A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis.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 58). 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
Table 1: The Millennium Development Goals
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day
Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
Achieve universal primary education
Ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling
Promote gender equality and empower women
Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015
Reduce child mortality
Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate
Improve maternal health
Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
Ensure environmental sustainability
Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources
Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
By 2020 to have achieved a significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers
Develop a global partnership for development
Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system. Includes a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction – both nationally and internationally
Address the special needs of the least developed countries. This includes: tariff- and quota-free access for least developed countries’ exports; an enhanced program of debt relief for HIPC and cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous ODA for countries committed to poverty reduction
Address the special needs of landlocked countries and small island developing states (through the Program of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States and the outcome of the twenty-second special session of the General Assembly)
Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term
In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth
In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries
In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication
The 1978 pledge of “Health for All by the Year 2000.”
The MDGs could, no doubt, engender some cynicism as well as hope. In many cases, the goals repeated long-held commitments of the international community that had not been fulfilled in the past. After all, one of the famous commitments of the past century was the international community’s 1978 pledge of “Health for All by the Year 2000.” Yet the world arrived in 2000 with the AIDS pandemic, resurgent TB and malaria, and billions of the world’s poor without reliable, or sometimes any, access to essential health services.
Universal access to primary education by the year 2000
At the World Summit for Children in 1990, the world pledged universal access to primary education by the year 2000, yet 130 million or more primary-aged children were not in school by then. The rich world had famously committed to the target of 0.7% of GNP devoted to official development assistance (ODA), direct financial aid to poor countries, yet the share of financial aid as a proportion of rich-world GNP had actually declined from 0.3% to 0.2% during the 1990s.
A palpable sense that they might be fulfilled.
Still, when the world leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration, and the MDGs within the Declaration, there was a palpable sense that this time – yes, this time – they just might be fulfilled. The world felt that with the strength of the ongoing economic boom, the vast new power of modern technologies, and the uniqueness of our global interconnectedness, this time we would follow through.