year ago since a deal was signed by 193 countries to try to make the world a better place.

The document laid out how countries are going to achieve this, and they're called the Sustainable Development Goals.

The world must act. We cannot leave people behind.

This is US President Barack Obama addressing the UN's General Assembly, speaking of their

importance, setting targets on a wide range of things from ending hunger to education for all.

And so today we commit ourselves to new sustainable development goals.

On this week's program, we're going to ask if these goals are actually achievable.

Should we be dismissing some and focusing on others, perhaps?

One group of economists thinks so.

They ended up with 169 targets, essentially promising everything to everyone, but it's not reality.

That's Bjorn Lomburg from the think tank Copenhagen consensus.

What we wanted to do was to say, with realistic funding, where can you actually do the most

good for every dollar spent?

We'll hear more from him later, but first, a little bit of context.

Back in 2000, the Millennium Declaration was signed by the largest gathering of world leaders. It was described as a statement of

values and principles of how the world should be. On its own, it could have just been another

well-meaning statement, but the UN

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