One Geek

This weekend saw us cross the half way point for the Millennium Development Goals aimed at halving poverty. We are not halfway, not even close in my books. If we are going to get there it’s going to take a lot more effort and energy from everyone.

Here is the good news:

The proportion of people living in extreme poverty fell from nearly a third to less than one fifth between 1990 and 2004. If the trend is sustained, the MDG poverty reduction target will be met for the world as a whole and for most regions.

The number of extremely poor people in sub-Saharan Africa has levelled off, and the poverty rate has declined by nearly six percentage points since 2000. Nevertheless, the region is not on track to reach the Goal of reducing poverty by half by 2015.

Progress has been made in getting more children into school in the developing world. Enrolment in primary education grew from 80 per cent in 1991 to 88 per cent in 2005. Most of this progress has taken place since 1999.

Women’s political participation has been growing, albeit slowly. Even in countries where previously only men were allowed to stand for political election, women now have a seat in parliament.

Child mortality has declined globally, and it is becoming clear that the right life-saving interventions are proving effective in reducing the number of deaths due to the main child killers – such as measles.

Key interventions to control malaria have been expanded.

The tuberculosis epidemic, finally, appears on the verge of decline, although progress is not fast enough to halve prevalence and death rates by 2015.

The bad

Over half a million women still die each year from treatable and preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth. The odds that a woman will die from these causes in sub- Saharan Africa are 1 in 16 over the course of her lifetime, compared to 1 in 3,800 in the developed world.

If current trends continue, the target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed by 30 million children, largely because of slow progress in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The number of people dying from AIDS worldwide increased to 2.9 million in 2006, and prevention measures are failing to keep pace with the growth of the epidemic. In 2005, more than 15 million children had lost one or both
parents to AIDS.

Half the population of the developing world lack basic sanitation. In order to meet the MDG target, an additional 1.6 billion people will need access to improved sanitation over the period 2005-2015. If trends since 1990 continue, the world is likely to miss the target by almost 600 million people.

To some extent, these situations reflect the fact that the benefits of economic growth in the developing world have been unequally shared. Widening income inequality is of particular concern in Eastern Asia, where the share of consumption of the poorest people declined dramatically between 1990 and 2004.

Most economies have failed to provide employment opportunities to their youth, with young people more than three times as likely as adults to be unemployed.

Warming of the climate is now unequivocal. Emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary contributor to global climate change, rose from 23 billion metric tons in 1990 to 29 billion metric tons in 2004. Climate change is projected to have serious economic and social impacts, which will impede progress towards the MDGs.

Millennium Development Goals Report 2007

What you’re still here?

Sadly all that really needs for the MDG’s to happen is for governments and their peoples around the world in both rich and poor countries to honour their commitments to people who are suffering and dying far to early for very stupid and preventable reasons. Australia needs to get to 0.7 GNI as it promised years ago which ain’t happening, butat least Rudd is showing some good signs.

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