After 2015, we need a new set of millennium development goals that apply to all countries

 

 

This new set of universal goals should address the issues of inequality and the world's present rate of consumption of limited commodities

 

Jonathan Glennie Wednesday 3 November 2010 09.31 GMT guardian.co.uk

 

 

Villagers in Matongo, Zambia look at new insecticide-treated nets given to them by members of the Roll Back Malaria Expedition. Photograph: Kim Ludbrook/EPA

Six weeks after the UN summit on the millennium development goals (MDGs) in New York, the discussion has turned to what happens after the deadline on 31 December 2015. Everyone has an opinion, but I haven't yet seen someone suggest the most fundamental and important step forward of all: a renewed set of MDGs should apply to all countries, not just so-called "developing countries" (an unhelpful and patronising term that we should anyway have stopped using by now).
One problem with the present set of MDGs is the impression given that it is only the developed countries that are helping poor countries. Read MDG8, which calls for a "global partnership for development", and you would be forgiven for believing that only the world's richest countries act in solidarity with the poorest.
In reality, even before the financial crisis hit, and more so in its aftermath, middle-income countries have been vital co-operators in trade and aid to the world's poorest countries. This is not only true of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries, whose contribution is well-known, but smaller countries also play a part; such as Cuba, which has been exporting highly qualified doctors to help in poor communities abroad for many years. It is not a question of the rich helping the poor, but everyone helping each other.
The greater problem, however, is that the MDGs development targets (MDGs 1-7) apply only to "developing countries", leaving the entirely false implication that "developed countries" no longer have anything to improve on. Next time we draw up some global targets, all countries should be treated the same, all with targets to meet at home, and all with a responsibility to offer help and solidarity abroad.
What should the world's post-2015 goals relate to? First, inequality. Most of the feedback so far on the MDGs has expressed concern that while progress is being made to meet poverty targets, this is often coming at the expense of rising inequality – it is easier to bring the not-so-poor just above the poverty line, than to reach the very poorest. There are no incentives to reduce inequality, although almost everyone recognises it as a fundamental factor behind poverty and conflict in and across societies.
Second, sustainability. Besides focusing on climate change, because the level of carbon emissions in the world is unsustainable and threatens stability and poverty reduction, we should also focus on the world's present rate of consumption of minerals, fish, water and many other limited commodities. Our consumption is unsustainable and will increasingly contribute to tension, conflict and injustice.
Lord Malloch-Brown, head of the UN development programme in 2000 and joint-author of the MDGs, tells a story of how he was going to print the final MDG draft when he met the then head of the UN environment programme on the way to the printer and said something like, "Blast, I've forgotten the environment," and went back and added MDG7. Things have moved on since then, and it is no longer possible to talk about development without integrating environmental sustainability and resource constraints. And yet the countries being held to account for MDG7 are the countries causing the least harm, while the richest countries, which are consuming far more per person have escaped targets. All countries, rich and poor, need to consider sustainability of the world's resources in their growth and development plans. Global targets would help.
There are very great political barriers to agreeing world targets on these issues, not least because there is not yet political consensus on either. Some argue that rising inequality is not a problem, others that man-made climate change is a plot. But the moral and scientific cases are made more clearly each year. We have five years to convince the remaining sceptics. Alongside targets on inequality and sustainability, there should still be targets on absolute poverty, as the job of the first set of MDGs will not yet have been completed.
While goals such as these would signify a global effort to tackle the biggest challenges of our time, they would also signal an important cultural shift. Rather than presenting the world as divided between developed countries and the rest, which are seeking to reach developed status, it presents a world where leadership is not so clear cut. While the rich world will score very well on poverty indicators, and will rightly offer to help other countries to improve, it will score poorly on sustainability, and only averagely on equality. On both, it would be wise to seek advice from other countries that have set out fairer and more environmentally sustainable development plans.
Agreeing the MDGs in 2000 was an historic step forward which we sometimes take for granted. All the countries of the world stated common development aims, as they did for human rights about 50 years beforehand. But a new set of MDGs applying to all countries would signify an even more historic shift and would demonstrate that western countries, dominant for so long, were embracing a more balanced and equal world, where we all have things to learn and in which all countries, crucially, are still developing.