A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE TO POVERTY (Part 57). This blog is a continuation of the review of The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Life Time, by Jeffrey Sachs, published in 2005
Chapter 11: The Millennium, 9/11, and the United Nations
The new millennium opened on a hopeful note. The world survived the widely feared Y2K computer crisis without incident. Celebrations the world over went off without a hitch. The US economy continued to surge ahead. Economic progress in China, India, and finally even Russia gave the sense that globalization might yet fulfill its promise. The IT boom was still in its full glory. We marveled at the dizzying progress of the new Internet age, the new global interconnectivity, and the seemingly endless flow of new products, new ways of organizing business, and new ways of linking people and production systems around the world. Although Africa remained a place of unrelieved crisis, even there the spread of democracy and the possibility of mobilizing new technologies to fight AIDS, malaria, and other diseases gave hope.
The largest gathering of world leaders in history
Perhaps the most vivid geopolitical reflection of this hope was the Millennium Assembly, which took place at the United Nations in September 2000. It was the largest gathering of world leaders in history. One hundred forty-seven heads of state and government came to New York, and did more than create a colossal traffic jam. At their historic UN meeting, the world leaders convincingly expressed a global determination to end some of the most challenging and vexing problems inherited from the 20th century. They conveyed the hope that extreme poverty, disease, and environmental degradation could be alleviated with the wealth, the new technologies, and the global awareness with which we had entered the 21st century.
UN represents 191 governments and the peoples of the world as individuals
For the occasion, Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented the world with a remarkable document. We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century reflected the secretary-general’s strong conviction that the UN represents not only its 191-member governments but also the peoples of the world as individuals, who are endowed with rights and responsibilities that have a global reach. We the Peoples laid out a discerning view of the great challenges facing global society: extreme poverty, pandemic disease, environmental harm, war and civil conflict. The document moved from a panoramic view of these great challenges through a powerful diagnosis of their root causes to a set of recommendations on how these challenges could be met through global cooperation and action.
The Millennium Declaration
The document became the basis for an important global statement, the Millennium Declaration, adopted by the assembled leaders. It is worthy and important reading for all of us. Despite our travails in the intervening years, the Millennium Declaration still inspires hope that the world, complicated and divided as it is, can come together to take on great challenges. The Declaration, like the secretary-general’s report, surveys the issues of war and peace, health and disease, and wealth and poverty, and commits the world to a set of undertakings to improve the human condition. Specifically, it sets forth a series of quantified and time-bound goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and deprivation. These goals were subsequently excerpted from the Millennium Declaration to become the eight Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs.
Commitments to achieve sustainable development
Table 1 lists the 8 goals and 18 targets that are commitments to achieve sustainable development for the world’s poorest people. The first seven goals call for sharp cuts in poverty, disease, and environmental degradation. The 8th goal is essentially a commitment of global partnership, a compact of rich and poor countries to work together to achieve the first seven goals. The MDGs wisely recognize that extreme poverty has many dimensions, not only low income, but also vulnerability to disease, exclusion from education, chronic hunger and undernutrition, lack of access to basic amenities such as clean water and sanitation, and environmental degradation such as deforestation and land erosion that threatens lives and livelihoods.