MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that all 192 United
Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. They
include eradicating extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics such as AIDS, and
developing a global partnership for development.

Background

The aim of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is to encourage development by improving social and
economic conditions in the world's poorest countries. They derive from earlier international development targets,
and were officially established following the Millennium Summit in 2000, where all world leaders present adopted
the United Nations Millennium Declaration, from which the eight goals were derived by a group headed by Jeffrey
Sachs.

Ideas behind the MDG

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) originated from the Millennium Declaration produced by the United
Nations. The Declaration asserts that every individual has the right to dignity, freedom, equality, a basic standard of
living that includes freedom from hunger and violence, and encourages tolerance and solidarity. The MDGs were
made to operationalize these ideas by setting targets and indicators for poverty reduction in order to achieve the
rights set forth in the Declaration on a set fifteen-year timeline.

The MDGs focus on three major areas of Human development (humanity): bolstering human capital, improving
infrastructure, and increasing social, economic and political rights, with the majority of the focus going towards
increasing basic standards of living. The objectives chosen within the human capital focus include improving
nutrition, healthcare (including reducing levels of child mortality, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and
increasing reproductive health), and education. For the infrastructure focus, the objectives include improving
infrastructure through increasing access to safe drinking water, energy and modern information/communication
technology; amplifying farm outputs through sustainable practices; improving transportation infrastructure; and
preserving the environment. Lastly, for the social, economic and political rights focus, the objectives include
empowering women, reducing violence, increasing political voice, ensuring equal access to public services, and
increasing security of property rights. The goals chosen were intended to increase an individual’s human
capabilities and “advance the means to a productive life”. The MDGs emphasize that individual policies needed to
achieve these goals should be tailored to individual country’s needs; therefore most policy suggestions are general.

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

The MDG were developed out of the eight chapters of the United Nations, signed in September 2000. There are
eight goals with 21 targets, and a series of measurable indicators for each target.

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• TARGET 1A: Halve the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day
• TARGET 1B: Achieve Decent Employment for Women, Men, and Young People
• TARGET 1C: Halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

• TARGET 2A: By 2015, all children can complete a full course of primary schooling, girls and boys

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

• TARGET 3A: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005,
and at all levels by 2015

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality rate

• TARGET 4A: Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

• TARGET 5A: Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio
• TARGET 5B: Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health

6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

• TARGET 6A: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
• TARGET 6B: Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need
it
 • TARGET 6C: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major
diseases

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

• TARGET 7A: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and
programs; reverse loss of environmental resources
• TARGET 7B: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss
• TARGET 7C: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe
drinking water and basic sanitation (for more information see the entry on water supply)
• TARGET 7D: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100
million slum-dwellers

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

• TARGET 8A: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and
financial system
• TARGET 8B: Address the Special Needs of the Least Developed Countries (LDC)
• TARGET 8C: Address the special needs of landlocked developing countries and small island
developing States
• TARGET 8D: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through
national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term
• TARGET 8E: In co-operation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable,
essential drugs in developing countries
• TARGET 8F: In co-operation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new
technologies, especially information and communications

Debate Surrounding the MDGs

Drawbacks of the MDGs include the lack of analytical power and justification behind the chosen objectives. The
MDGs leave out important ideals, such as the lack of strong objectives and indicators for equality, which is
considered by many scholars to be a major flaw of the MDGs due to the disparities of progress towards poverty
reduction between groups within nations. The MDGs also lack a focus on local participation and empowerment.
The MDGs also lack an emphasis on sustainability, making their future after 2015 questionable. Thus, while the
MDGs are a tool for tracking progress toward basic poverty reduction and provide a very basic policy road map to
achieving these goals, they do not capture all elements needed to achieve the ideals set out in the Millennium
Declaration. Another criticism of the MDGs is the difficulty or lack of measurements for some of the goals. Amir
Attaran, an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health, and Global Development
Policy at University of Ottawa, argues that goals related to maternal mortality, malaria, and tuberculosis are in
practice impossible to measure and that current UN estimates do not have scientifically validity or are missing.
Household surveys are often used by the UN organizations to estimate data for the health MDGs. These surveys
have been argued to be poor measurements of the data they are trying to collect, and many different organizations
have redundant surveys, which waste limited resources. Furthermore, countries with the highest levels of maternal
mortality, malaria, and tuberculosis often have the least amount of reliable data collection. Attaran argues that
without accurate measures of past and current data for the health related MDGs, it is impossible to determine if
progress has been made toward the goals, leaving the MDGs as little more than a rhetorical call to arms.

Proponents for the MDGs argue that while some goals are difficult to measure, that there is still validity in setting
goals as they provide a political and operational framework to achieving the goals. They also assert that non-health
related MDGs are often well measured, and it is wrong to assume that all MDGs are doomed to fail due to lack of
data. It is further argued that for difficult to measure goals, best practices have be identified and their implication is
measurable as well as their positive effects on progress. With an increase in the quantity and quality of healthcare
systems in developing countries, more data will be collected, as well as more progress made. Lastly the MDGs
bring attention to measurements of wellbeing beyond income, and this attention alone helps bring funding to
achieving these goals.

Challenges of the Millennium Development Goals

Although developed countries' aid for the achievement of the MDGs has been rising over the recent year, it has
shown that more than half is towards debt relief owed by poor countries. As well, remaining aid money goes
towards natural disaster relief and military aid which does not further the country into development. According to
the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2006), the 50 least developed countries only
receive about one third of all aid that flows from developed countries, raising the issue of aid not moving from rich
to poor depending on their development needs but rather from rich to their closest allies.

Many development experts question the MDGs model of transferring billions of dollars directly from the wealthy
nation governments to the often bureaucratic or corrupt governments in developing countries. This form of aid has
led to extensive cynicism by the general public in the wealthy nations, and hurts support for expanding badly
needed aid.
 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Sustainable Development Introduction

The idea of sustainable development grew from numerous environmental movements in earlier decades. Summits
such as the Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil, 1992, were major international meetings to bring sustainable development
to the mainstream.

However, the record on moving towards sustainability so far appears to have been quite poor. The concept of
sustainability means many different things to different people, and a large part of humanity around the world still
live without access to basic necessities.

Addressing Biodiversity Loss

At the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit), the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD) was born. 192 countries, plus the EU, are now Parties to that convention. In April 2002, the Parties
to the Convention committed to significantly reduce the loss of biodiversity loss by 2010.

Perhaps predictably, that did not happen. Despite numerous successful conservations measures supporting
biodiversity, the 2010 biodiversity target has not been met at the global level. This page provides an overview on
how the attempts to prevent biodiversity loss are progressing.

Poverty and the Environment

The causes of poverty and of environmental degradation are inter-related suggesting that approaching sustainable
development requires understanding the issues from many angles, not just say an environmentalist or economics
perspective alone.

Non-Governmental Organizations on Development Issues

What does an ever-increasing number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) mean? NGOs are non-profit
organizations filling the gap where governments will not, or cannot function. In the past however, some NGOs from
the wealthy nations have received a bad reputation in some developing nations because of things like arrogance,
imposition of their views, being a foreign policy arm or tool of the original country and so on. Even in recent years
some of these criticisms still hold. However, recently some new and old NGOs alike have started to become more
participatory and grassroots-oriented to help empower the people they are trying to help, to help themselves. This is
in general a positive turn. Yet, the fact that there are so many NGOs popping up everywhere perhaps points to
failures of international systems of politics, economics, markets, and basic rights.

Foreign Aid for Development Assistance

In 1970, the world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their gross national income as official international
development aid, annually.

Since that time, billions have certainly been given each year, but rarely have the rich nations actually met their
promised target.

For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst the lowest in terms of meeting the
stated 0.7% target.

Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations. Common criticisms, for many
years, of foreign aid, have included the following:

• Aid is often wasted on conditions that the recipient must use overpriced goods and services from
donor countries
• Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most
• Aid amounts are dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country
products while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products
• Large projects or massive grand strategies often fail to help the vulnerable; money can often be
embezzled away.

Water and Development

Issues such as water privatization are important in the developing world especially as it goes right to the heart of
water rights, profits over people, and so on. This article looks into these issues and the impacts it has on people
around the world.
Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility is a bit of a buzz word and some feel that it has been diluted from its original aims,
while others are trying to find innovative ways to engage with businesses to be more responsible in their practices.

Energy Security

Energy security is a growing concern for rich and emerging nations alike. The past drive for fossil fuel energy has
led to wars, overthrow of democratically elected leaders, and puppet governments and dictatorships.

Leading nations admit we are addicted to oil, but investment into alternatives has been lacking, or little in
comparison to fossil fuel investments.

As the global financial crisis takes hold and awareness of climate change increases, more nations and companies are
trying to invest in alternatives. But will the geopolitics remain the same?

Brain Drain of Workers from Poor to Rich Countries

Brain drain is a problem for many poor countries losing skilled workers to richer countries. In healthcare, the
effects can often be seen vividly. For example, in many rich countries, up to one third of doctors may be from
abroad, many from Sub-Sahara Africa, while many African countries have as little as 500 doctors serving their
entire population. Reasons for this brain drain vary, ranging from poor conditions domestically to attractive
opportunities and active enticement from abroad.

United Nations World Summit 2005

The UN World Summit for September 2005 is supposed to review progress since the Millennium Declaration,
adopted by all Member States in 2000. However, the US has proposed enormous changes to an outcome document
that is to be signed by all members. There are changes on almost all accounts, including striking any mention of the
Millennium Development Goals that aim for example, to halve poverty and world hunger by 2015. This has led to
concerns that the outcome document will be weakened. Developing countries are also worried about stronger text
on human rights and about giving the UN Security Council more powers.
World Summit on Sustainable Development

This section introduces some of the issues on the international summit (August 26 - September 4, 2002) where
thousands of delegates met to discuss various issues comprising sustainable development. Of course, there was a lot
of controversy including differences between the global North and South on all sorts of issues such as corporate-led
globalization, privatization of energy, water, health, etc. In addition there was also concern about motives and
influences of large corporations on the outcomes of the Summit.

United Nations on Development Issues

The United Nations is the largest international body involved in development issues around the world. However, it
has many political issues and problems to contend with. But, despite this, it is also performing some much needed
tasks around the world, through its many satellite organizations and entities, providing a means to realize the
Declaration of Human Rights. Unfortunately though, it is not perfect and is negatively affected by politics of
powerful nations that wish to further their own interests.

Causes of Poverty

Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Why is this? Is it enough to blame poor
people for their own predicament? Have they been lazy, made poor decisions, and been solely responsible for their
plight? What about their governments? Have they pursued policies that actually harm successful development?
Such causes of poverty and inequality are no doubt real. But deeper and more global causes of poverty are often
less discussed.

Environmental Issues

Environmental issues are also a major global issue. Humans depend on a sustainable and healthy environment, and
yet we have damaged the environment in numerous ways. This section introduces other issues including
biodiversity, climate change, animal and nature conservation, population, genetically modified food, sustainable
development, and more.
Aid

There are numerous forms of aid, from humanitarian emergency assistance, to longer term development aid. Some
provide food aid, or military assistance, but all these forms of aid seem to be accompanied with criticism, either
around inefficiency of delivery, or of political agendas or more. This section attempts to look at some of these
issues.

Some of the other main issues are:

G8: Too Much Power

Trade, Economy, & Related Issues

Consumption and Consumerism