UN Millenium Development Goals

Global economic crisis. This is the name we all have been hearing all over the world during the last 4 years, since the Lehman Brothers bakruptcy in 2007. We are now concerned about unemployment rates, financial issues, inflation…macroeconomic terms that were completely unknown a few years ago.

Global poverty crisis. This is the name of the world’s real situation, the situation of 90% of the population, not only since 2007, but many decades before. We have never been concerned about  hunger, aids, inequalities, mortality…terms that are still completely unknown.

Development and economic growth are not synonimous, this is the basic mistake western countries make when dealing with global issues.

Economic growth is “A positive change in the level of production of goods and services by a country over a certain period of time”.

Development is  ”The progression from a simpler or lower to a more advanced, mature, or complex form or stage”.

What is a more advanced and mature stage?This seems obvious, but is really difficult to realize that we will never get to that stage if we only care about ourserlves, instead of  looking at the big picture. To define this more advanced and mature stage, all the 193 United Nations countries agreed eight international development goals to achieve by the year 2015:

-Goal 1: End poverty and hunger. Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day.

-Goal 2: Universal education. Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

-Goal 3: Gender equality. Eliminate gender dispatiry in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015.

-Goal 4: Child health. Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.

-Goal 5: Maternal health. Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio.

-Goal 6: Combate HIV/AIDS. Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.

-Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability. Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources.

-Goal 8: Global partnership. Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system.

These objectives encourage a sustainable development based on the improvement of life condition in the poorest countries, mainly because a little change in those countries can make a real difference, when there are 1,300 million people whose income is less than $1 a day.

Regarding Eastern Asia, the progression since 1990 has been one of the most encouraging in all the 8 goals:

-Reduction from 60% to 16% the people whose income is less than $1 a day

-Improvement from 95% to 96% the net enrolment ratio in primary education

-Reduction from 45% to 19% the under-five mortality rate

-Reduction from 110 to 41 the maternal deaths per 100,000 live births

-The HIV incidence has remained the same (0.01 new infections per 100 people per year), but it is the lowest in all the developing countries

Our duty as a global society is to provide a real equal opportunities life to all of the members of humankind, regardless where they live or where they were born.

THAT IS  the more advanced and mature stage, let’s work on it.

Pablo Gonzalez

Sustainability 2011-2012

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