Trade liberalization has the potential to offer tremendous opportunities for South Asia by opening up lucrative new markets, generating foreign exchange, and stimulating the agricultural sector that provides the majority of the world's poor people with their livelihoods.
India is playing an important role in building such a coalition of developing countries and tilting the power dynamics in their favor through its strong role in the G-20. A growing role in global forum such as the World Trade Organization is a part of global responsibility that comes with India's size and position in the world.
There are certain things that can be done to attain MDG and fight poverty.
Increasing public investment in agricultural research and development, infrastructure, health, and education is critical to improving the standard of living for South Asia's poor. The effectiveness of these investments, however, is closely linked to the quality of institutions that accompany them. Currently, there is ample room to strengthen public institutions and governance in most developing countries. The crippling effects of corruption and poor capacity continue to undermine already scarce public resources and hinder efforts to address poverty and hunger throughout the world.
Promoting transparency and accountability, competent public administration, and the rule of law must be at the forefront of development policies. Not only will better governance allow public investments to be more productive, but it will also help optimize their allocation by giving voice to poor people and engaging them in public policy processes. Given its mission to provide developing countries with sustainable policy solutions to end hunger and poverty, IFPRI does not overlook the central role of governance and institutions. Much of our research has revolved around these issues and will continue to do so in the years to come.
- Incorporate gender specific education and training in the work of NGOs, Government and development agencies in order to enable them to better incorporate a gender equality perspective in their work.
- Support and undertake disability awareness education among women’s movements and organizations in order that they more actively and effectively include participation of women with disabilities.
- Encourage the Commission on the Status of Women to address the issue of double and multiple discrimination experienced by women with disabilities living in the poorest communities.
- Promote systematic compilation of disaggregated data on women with disabilities
- Ensure that all funding programmers make gender and disability mainstreaming a precondition
- Support empowerment strategies and initiatives for women with disabilities that give particular attention to leadership and skills training to ensure that women with disabilities can take advantage of opportunities and rise to senior positions
- Pro-actively involve women with disabilities in the consultation processes between international donors, Government and civil society. Women with disabilities know their problems best and should therefore be given opportunities to participate in the identification, formulation and implementation of strategies and approaches to address the problems and challenges they experience
- Make gender equality also a man’s issue - not only a woman’s issue.
Energy efficiency is essentially using less energy to provide the same service. In this sense, energy efficiency can also be thought of as a supply resource – often considered an important, cost effective near- to mid-term supply option. Investments in energy efficiency can provide additional economic value by preserving the resource base and (especially combined with
pollution prevention technologies) mitigating environmental problems. Improvements in energy efficiency can produce direct environmental benefits in a number of ways, not only reducing pollution but also delaying the need to develop new fuel resources. In addition, energy efficiency improvements can considerably reduce the cost of pollution
Industrial, commercial, and consumer equipment today can be as much as 80% more efficient than equipment installed just twenty years ago. For example, improved efficiency in any power plant can produce significant reductions in CO2 emissions. Typically, a 1% point gain in efficiency reduces CO2 output by 2%. Efficiency can also be increased at the point of consumption. For example, compact fluorescent lamps are available which use 75% less electricity than conventional light bulbs, and last much longer, while providing light of a similar quality. Although cost-effective over the lifetime of the bulb, compact lamps are not used everywhere due to the greater initial cost.
sustainable development:
Access to Energy is a crucial enabling condition for achieving sustainable development. Prudent energy policies and research can play an important role in steering both industrialized and developing countries onto more sustainable energy development paths. Specifically, they can strengthen the three pillars of sustainable development: the economy, by boosting productivity; social welfare, by improving living standards and enhancing safety and security; and the environment, by reducing indoor and outdoor pollution and remediating environmental degradation.
This is an example of one of the major barriers to greater energy efficiency - capital outlay. The ability to use the full range of market based energy and energy technology resources, along with cleaner technologies and fuel systems, will help drive the innovation needed to optimize business and societal activities within the framework of sustainable development Current government policy on the use of ICTs is primarily directed towards the management of telecommunications infrastructure. Rural populations are disadvantaged with regard to access to information and supporting ICTs.
There is a need for broad-based and equitable access to ICTs in rural areas consistent with ongoing processes of decentralisation, democratisation and policy revisions, in the context of global and national governance considerations. There is a further need for the adjustment of policies and awareness-raising with respect to capacity building in the context of emerging ICT opportunities.
Information and communication technologies (ICTs), and particularly the Internet, are transforming broad areas where information is a central activity, including rural development and food security. The transformation is based on the opportunities for individuals and communities to be information producers as well as consumers and which builds on and integrates the capacities of other media (e.g. radio and television). This enables increasingly low-cost access and distribution of information and also facilitates interactive participation in the creation and use of information. In this process there is a priority role for generating and distributing public information. This in turn is transforming organisations everywhere who create, manage and distribute information.
A specific policy regime needs to be established to ensure equitable access for rural populations to information and ICTs.
There is a need to move away from centrally maintained reservoirs of information towards an approach which links widely distributed information resources from a variety of providers.
The realization of the opportunities offered by ICTs for rural development and food security require a culture of information and new skills.There is a need to build awareness among decision makers and stakeholders, including regional organizations, on the need for investment in ICT capacity building at all levels of formal and non-formal education. This includes training development workers to incorporate ICTs in their activities. Furthermore, emphasis should be placed on training women and youth in using ICTs and ensuring the inclusion of disadvantaged groups.
There is currently a shortage of content, applications and access to existing data of particular interest to rural development and food security. Beyond physical access, data need to be timely, retrievable and easily applied by a broad range of users. There is now the opportunity for participation by small and decentralized content providers, ensuring that information is available in local languages and reflects local cultures.
My role includes talking as much as possible to the media in every country and encouraging them to cover MDG issues.
We can try to educate as many people as we can about the different problems human race is facing right now and different ways to get over it. For eg. people can be taught about family planning and sanitation which is a big problem and the main cause of poverty.
We can also help by donating money to NGO’s and other governmental organizations. There are many greeting card that donate part of the money to organizations like CRY.
Recommendations:
[www.make-development-inclusive.org]
[United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Human Development Report, 1999, Oxford U. Press, New York (1999).]
[www.helsinkiconference.f i]
[www.make-development-inclusive.org]
[http://www.worldbank.org/gender/resources/gendermdg.pdf]
[http://www.apdip.net/documents/mdg/analysis/unict18112004.pdf]
[http://www.fao.org/sd/CDdirect/CDre0055c.htm]
