​The Millenium Development Goals, a product and reflection of the development concept dominant in the late 1980s, focused primarily on social development.

The proposed Sustainable Development Goals are swinging the spotlight back to economic development issues, while still including the social pillar and adding a focus on the environment, leading to expectations that the SDGs should promote economic transformation.

This paper examines what economic transformation means in practice and how it can be achieved, without sacrificing social and environmental objectives. 

Yurendra Basnett, Debapriya Bhattacharya