Yesterday was the final day of the critical UN millennium development goals (MDGs) summit, where world leaders gathered to review progress against ambitious targets including halving world poverty, achieving universal primary education, fighting killer diseases, empowering women, and delivering water and sanitation, all by 2015. The outcomes are crucial to gaining increased support and momentum towards these and other MDG aspirations.
Last week, I was privileged to speak at an event convened by Bond (the membership body for 370 UK NGOs working in international development), where Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, and Andrew Mitchell, the secretary of state for international development, set out the UK government's plans for the summit, with a focus on maternal mortality and malaria. It is vital we make progress in these areas: every minute, a woman dies from a pregnancy or child-related cause, and malaria causes nearly a million deaths each year.
For progress to be made on these and other targets, policymakers need to recognise that the MDGs are interwoven. So, when a particular target is very off track, it holds back all the others. Good management of water resources and proper drainage, for example, can make a real difference in reducing transmission of malaria and other water-borne diseases, while progress on maternal health and mortality requires not only improved healthcare systems, but also safe sanitation, water and sound hygiene practices to ensure infection-free births and good chances of child survival in the first month of life.
Without sanitation, safe water and hygiene, we will fail to reach the MDGs across large parts of the developing world. In Nigeria, where I live, the statistics on water and sanitation are shocking: only half the population has access to safe water, and less than a third has proper sanitation. As a result, 150,000 children under the age of five die every year from diarrhoea. In Africa, diarrhoea is now the biggest killer of children, claiming the lives of almost one in five children before their fifth birthday - more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
With a population of 140m, Nigeria has the third highest number of people living in poverty of any country in the world. It will be difficult to claim successful delivery of global MDG ambitions without achieving success in Nigeria. Yet according to the national 2010 countdown strategy, achieving the MDGs could cost as much as $170bn by 2015. A substantial portion of this is expected to come from the oil and gas industries. Government revenues are estimated at around $40bn a year, but with such a huge population, there is a vast shortfall to make up.
Last week in London, I asked Mr Clegg whether the UK government had any plans to breathe new life into the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The body was set up by the previous UK government to set a global standard for transparency in oil, gas and mining, and he has promised me he will look into it. Although the EITI does not carry a high profile in terms of the MDGs, for a country like Nigeria it has huge potential to make a difference.
The UK has a role to play by supporting the implementation of the Nigerian EITI. I would ask Mr Clegg to ensure that the UK government promotes financial transparency of UK-regulated companies operating in Africa with a zero-tolerance approach to bribery and corruption. If the UK government can help ensure British (and other OECD) companies meet their obligations in respect to the transparency initiative, they will be doing an important service for the poor of Nigeria.
It is clear that Nigeria will only deliver MDG progress if the revenues from oil and gas are directed by the government - at national, regional and local levels - to where the need is greatest. Those areas include tackling extreme poverty and hunger, strengthening health and education, diversifying our economy, bringing greater gender equality and delivering sustainable access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene.
However, oil and gas revenues alone will not be sufficient for meeting Nigeria's MDGs by 2015. Action and reform are urgently needed across many policy areas, but Nigeria also needs international aid – to strengthen governance and institutions and address the overwhelming levels of poverty. There must be a sense of urgency and even impatience to address the lagging and critical sectors, such as sanitation, if world leaders are to honour the promises they have made and stop Africa losing too many of our children for lack of the bare essentials such as safe water and sanitation.
With only five years to go to 2015, and many MDGs off track, progressive UK leadership on development is needed more than ever to help accelerate progress towards attaining the vital, and achievable, millennium development goals.
• Juanita During is head of governance at WaterAid in Nigeria. She joined WaterAid in January 2008, having previously spent seven years with Unicef in Nigeria.
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