Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The 'humanization' of sustainable development: the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs)
In September 2000, at the United Nations Millennium Summit, world leaders agreed
on eight measurable Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015, in
addition to outlining broad commitments to human rights, good governance and
democracy. Official United Nations figures indicated the existence of vast inequalities
in an increasingly affluent world - 113 million children do not go to school, over
a billion people earn less than $1 a day, 11 million children die before they are five
and preventable diseases devastate many populations. Inequality and injustice clearly
go hand in hand but the Millennium Declaration, as with so many international
agreements, was the product of extended dialogue, detailed negotiation and frustrating
compromise (United Nations, 2000).
The Millennium Development Goals include:
•
halving extreme poverty and hunger;
•
achieving universal primary education;
•
empowering women and achieving gender equality;
•
reducing mortality for the under-fives by two-thirds;
•
reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters;
•
reversing the spread of major diseases, especially HIV/AIDS and malaria;
•
ensuring environmental sustainability;
•
creating global partnerships for development with targets for trade, aid and debt
relief.
By 2006, it was also clear that progress towards meeting these goals was slow
and uneven (United Nations, 2006) with Asia seeing the greatest reduction in poverty
though chronic hunger was still widespread in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. There
were significant increases in universal primary education, particularly in India,
although urban and gender inequalities remained serious problems. Women's position
in the labour market, and child and maternal mortality rates had improved slightly,
although reproductive healthcare services were very poor in many regions. The
incidence of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria was still high. The rate of deforesta-
tion had slowed down but forest loss continued. Half of all developing nations still
lacked basic sanitation systems and development assistance from the more affluent
nations had increased but was still below the targets set a few years earlier. Some
14 per cent of the global population had Internet access, but a digital divide was
perceived as separating the developing from developed nations, with over 50 per
cent of the population in developed regions using the Web as opposed to 7 per cent
in developing regions (less than 1 per cent in the least developed nations). Two years
earlier the Human Development Report for 2004 had also noted uneven progress,
stating soberly that:
at the current pace Sub-Saharan Africa will not meet the goal for universal
primary education until 2129 or the goal for reducing child mortality by two-
thirds until 2106 - 100 years away, rather than the 11 called for by the goals.
In three of the goals - hunger, income poverty and access to sanitation - no
date can be set because the situation in the region is worsening, not improving.
(Fukuda-Parr, 2004: 132)
