The world’s governments are to meet at a special session of the UN General Assembly on Sept. 25 to discuss how to accelerate progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and also to agree on a timetable for a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The MDGs, adopted in 2000, will conclude in 2015, to be followed by the SDGs, most likely for the period from 2015 to 2030.
The MDGs focus on ending extreme poverty, hunger and preventable disease. They have been the most important global development goals in the UN’s history.
The SDGs will continue the fight against extreme poverty, but also add the challenges of ensuring more equitable economic growth and environmental sustainability, especially the key goal of curbing the dangers of human-induced climate change.
Setting international development goals has made a huge difference in people’s lives, particularly in the poorest places on the planet. Sub-Saharan Africa has benefited enormously from the MDGs, and we can learn from that success in designing the SDGs.
To see the MDGs’ importance for sub-Saharan Africa, one need only compare the decade before their adoption with the decade after.
In the 10 years before the MDGs, economic growth in the region was slow, the poverty rate was high (and rising), and there was an increasingly heavy disease burden, including HIV/AIDS and malaria.
The adoption of the MDGs focused increased attention by African governments, non-governmental organizations, UN agencies, international donors, foundations and activists on the urgency of combating poverty, hunger and disease.
The MDGs also cast a global spotlight on the crippling debt burdens faced by many of Africa’s poorest countries, leading to a process of debt cancelation led by the IMF and the World Bank.
ACHIEVEMENTS
From 2000 to 2010, sub-Saharan Africa’s poverty rate (as measured by the share of those living on less than US$1.25 a day) fell to 48.5 percent, after having risen from 56.5 percent to 58 percent in the 1990 to 1999 period, while overall annual economic growth, which averaged 2.3 percent from 1990 to 2000, more than doubled, to 5.7 percent during the 2000-2010 period.
There were significant improvements in disease control as well. From 1990 to the peak year, about 2004, annual malaria deaths rose from about 800,000 to 1.6 million.
After that point, upon the MDGs-inspired mass distribution of anti-malaria bed nets, malaria deaths began to decline, to around 1.1 million per year in 2010, and perhaps lower now.
Likewise, as of 2000, there were still no official donor-supported programs to enable poor Africans to receive antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. Thanks in large part to the agenda-setting power of the MDGs, donor programs to fight AIDS began to be implemented, and more than 6 million Africans now receive antiretroviral treatment supported by official donor programs.
As special adviser to the UN secretary general on the MDGs since 2001 (to then-UN secretary-general Kofi Annan until 2006, and to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon since 2007), I have seen how seriously many African governments take the targets, using them to set priorities, catalyze stakeholders, increase public awareness and motivation, and hold ministries accountable.
Over time, the UN and the high-income countries’ donor agencies increasingly used the MDGs to help organize their own work in Africa as well. While the MDGs are not the only factor underpinning the improvements since 2000, they have played a huge role.
Of course, much remains to be done to maximize progress on achieving the targets set by the MDGs. Most important, significant gains in health could be attained with adequate financial resources. Donor countries should provide ample replenishment funding later this year to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, which would ensure this vital agency’s continued success.
LOOKING FORWARD
When UN member states turn to the next set of global development goals, they should learn from the MDGs. First, keeping the list of SDGs relatively short — no more than 10 — will make them easy to remember, which will help in mobilizing the public.
Second, all governments, rich and poor, should be accountable for meeting the SDGs as implementers. The MDGs applied mainly to poor countries as implementers and to rich countries as donors. The SDGs should apply to all countries as implementers (and also to rich countries as donors). Indeed, when it comes to problems like climate change, which will be at the core of the new SDGs, rich countries have more work ahead of them than poor countries do.
Third, the SDGs should build on the MDGs. The MDGs helped to cut global extreme poverty by more than half. The SDGs should take on the challenge of ending extreme poverty for good. The World Bank, to its credit, has already adopted the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030. UN member states should do the same.
Finally, the SDGs should mobilize expert groups around the key challenges of sustainable development. When the MDGs first appeared, the relevant specialists began to organize themselves to give advice on achieving them.
The UN Millennium Project synthesized the counsel of roughly 250 global experts on crucial development issues. The same process of expert advice and problem solving is urgently needed on issues such as low-carbon energy, sustainable agriculture, resilient cities, and universal health coverage, all of which are likely to feature in the SDGs.
Fifty years ago, then-US president John F Kennedy declared that, “By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly towards it.”
The MDGs have helped to play that role in the fight against poverty. The SDGs can do the same for the complex challenge of achieving sustainable development.
Jeffrey Sachs is professor of sustainable development, professor of health policy and management, and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also special adviser to the UN secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry