Millennium Goals

May 31, 2013 Editorial

We, along with the rest of the developing world, are two years away from the deadline of achieving the “Millennium Goals”. Back in 2000, in the euphoria of welcoming a new millennium, and not coincidentally, in the midst of an unprecedented wave of prosperity, the rich nations had joined in solidarity with the poorer ones at the UN and had pledged to work together to ensure that the eight goals established – constituting the barest minimum required to facilitate some kind of equity of development in a globalising world – would be reached.
The eight goals were: To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; to achieve universal primary education; to promote gender equality and empower women; to reduce child mortality; to improve maternal health; to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; to ensure environmental sustainability and finally, to develop a global partnership for development. All the goals are laudable and if nothing else, they have forced governments to at least make some efforts towards their achievement.
The one that has lagged the most has been the promise of the rich and most developed countries “to develop a global partnership for development”. Even before their recession kicked in during 2008, they had already started to dig their heels in as far as an equitable trading system, which would have done the most to let poorer countries achieve every one of the other Millennium Goals.
The Doha Round of the WTO negotiations, kicked off in 2001, was explicitly designated as the “Development Round” since the agenda was tied to the needs of the lesser developed countries. But the developed countries, led by the US, refused to remove subsidies on a host of products that in the end stunted the growth of the poorer countries struggling to compete in the world market in these products such as rum, as in the case of Guyana.
On the goal of “environmental sustainability” here again the US has led the way in thwarting the efforts of the rest of the world in creating a healthy world that would be still available to future generations. The US refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and has been in the forefront of stymieing efforts to have a new Protocol in place. It has insisted on setting new goalposts with the development of China and India into industrial powerhouses and now large emitters.
The US ignored the fact that it has been the driver in the development of China’s manufacturing might and has been the major beneficiary. Initiatives such as “Cap and Trade” of pollution that would have also benefited countries such as Guyana that are low polluters and possess large carbon sinks have also been placed on hold.
But the goal, “to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger” is so basic a human need that it can serve as a reliable guide to the achievement of the overall effort in or country. Initially there were three targets established: to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015; to halve the proportion of people suffering from hunger during the same time frame and to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people.
In Guyana, the first survey to give us a handle on our situation was conducted in 1993, and then again in 1999, when two measures for poverty were established: “moderate poverty” and “extreme poverty”. In 1993, 43.2% of Guyanese were moderately poor in 1993 and by 1999, that had dropped to 36.1%. In extreme poverty, the comparable figures were 28.7% and 18.6%. The government accurately points out that by 2015 it only has to reduce the extreme poverty figure by another 4% to meet the halving of the 1993 figure of 28.7%. But it is still a bitter pill to swallow when 14.3 percent of Guyanese will not even have G$280 a day to feed themselves in 2015.
But after that initial drop between 1993 and 1999 both poverty rates levelled off to 2006, and we might still not achieve even that goal.

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