Ten years after the world’s nations pledged to cut deeply into the problems afflicting the world’s poor by 2015, a Millennium Development Goals Summit is being held at the United Nations today through Wednesday to assess progress. The event overlaps with a batch of related meetings in New York City, including Climate Week and the Clinton Global Initiative.
To mark the occasion, Olav Kjorven, assistant secretary general of the United Nations for development policy, submitted a comment on my recent post asking if the world’s wealthiest people need new goals even as rich countries work to foster human and environmental progress elsewhere.
I’m featuring it below as a “ Your Dot” contribution. Also, I encourage you to read Bono’s Op-Ed contribution from the weekend with his three-point list, which includes a riff on the vital role of “governance as an effect multiplier.” He alludes to an earlier column in which he described how some Africans he’s met see “corruption as more deadly than the deadliest of diseases.”
Here’s Kjorven’s reaction to my question about the need for new goals for the top billion:
Andrew, this is a great question. On the eve of the largest gathering of world leaders ever, in New York next week, it is also most timely.
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re part of the world’s top billion people — those whose incomes (and opportunities) seem worlds apart from those of the bottom billion, who earn less than $1.25 a day. The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were established as globally shared commitments back in the year 2000, in order to improve opportunities and livelihoods for essentially the bottom billion, and with a target date of 2015. In fact, much and impressive progress has been made over the last ten years, but the fact remains that countries both north and south must do more than they’re doing to ensure that the Goals are met by 2015. The MDG Summit this week in New York is about strengthening will and commitments exactly for this. Achieving the eight MDG goals within the next five years – targeting poverty, gender inequality, lack of education and health services, and a deteriorating environment in poor countries – must be a global top priority. It’s a moral issue, and at the end of the day it is in everybody’s best interest.
However, looking beyond the next five years, wouldn’t it be interesting if the rich world — or the top billion if you wish — would commit to its own eight goals to strive towards, goals that could help us secure livable conditions for a growing world population for decades to come? Here’s a very rough first cut of what eight such goals for the world’s top billion for the coming 20 years could look like. It would be great to get some help in improving and refining them—if they get compelling enough they would get traction!
Goal 1: Cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent. This means transformation of economies, but it is clearly within reach if there’s political will. A reduction of this order in the rich world is necessary to stave off the risk of serious climate disruption with dramatic implications worldwide. It is also necessary for improved energy security and enhanced global stability.
Goal No. 2: Convert at least 40 percent of agricultural lands to ecologically sustainable production, with minimized use of agro-chemicals, and expanded use of techniques that reduce soil erosion and run-off and that maintain high levels of biodiversity.
Goal No. 3: Transition 13 of the 22 million boats fishing into alternate activity in order to save and replenish depleted global fish and seafood stocks and ensure sustainability of global fisheries. Today, one billion people depend on the oceans for their daily protein intake – a reliance that will grow dramatically by 2030. If a corresponding increase in fish stocks doesn’t happen, the population that relies on seafood will be forced to seek other means of survival, putting even more pressure on other sources of food and the ecosystems supporting them.
Goal No. 4: Reduce average animal protein intake among the top billion by 20 percent. By getting this intake instead from vegetables, grains and fruits, we will reduce the environmental strain of meat, poultry and fishing industries.
Goal No. 5: Shift the tax burden from work to consumption, depletion and contamination of natural capital. Develop additional policies and incentives that can facilitate pursuit of happiness without cost or destruction to the natural world and to peoples and societies elsewhere.
Goal No. 6: Make the rules and support systems around intellectual property rights more supportive of research and development overall and of lowering the barriers to participation in innovation for the common good. Enhance opportunities for all to participate in innovation.
Goal No. 7: Strengthen transparency rules and anti-corruption measures around resource extraction, control predatory currency speculation through a responsibly regulated financial sector, and make macro/monetary policy consistent with needs for global financial balance.
Goal No. 8: Fully meet existing MDG8 commitments and go beyond them in order to accelerate the global fight against poverty. Meeting commitments on aid, trade, debt relief and technology is as important as ever.
These eight goals — or something like them — would safeguard prosperity and opportunities for our children and our children’s children. It’s a responsibility that we can’t afford to pass up.
The United Nations has a blog seeking ideas for meeting the 2015 deadline. Weigh in there, and here of course.
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