Sustainability: Millenium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) have been established at the United Nations Millennium Summit that occurred in 2000. All leaders present have adopted them and agreed to achieve them by 2015. The UN leads the MDG’s but the idea came also from OECD, World Bank and the IMF. The main incentive to implement them was the growing criticism of the Official Development Assistance (ODA). The MDG’s has three main points that they focus on: increasing human capital or sometimes even creating it (access to healthcare and improving nutrition), improving infrastructure and increasing social, economic and political rights.

Those main ideas were divided into 8 goals; within each of them has also its main targets:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day
• Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people
• Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

1. 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

1. 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

1. Reduce child mortality rates

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

1. Improve maternal health

• Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio
• Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health

1. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

• Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
• Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it
• Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases

1. Ensure environmental sustainability

• Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources
• Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss
• Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
• By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

1. Develop a global partnership for development

• Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system
• Address the special needs of the least developed countries, landlocked countries and small island developing states
• Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt
• In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

I would like to go through a short analysis how did the MDG’s influence the development of countries in the North African region.

Goal 1

As far as the first target is concerned the percentage of extreme poor people has decrease by 2 percentage points from 5 to 3. But it’s still not getting to the 2015 target which is set at 2,5%. North Africa is one of the regions that the proportion of employment to the population is actually growing. It has grown by 3 percentage points since 1990. Speaking of hunger, North Africa do not has much problems with that issue because only 5% or less of population is undernourished. However, the proportion of underweight children has still to drop by 16%.

Goal 2

The enrolment ratio in primary education in North Africa is pretty high, because it has reached 94% in 2009. Also the youth literacy ratio has grown from 68% to 87%, which is the best result from the regions involved in the MDG’s.

Goal 3

As everybody know traditionally in Islamic countries women has less voice then men. It is visible in the gender disparity in education. As in primary and secondary education it is not that visible, the tertiary education is far from where the target is set. Per 100 men there are 74 women and the target are set between 97 and 103.

Goal 4

The mortality rate of under-five children is declining continuously in every region. North Africa is the only region that has already reached its 2015 targets. The mortality ratio has decreased from 80 deaths per 1,000 births to 26. This ratio is highly correlated with the secondary or tertiary education of children mothers, which in North Africa is high compared to other parts in the world.

Goal 5

Mother mortality ratio is also going down in the world. North Africa is one of the better doing regions in this aspect. The ratio has been decreased from 230 to 92 deaths per 100,000 live births. It is mostly due to the improvement of healthcare. The proportion of deliveries attended by skilled health personnel can prove it, because it has grown from 45% to 81%. Also the high quality service for pregnant women has grown a lot in North Africa. The proportion of women that have been approached four or more times during pregnancy has grown from 20% to 57%.

Goal 6

The number of HIV incidence has decreased worldwide by 25% in the past 10 years. In North Africa is not a big problem, because there are 0.1 new HIV incidences per 100 persons aged between 15 – 49. The percentage of people with HIV who are receiving antiretroviral treatment have grown by 15 percentage points up to 25%. This far from achieving a universal access to this special treatment, but it is probably caused by the fact that in North Africa the presence of AIDS is scarce. Number of people infected by tuberculosis in that region also went down by around 60% to achieve 2 deaths caused by this disease per 100,000 persons.  Worldwide, since 1995, thanks to effective international strategy towards tuberculosis abatement 6 million lives were saved.

Goal 7

All Africa is one of the regions that are loosing forest areas. In the years 2000-2009 the net change amounted to 3.4%. This is also related to GHG emissions besides the economic growth. Northern Africa CO2 emissions are now at the level of 0.5 billions metric tones. One of the biggest problems in environmental sustainability in this region is the use of renewable water sources. They are withdrawing surface and ground waters in a quantity that stands for 92% of all internal renewable water resources. Access to sanitation facilities has also grown a lot in Northern Africa. Share of people that have this possibility is now at the level of 89% at has acceded the 2015 target by 3 percentage points. In the world there are still 2.6 billion people that still lack of flush toilets. As far as slums population is concerned the trends are similar in the whole world. Population in those areas is growing, however the proportion of this population in the total city inhabitants is decreasing.

Goal 8

This goal is mostly related to developed countries actions. It is focused on increasing the efficiency of ODA given by developed countries. The UN want to increase the share of ODA that are addressed to Least Developed Countries (LDC’s). The G20 countries are also working on creating a more equal financial system in needed regions in order to improve the distribution of public funds. The financial debt decrease in Northern Africa has been constant for the past years. Of course after 2009 we could notice a slight jump. Comparing the year 2000 with 2009 we have experienced a fall of 8.4 percentage points reaching a level of 6.9% of exports revenues.

Conclusions

Analyzing the MDG’s 2011 report I could notice that Northern Africa is doing very well compared to other regions. It is one of two or three regions that have already achieved some 2015 targets, which is a very good forecast for future. One of the biggest improvements has happened in healthcare access and its quality, which highly reflects on people quality of life and life expectancy.

References:

1. United Nations 2011. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2011. United Nations, New York.

2. Milenium Development Goals Official Site – http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

Comments Off on Sustainability: Millenium Development Goals / 17 Jan 2012 por Piotr Adam Lubiewa-Wielezynski
IMSD /

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