The UN Millennium Development goals have set up these eight goals to eradicate the basic problems that are currently taking lives of loads of people and are finding ways to keep a check on them and eradicate them completely. The UN has a target date of 2015 which is agreed upon by all the world’s countries and the world’s leading development institutions. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest.
Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
- Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day
Success Stories
For the first time, many farmers were able to produce enough rice to feed their families and turn a profit at the market. Diversification into other products has become a reality for many, and long-sought-after conveniences such as indoor plumbing, beds and mobile telephones have been made possible thanks to the proceeds of NERICA.
Rice production in sub-Saharan Africa was being outstripped by rapid population growth by the mid-1990s. The resulting rice imports were taxing foreign reserves by nearly US$1 billion annually. Worse still, most rice producers were facing the unenviable choice between a high-yield species poorly adapted to African conditions (the Asian rice) and a well-adapted but low-yield species (the African rice). Enter NERICA, or New Rice for Africa – a hybrid between the Asian and African rice – a high-yielding, drought resistant and protein-rich variety that has contributed to food security and improved nutrition in several countries on the continent, including Congo Brazzaville, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Togo and Uganda. Today, 12 years after the debut of NERICA, some 18 varieties of the hybrid species have been made available to rice farmers across sub-Saharan Africa. For the first time, many farmers were able to produce enough rice to feed their families and turn a profit at the market. Diversification into other products has become a reality for many, and long-sought-after conveniences such as indoor plumbing, beds and mobile telephones have been made possible thanks to the proceeds of NERICA.
Micro-credit has helped jumpstart small businesses, providing decent livelihoods for Nepal's marginalized citizens.
Achieve Universal Primary Education- Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary education.
Success Stories
Public school enrolment in the most deprived districts and nationwide soared from 4.2 million to 5.4 million between 2004 and 2005.
In sub-Saharan Africa, school fees consume nearly a quarter of a poor family's income, paying not only for tuition, but also indirect fees such as Parent-Teacher Association and community contributions, textbook fees, compulsory uniforms and other charges. Fees are keeping school children out of the classrooms. Countries such as Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda have abolished school fees, which has led to a surge in enrolment: in Ghana.
Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
- Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.
Success Stories
Recently, Rwanda conducted elections for the Presidency and the parliament had a referendum on a new constitution. For the first time in Rwanda's history, free and fair elections were held. The new constitution guarantees a minimum of 30 percent of parliamentary seats and other leadership positions to women. Today, Rwanda has the highest number of women parliamentarians in the world with women constituting nearly 50 percent in the Chamber of Deputies and about 35 percent in the Senate. The Government of Rwanda also has 34 percent of women in its Cabinet. UNDP has been supporting the Rwanda Parliament, in particular the Rwanda Women Parliamentary Forum. In February 2007, the Forum held an international conference to share its experiences and to forge partnerships with development allies in the area of nation building. Speakers at the conference agreed that women play a critical role in the development of nations and in the attainment of the MDGs.
Reduce child mortality
Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five.
Success Stories
Viet Nam's Ministry of Health has eliminated maternal and neonatal tetanus, with support from WHO and UNICEF.
Viet Nam's Ministry of Health has eliminated maternal and neonatal tetanus, with support from WHO and UNICEF. A survey conducted by UNICEF, WHO and the Government of Viet Nam in three of Viet Nam's disadvantaged districts - Bao Yen and Bao Thang in Lao Cai Province, and Phuoc Long in Binh Phuoc Province - showed less than one neonatal tetanus death per 1000 live births in 2005. In the 1980s, some 20,000 Vietnamese babies died annually of tetanus before the age of one month. Since 1991, pregnant women have been vaccinated throughout Viet Nam through its Expanded Programme on Immunization, resulting in a high vaccination coverage rate. Viet Nam is the ninth country in the world, and the first East Asian country, within a priority group of 58 countries that has eliminated these diseases.
Through community outreach, supervision, training, and data collection and monitoring, massive immunization campaigns have reached vast numbers of children.
- Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio.
Success Stories
Today, maternal mortality reduction has become both a state and a national priority, which is reflected in the government's National Population Policy and National Health Policy.
Galvanizing support for maternal health is the goal of the UNFPA-led Campaign to End Fistula, which in 2006 worked in 40 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Arab States. The aim is to prevent and treat a terrible childbirth injury called fistula-a rupture in the birth canal that occurs during prolonged, obstructed labour and leaves women incontinent, isolated and ashamed. Most victims are poor, young and malnourished. Nine out of 10 fistulas can be successfully repaired. Since the launch of the campaign in 2003, UNFPA has assisted 30 countries to complete needs assessments. More than 20 countries have moved from assessment and planning to implementation.
Over the last four years in Rajasthan, the percentage of deliveries assisted by skilled birth attendants increased by more than 30 percent.
In rural India, one woman dies every five minutes giving birth, often due to poor health, unsafe home births and inadequate access to quality healthcare. In the country more than 100,000 women die every year due to childbirth-related causes. UNICEF has been working with the Government of India, health partners and donors to address this situation. The Women's Right for Life and Health project aims to ensure that women and their children, especially among the poorest communities receive adequate health care. Over the last four years in Rajasthan, for example, the percentage of deliveries assisted by skilled birth attendants increased by more than 30 percent. Communities have responded positively with a boost in voluntary blood donations for use during obstetric emergencies. Today, maternal mortality reduction has become both a state and a national priority, which is reflected in the government's National Population Policy and National Health Policy.
Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other Diseases
- Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
- Halt and begin to reverse the incidents of malaria and other major diseases
Success Stories
The government distributes free-of-charge insecticide-treated nets (ITN) to all pregnant women and to children under the age of five in many of the provinces in Mozambique.
Malaria kills a child in the world every 30 seconds. It infects 350-500 million people each year killing 1 million, mostly children, in Africa. Ninety percent of malaria deaths occur in Africa, where malaria accounts for about one in five of all childhood deaths. The disease also contributes greatly to anemia among children - a major cause of poor growth and development. In Mozambique, more children die of malaria than any other disease. It accounts for 60 percent of pediatric hospital admissions and 30 percent of hospital deaths, and it is a major reason why Mozambique still has one of the world's highest child mortality rates. Malaria is also deadly for pregnant women, who run the risk of severe anemia, which can be fatal. To prevent the spread of malaria, the government distributes free-of-charge insecticide-treated nets (ITN) to all pregnant women and to children under the age of five in many of the provinces. The bed nets are an effective and cheap method of fighting malaria by preventing mosquito bites (which transmit the disease) and killing the mosquitoes. According to WHO, bed nets can cut malaria transmission by at least 60 percent and child deaths by a fifth if the nets are used properly. Since 2000, some 1.7 million bed nets have been distributed through the public health system in Mozambique. Two-thirds of those nets have been delivered via UNICEF-supported programmes in about 60 percent of the country's districts.
In Ecuador, UNDP has partnered with UNAIDS and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation to help the central Government develop a new, more far-reaching National Strategic HIV/AIDS Plan, launched in 2007.
Ensure Environmental Sustainability
- Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes, reverse loss of environmental resources.
- Reduce by half the proportions of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
- Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020.
Success Stories
Many of the environmental issues the world is facing today, from climate change to ozone depletion, are global in nature. With funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), UNDP supports international cooperation to promote sustainable development. The GEF is the largest fund for protecting the environment, with UNDP as one of the implementing agencies, along with UNEP and the World Bank. The UNDP-GEF Small Grants Programme has funded more than 8,400 projects by non-governmental and community organizations around the world. In 2006, the GEF received its fourth replenishment of US$3 billion from 32 donor countries; the GEF Council approved $203 million in grants for UNDP projects; and UNDP leveraged an additional $500 million in project co-financing from governments and other partners. A GEF example that promotes environmentally friendly ways of cultivating coffee combines just under $12 million of GEF financing with over $70 million mainly from the private sector; Kraft, one of the world's largest coffee roasters, has increased its purchase of certified coffee from five million pounds to 29 million pounds over the last two years. In 2005, Kraft launched Kenco sustainable certified coffee in the UK, and has subsequently introduced several other brands in Europe and North America. An early success of the project has been the announcement that all 1,200 McDonald's restaurants in the UK and Ireland will sell exclusively Kenco coffee, which amounts to more than 143,000 cups a day. McDonalds has stated that it will extend this commitment to serving certified sustainable coffee in all of its European outlets during 2007.
Following the devastating tsunami of December 2004...UNEP cleared 89 islands of hazardous waste; the three remaining affected islands were cleared in 2006.
Develop a Global Partnership for Development
- Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory, includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction- nationally and internationally.
- Address the least developed country’s special needs. This include tariff- and quota-free access for their exports, enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries, cancellation of official bilateral debts, and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction.
- Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing states
- Deal comprehensive with developing countries, debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term.
- In cooperation with the development countries, develop decent and productive work for youth.
- In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries.
- In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies- especially information and communications technologies.
Success Stories
In many countries, UNDP already has a long history of working with governments on activities that connect different social and economic sectors. In Yemen, the Government turned to the UN system for assistance with an MDG assessment. Under the leadership of the Resident Coordinator, the UN agencies in Yemen worked closely together on a comprehensive programme of support. Each UN agency offered specialized skills-UNDP and the ILO on economic growth; UNDP on the environment, decentralization and gender; UNFPA and WHO on health and population; and the FAO and WFP on food security. Yemen's latest national development strategy, which began in 2006, draws extensively upon the results of the assessment. It integrates all key issues related to achieving the MDGs, and contains precise targets and specific actions on priorities such as economic growth, access to safe drinking water and girls' education. Yemen is now using the assessment for talks on membership with the Gulf Cooperation Council. Along with a public investment plan supported by UNDP, the assessment also became the basis for a council-sponsored donor conference in late 2006 that raised almost US$5 billion for Yemen's national development strategy.
UNDP works directly with national and multinational companies to reduce poverty and extend services to underdeveloped areas.
Our Role
I think the best way to solve this problem is to Educate the masses in a country with the help of NGO and governmental organisations. I think if the population is educated they can make decisions for themselves and in some time become independent. By taking such actions problems like over population and health care become much easier and the capacity to become independent becomes much easier. This can be seen in india where a large population that was under the poverty line started working getting educated and over a span of 20 years made themselves good enough to support international companies and making a large revenue for themselves as well as their country.
The UN is working very hard to accomplish the these goals and accomplish the work before the give time frame and it and it can be seen in MDG Monitor. The MDG Monitor shows how countries are progressing in their efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). With the 2015 target date fast approaching, it is more important than ever to understand where the goals are on track, and where additional efforts and support are needed, both globally and at the country level.
The MDG Monitor is designed as a to:
TRACK progress through interactive maps and country-specific profiles.
LEARN about countries' challenges and achievements and get the latest news.
SUPPORT organizations working on the MDGs around the world.
Globalization and Collaborative and Social Networking Technologies
Openness: Linux that was designed to provide personal computer users a free or very low-cost operating system comparable to traditional and usually more expensive Unix systems. Linux has a reputation as a very efficient and fast-performing system.
Unlike Windows and other proprietary systems, Linux is publicly open and extendible by contributors. Because it conforms to the Portable Operating System Interface standard user and programming interfaces, developers can write programs that can be ported to other operating systems. Linux comes in versions for all the major microprocessor platforms including the Intel, PowerPC, Sparc, and Alpha platforms. It's also available on IBM's S/390. Linux is distributed commercially by a number of companies. A magazine, Linux Journal, is published as well as a number of books and pocket references.
Linux is sometimes suggested as a possible publicly-developed alternative to the desktop predominance of Microsoft Windows. Its use in the business enterprise is growing. Because of its openness it is more robust to virus attacks, provides innovative GUI’s and multiple platform usage.
Peering: Peering is being championed as a technology, a business opportunity and an investment, as well as a revolutionary new means of empowering people and protecting their civil liberties and sense of individualism. Limewire is a good example of peering in which people sitting at different locations can access to a decentralized data that they need for their needs. It helps in getting access to data even though the data is not on the same location.
Sharing: Sharing, which is a less proprietary approach to (among other things) products, intellectual property, bandwidth, scientific knowledge. Bit Torrent for example makes use of sharing of information that can be shared by different users over the internet without even needing to keep it over their own memory space. It is a method of distributing large amounts of data widely without the original distributor incurring the entire costs of hardware, hosting and bandwidth resources. Instead, when data is distributed using the BitTorrent protocol, each recipient supplies pieces of the data to newer recipients, reducing the cost and burden on any given individual source, providing redundancy against system problems, and reducing dependence on the original distributor.
Acting Globally: Globalization is the tendency of businesses, technologies, or philosophies to spread throughout the world, or the process of making this happen. The growth in the development of india is a good example as the job requirements that were up somewhere else in the world are fulfilled by the people who live in india. It is only through globalization that the employment problem of such a huge nation is seeing a solution.
After looking at the new idea of Wikinomics we come to understand that there is a huge need for people to work together in order to develop in their own respective fields. There is a long way to go in order to serve the world by atleast the process has started in the right way.
Role of ICT in Building Sustainable Development:
Through the adoption of E-commerce will lead to a net 2 % per annum reduction in CO2 emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP, a good indication of the carbon intensity of an economy, have decreased in most European countries by between 20 % and 50 % in the past two decades. However, it is impossible to determine whether this has been due to ICT applications or a range of other factors.
Decrease in the use of transport
There is evidence of the impact of ICT on travel. E-commerce and telework reduce the need to travel and telematics systems may make car transport more efficient, counter-trends exist, and the balance of benefit to the environment has yet to be established.
Home shopping over the Internet should reduce the need for consumers to make car journeys to shops. The consequent reduction in vehicle emissions would be significant.
Remote working using the Internet to access office systems, for example via Virtual Private Networks or using teleconference and videoconference technology, has been possible for a long time. When promoted by employers, teleworking has been shown to significantly reduce travel miles. One Swedish company with 200 employees has managed to reduce home-to-work travel by 74,000 km a year. One major European - Telecommunications Company now has 4,000 home workers who between them save approximately 12.5 million commuter miles per annum – equating to a saving of 1,000 tones of carbon dioxide emissions.
One means of ensuring more efficient travel patterns for all vehicles is the utilization of telematics systems. The term telematics has evolved to refer to in-car systems that combine Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) tracking and other wireless communications including access to the Internet. The most significant application of this technology is Intelligent Traffic Guidance Systems (ITGS). ITGS can plot the quickest or most efficient route from A to B, taking into consideration traffic flow systems such as one-way streets or speed controls and, more importantly, avoiding areas of congested or slow-moving traffic. The effect is to significantly reduce congestion and traveling time, and therefore vehicle emissions. ITGS was shown to reduce traveling time in rush hours by 50% compared to conventional static navigational systems.
The application of ICT in trade, work and travel systems could on balance cut the demands of transport on the environment.
Reduction in the use of paper thus saving trees
The application of ICT can decrease the amount of material products circulating in some areas of the economy. “E-books”, which exist only as downloadable electronic files, are one example: Penguin books planned to have 200 titles available electronically by the end of 2001. The result could be the use of less paper in the publishing industry, less glue for binding, less filler for glossy pages, less freight on the transport network and so on. The technology used by MP3 files similarly could result in the production of fewer CDs..Likewise online banking means that printed statements are no longer
necessary. The energy use of the Internet The Internet is central to hopes for a “weightless” new economy
Our Role:As a global citizen it is our duty to preserve nature for future and for this we have to give something back for all that we receive. The environment has lost ability to recovery by itself. Therefore we have to give environment more than we take from it. To overcome global crisis that we are facing these days we have to take the help of ICT to solve the issues and make the use of tools like: farsightedness, flexibility, and recreation ability of nature .In order to achieve sustainable development of the world we have to go through NEW SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION that allow to convert wastes into environment life support agents. There are many companies that are working towards it like the WM in America that collects waste from all over America and use it to produce electricity and also reduce green house effect. We can help by donating to such companies and spreading the word through blogs and other online communities. We can also educate people about computers and the internet so that they can get a lot of information about different dangerous diseases and how they can be cured by simple precautions like clean water , sanitation and proper food. We can help by planting trees and by doing small things like not making use of plastics and products that use CFCs. If everybody in the world starts making small gestures towards sustainable development it won’t take long before nature refreshes itself and we have a whole new world to live present to the future.
I think the best way to solve this problem is to Educate the masses in a country with the help of NGO and governmental organisations. I think if the population is educated they can make decisions for themselves and in some time become independent. By taking such actions problems like over population and health care become much easier and the capacity to become independent becomes much easier. This can be seen in india where a large population that was under the poverty line started working getting educated and over a span of 20 years made themselves good enough to support international companies and making a large revenue for themselves as well as their country.
References
[http://www.un.org/english/]
[European Information Technology Observatory · E ITO 2002]
[As quoted from Markle Foundation/Accenture/UNDP in ICT and MDG’s: World bank Group Perspective, December 2003]
[United Nations, The World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland
Commission), Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987.]
[http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/]
[http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/4083/5800]
[http://www.egovonline.net/articles/article-details.asp?articleid=507&typ=In%20Practice]
[http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=8]
[http://www.igi-pub.com/reference/details.asp?ID=5066]
[http://www.worldbank.org/egov]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mdg]
[http://www.mdgmonitor.org/]
[http://www.empa.ch/plugin/template/empa/*/42011/---/l=2]
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