Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals are important. They consist of eight, time bound objectives for the global community to achieve - across a breadth of issues - disease, education, poverty, environment. There has been close to universal acceptance of the goals and the timeframe for delivery - 2015. Even the U.S. has signed up to this one.

They are important to me because they make an unequivocal statement that development is worth paying for - and the entire global community believes this is the case. Support for development is not an optional extra - a charity issue - to be supported in times of plenty. It is a core objective - signed up to by all our governments.

Of course, signing up and putting your money where your mouth is are two very different things. Most wealthy countries are not yet close to providing the 0.7% of GDP in Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) that they signed up to. Sadly, as so often, the U.S. is near the bottom of the list in the percentage of GDP that is provides (although in absolute terms, the U.S does provide significant support).

What interests me is how we are going to meet the MDGs without compromising other global challenges - such as climate change - and resolve the question of ensuring access to dwindling (or increasingly expensive) energy resources for all. There is ample academic literature out there that shows the link between energy and development. Access to affordable energy is critical. The global community has signed up to drive the development agenda forwards (requiring a significant increase in energy access through the developing world) at exactly the same time that it is trying to reduce the consumption of fossil fuel energy to combat climate change and as the concentration of remaining energy sources and expected price increases are making it increasingly uncertain that sufficient energy will be readily available in the developing world.

How do we simultaneously solve for all these objectives? What has to give?

Next time: a few first thoughts on climate change - the third big piece of the puzzle.