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Millennium Development Goals (MDG)

At the Millennium Summit in September 2000 147 heads of State and Government, and 189 nations in total, in the United Nations Millennium Declaration [A/RES/55/2] committed themselves to making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from want. . The Millennium Development Goals grew out of the agreements and resolutions of world conferences organized by the United Nations in the past decade. The objective of the Declaration is to promote "a comprehensive approach and a coordinated strategy, tackling many problems simultaneously across a broad front."

The Declaration calls for halving by the year 2015, the number of people who live on less than one dollar a day. Direct support from the richer countries, in the form of aid, trade, debt relief and investment is to be provided to help the developing countries.

The first seven goals are mutually reinforcing and are directed at reducing poverty in all its forms. The last goal-global partnership for development-is about the means to achieve the first seven.

To help track progress, the United Nations Secretariat and the specialized agencies of the UN system, as well as representatives of IMF, the World Bank and OECD defined a set of time-bound and measurable goals and targets)]. International experts also selected relevant indicators to be used to assess progress over the period from 1990 to 2015, when targets are expected to be met. Based on data from the 48 selected indicators, aggregated at global and regional levels each year, the Secretary-General will prepare a report on progress achieved.

Millennium Development Goals - Goals and targets

1.Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger-
  • Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day
  • Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

2. Achieve universal primary education
  • Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling

3. Promote gender equality and empower women
  • Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and in all levels of education no later than 2015

4. Reduce child mortality
  • Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate

5. Improve maternal health
  • Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
  • Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS

7. Ensure environmental sustainability
  • Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and program and reverse the loss of environmental resources
  • Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water
  • Have achieved, by 2020, a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

8. Develop a global partnership for development
  • Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system (includes a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction-both nationally and internationally)
  • Official development assistance
  • Address the special needs of the least developed countries (includes tariff-and quota-free access for exports enhanced program of debt relief for HIPC and cancellation of official bilateral debt, and more generous ODA for countries committed to poverty reduction)
  • Market access
  • Address the special needs of landlocked countries and small island developing states (through the Barbados Programme and 22nd General Assembly provisions
  • Debt sustainability
  • Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term
  • Other
  • In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth
  • In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries
  • In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

Country-level monitoring is an indispensable element in assessing progress towards the MDGs and in mobilizing resources to assist developing countries in meeting the targets. The United Nations Development Programme, assisted by other agencies and the United Nations Secretariat, is coordinating efforts and supporting the preparation of national monitoring reports in countries.

Out of the eight goals outlined in MDG of special interest to this website is the seventh goal, which emphasizes on the need to Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and program and reverse the loss of environmental resources. The environment provides goods and services that sustain human development so we must ensure that development sustains the environment. Better natural resource management increases the income and nutrition of poor people. It also reduces the risk of disaster from floods. Improved water and sanitation reduce child mortality, and better drainage reduces malaria. Managing and protecting the environment thus contribute to reaching the other Millennium Development Goals. Fortunately, good policies and economic growth, which work to improve peoples' lives, can also work to improve the environment.

So it is seen that Energy can play a crucial role in improving the lives of poor people across the world. Lack of access to adequate, affordable, reliable, safe and environmen-tally benign energy is a severe constraint on development. More than two billion people lack clean, safe cooking fuels and must depend on traditional biomass sources. Poor people see access to energy as a priority. And energy is not just about grid electricity, neither is grid electricity always the best energy source for all needs, biomass, kerosene and other sources are also equally important.

It is important to understand that people do not want energy in itself but for the services it provides - heat, light, warmth, water pumping, transport, etc. This can be made available to the people by fuels and fuel technology which will have a major impact in facilitating sustainable livelihoods, improving health and education and significantly reducing poverty. Different income groups have different requirements for which they use energy and,as income rises, they meet their needs with different energy sources and different conversion technologies. All the options should be considered for providing energy services to the poor, including renewable energy sources, traditional biomass, and fossil fuels combined with cleaner, more efficient energy technology. Reliance on fossil fuels and biomass will continue for many years, so development plans should include them in the overall energy strategy, particularly how to encourage more sustainable management and cleaner more efficient uses.

Related topics

External links and references

Millenium Development Goals

United Nations Millennium Development Goals

Millennium Development Goals

http://www.who.int/indoorair/

Contributors

User:Grant Ballard-Tremeer 21 August 2003

User:Dr Karabi Dutta 03 September 2003

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Page created: 21 August 2003; Last edited: 26 February 2004; Version: 4
Knowledge Bank text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Pagename: MillenniumDevelopmentGoals @HEDON: RBAA