Improving the lives of the poor

A report card on the Millennium Development Goals by Dr Matthew Clarke from Deakin University, and colleague Dr Simon Feeny from RMIT

In September 2000, Australia joined with 190 other countries at the United Nations Millennium Summit in committing the international community to improve the lives of the poor by 2015 through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

We are now past the half way mark to their achievement and in September, the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd returned to the United Nations with other world leaders to review progress towards these global goals.

The MDGs are a set of eight internationally agreed goals to improve the well-being of the poor in developing countries. The MDGs are designed to address many of the multidimensional aspects of poverty and include:
(1) eradicating extreme income poverty and hunger;
(2) achieving universal primary education;
(3) promoting gender equality;
(4) reducing child mortality;
(5) improving maternal health;
(6) combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases;
(7) ensuring environmental sustainability;
(8) developing a global partnership for development.

The MDGs emanated from a number of international conferences during the 1990s, which themselves drew on pre-existing goals and targets dating back to aspirations espoused by the international community before World War II.

The importance of the MDGs lies in the fact that for the first time, the international community actually set itself both targets and timelines for improving the lives of the poor. Such consensus had never before been reached.

In the Asia-Pacific region, some strong progress towards the achievement of the MDGs has been made. Until recently, the region as a whole was on track to achieve the first MDG of reducing by half the proportion of people living in poverty. This was due to remarkable progress made by the region’s two largest developing economies: China; and India. However, many recent gains in poverty reduction and falls in malnutrition have been wiped out by this year’s food crisis and increases in oil prices. The possibility of recessions in many of the world’s economies also threatens further progress towards the goals.

So while there are still seven years left to achieve the MDGs, it is unlikely that all developing countries will achieve all the goals, with many poorer countries failing to achieve any of them.

Responsibility for MDG achievement lies with both developed and developing countries. Developed countries have obligations to increase the level and quality of their foreign assistance, provide greater access to their domestic markets and reduce the debt burden of their development partners. Recent increases in Australia’s aid program have therefore been important.

At the same time, responsibility for achieving the MDGs rests largely with the governments of developing countries and requires a strengthening of their own commitment to poverty reduction.

It is now also necessary that consideration be given to revising the goals and targets to reflect changing global circumstances but also the different development challenges faced by developing countries.

Development goals are important and rather than abandon the MDGs because it is unlikely they will be achieved, the answer lies in tailoring them to specific country contexts.

What matters is the existence of appropriate, mutually agreed upon targets that governments and the international community can work towards. This will lead to greater action to achieve them.

Given the importance of ownership for successful development, tailored goals and targets should be devised by developing countries themselves and incorporated into their national development strategies. The goals should then become the focus of foreign aid donor activities, being explicitly incorporated into their policies and programs. The international community should have no excuse for not backing country owned, ambitious but achievable development targets.

A few countries in the Asia-Pacific have taken this lead. Papua New Guinea has tailored its MDGs, making some targets less ambitious but more realistic for the country to achieve by 2015. Conversely Thailand is expected to achieve all of the goals before 2015 and has therefore tailored the goals to be more ambitious. Thailand’s tailored goals include reducing poverty to less than 4 per cent by 2009 and achieving universal secondary education by 2015. Not only might the goals need to be tailored but additional goals might need to be added. Cambodia, for example has included a goal for zero impact from landmines.

It may also be appropriate for new global MDGs to be added that consider the plight of the chronically poor or those with disabilities.
This week’s United Nations’ ‘Call to Action on the MDGs’ must therefore recommit the international community to improving the lives of the poor, but also provide flexibility for individual countries to establish country specific goals and development targets. Australia has an important role in this revitalization of the MDGs in our region and Mr Rudd’s presence at the United Nations this week is a very important first step.

Dr Matthew Clarke and Dr Simon Feeny are publishing a book on the achievement of the MDGs later this year.

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