Kuala Lampur, Dec. 24 -- As 2025 draws to a close, questions are growing louder across Malaysia and beyond: can the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) still drive real progress in a world grappling with economic uncertainty, environmental disruption, and widening social inequality?

Adopted by all United Nations member states on 25 September 2015, the 17 SDGs were designed as a shared global blueprint to end poverty, improve health and education, reduce inequality, and combat climate change by 2030. A decade on, scepticism is understandable.

Yet the more pressing question is not whether the SDGs are still relevant, but whether we are willing to act on them.

Malaysia is well placed to answer that question decisively. The SDGs were neve...