The Millennium Development Goals Mdgs

The first and foremost goal of the Millennium development goals is to scale back extreme poverty by the year 2015. Millennium development goals indicators provide a considerable stress on improvement within the condition of the women and children as the result of the history says that they are the foremost suffers of the financial condition. The eight goals of the Millennium development goals are

UNICEF has set Millenium development goals, which 189 countries have signed in September 2000. The goals reveal the extent importance of UNICEF’s work. First goals are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger meaning in practice that the amount of people living less than one dollar per day or suffer for hunger should halve between 1990 and 2015. Furthermore, primary education should be ensured for all children, also for girls. Child mortality and maternal health are also primary goals of UNICEF. There are also set goals to combat AIDS/HIV, malaria and other diseases, to ensure environmental sustainability and to develop global partnership for development. All of the Millenium goals concerns basic needs of life; food, health, income and education. The amount of people who do not have these is devastating. It cannot be denied that UNICEF’s work is

In October 2000, the International Development Goals were articulated as the MDGs in a joint report by the UN, OECD, World Bank and the IMF (Saith, 2006; Sen G & Mukherjee A, 2014), which composed of 8 goals accompanied by 21 targets and 60 indicators in order to measure progress towards the achievement of each of those goals (Johnson R, 2010). These goals and their related targets and indicators dominated international development discourse as the standard for development by various international organisations (Sen G & Mukherjee A, 2013; S. Fukuda-Parr, 2016), as they were aimed to improve the living conditions, peace and security, the environment, and human rights and democracy, eradicate poverty and global imbalances by 2015. The breadth and depth of the Declaration necessarily meant choosing a few set of goals, targets and indicators to guide policies and monitor outcomes. However, some scholars like (Langford, 2010; Amin, 2006; Sen, 2013 and Saith, 2006), argue that the set of goals are reductionist, simplistic and do not do justice to the Millennium Declaration.

The Millennium Development Goals are a set of eight goals designed to better human kind across the globe, on a variety of issues. This was signed into action by the United Nations, with a hope of achieving these objectives between the years 2000 to 2015. Although there was certainly measurable improvement in every goal across the board, ultimately, several of the goals were not met, due in large to the goals set having been unrealistic from the start when considering the condition some of the worst of these developing nations were already in (Clemens, 2005). The Sustainable Development Goals are a continuation of these goals, with additional goals, as well as pin pointing some of the issues found throughout the past initiative. Although the Millennium Development Goals have displayed a unified push to bettering the world, it is clear that not enough has been done yet to help some of the most impoverished nations in the world, most notably those of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Millennium Goals (MDG) were created by the United Nations to help the world’s poorest people. Goal 7 of the MGD is to ensure environmental stability. When looking at the highlights (or key facts) for goal 7 in the 2015 report, marked improvements have been made. Due to global efforts to eliminate substances that deplete the ozone, it is anticipated that by 2050 the ozone layer will be restored. Since 1990, the percentage of the global population that uses an improved drinking water source has increased from 76 percent to 91 percent and 2.1 billion people have gained access to improved sanitation. The people practicing open defecation globally has been cut by almost half. Between 2000 and 2014, the proportion of urban population living in slums in the developing regions fell from 39.4 percent to 29.7 percent. There is an area, however, that did not show any improvement and in fact, has gotten worse. Since 1990, carbon dioxide emissions have increased more than 50 percent.

Sustainability can be defined as the development of present needs that wouldn’t hinder the development of future needs in an environment. Sustainability main focus is on preserving the natural resources of an economy, it is not a fixed state of harmony but a continuous process of change where the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, orientation of technological development and institutional change are made consistent with present and future investments.(UNCED, 1978). Mohan Munasinghe posited that the goal of Sustainable development is to maximize the net welfare of economic activities while maintaining or increasing the stock of economic, ecological and socio cultural assets overtime to ensure the sustainability of income and Intra generational equity and providing a safety net to meet basic needs and protect the poor.

The approval of the Millennium Declaration in 2000 didn’t go as smoothly as one would imagine it to be for such a visionary development agenda. MDGs critics underscored that chosen goals were not based on a comprehensive analytical work, while others emphasized the difficulty to measure progress against objectives and uneven progress. Indeed, there were significant disparities in progress towards the goals among the countries. China and India led the overall developmental progress, while poor countries like Benin were not on track to realize any.

Over 15 years ago, the World Health Organization set a goal to halt and reverse the incidence of tuberculosis. Millennium Development Goal #6 is combat diseases like Malaria, AIDS, and tuberculosis. The international community has worked together using preventative and treatment measures in efforts to reach this goal and eradicating diseases. While tuberculosis is a quickly spreading and multifaceted disease, the goal has had to adapt to the changing nature of the disease. Factors such as education, economics, and technology play important roles in eradicating tuberculosis across the world (Skolnik, 2012). While there is an extremely low prevalence of tuberculosis in developed countries, tuberculosis runs rampant and is harder to reach and combat in poorer and developing countries, particularly sub-saharan Africa and south-east Asia. Tuberculosis is one of the infectious diseases health experts and advocates are working to eliminate. Additionally, they hope to improve health access and reduce health disparities to prevent the spread of future infectious disease.

Based on its HDI ranking relative to other nations, India “does a relatively poor job of converting its income into good health and educational outcomes” (“Shaping the Developing World”, 48). This means that India’s use of its capital and human capital is inefficient, at least in comparison to countries with similar incomes, in respect to improving its infrastructure, services, and other factors that generally improve the lives of its citizens. In India’s case, this is most evident by far in the government’s provision (or lack thereof) of adequate education and health services. India’s infant mortality rate is ten times that of the average developed country, and only around 35% of citizens have access to toilets and clean water (“Shaping the Developing World”, 49). There are more than 30 million Indian school-age children who are not attending, and those that do receive a lackluster

Educators play an essential part in preparing and empowering students to take the responsibility for creating and enjoying a sustainable future. The Adelaide Declaration by Australian Ministers of Education (1999) includes the goal that: ‘When students leave school, they should have an understanding of, and concern for, stewardship of the natural environment, and the knowledge to contribute to ecologically sustainable development’ (1.7). The Sustainable Development Goals from the United Nations also emphasizes on the importance of offering a quality education for young generation to improve people’s lives and pursue sustainable development. Educators, thereby, should be competent in assisting children to understand sustainability issues, concepts and practices in order to help them become responsible global and local citizens. As stated in Melbourne Declaration (Ministerial Council on Education Employment Training and Youth Affairs [MCEETYA], 2008), excellent teachers are able to incorporate children’s learning towards sustainability by providing a wide range of effective learning experiences. One vital way of promoting children’s learning in Sustainability is to embed Sustainability Education into daily routines and teaching practices. Although the importance of having qualified and competent educators who concerns about Sustainability Education for young children has been clearly stated in many global, national and local documents, teachers in the field are still facing

The Sustainable Development Goals are a set of global agendas set by the United Nations to be achieved by the year 2030. They are a continuation of the Millennium Development Goals, which were framed through the Millennium Deceleration in 2000 to address the needs of the world poor (1). The Millennium Development goals included a set of eight easily stated goals with 21 targets and 48 indicators to measure progress (1). Amongst them- reducing child mortality (MDG 4), improving maternal health (MDG 5) and combating HIV-AIDS, malaria and other diseases (MDG 6)- were specifically aimed at improving health (2). This approach provided a clear and focused direction for many of the stakeholders, to work on realizing these goals. The SDGs, on the other hand, are longer with 17 Goals and 126 targets (3). Unlike the MDGs, the SDGs contain one cohesive health goal (SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages), with 9 specific targets and 4 means of implementation within the targets (4) . There is criticism claiming that a switch from three to one goal would reduce the global focus on health. I argue that a simplified SDG goal is sufficient because it builds upon, and strengthens the template set-up in the MDGs. Furthermore, the four proposed ways of implementation to achieve these targets further reinforces the objective (1). Thus, if the work that has been laid out in the MDG era continues with a sustained focus, there is no reason why the priority

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were established in 2000 to determine, focus on and put into action steps that will fight eight key areas to help underdeveloped countries. The eight targeted areas which are poverty, education, gender equality, child mortality, maternal health, disease, the environment and global partnership place attention on areas that will help the improvement and betterment of underdeveloped countries.

According to the Country Report in 2013, South Africa has come along way in terms of achieving the Millennium Development Goals for 2015. When looking at goal one, which has to do with eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, they have almost completed all of the targets. As of 2013, South Africa has achieved the proportion of population below $1.00 per day and the proportion of population below $1.25 per day. They are likely to achieve the proportion of population below $2.00 per day. They have achieved the poverty gap ratio of $1.00, $1.25, and $2.00 per day. They are likely to achieve the poverty gap ratio of $2.50 per day. They are likely to achieve the percentage of employed people living below $1.00 per day. Although they have achieved and are likely to achieve many of these targets for goal one which has to do with poverty, they are unlikely to reach the share of the poorest quintile in national consumption, the percentage growth rate of GDP per person employed, employment-to-population ratio, and the percentage of own-account and contributing family workers in total employment. In terms of hunger they are likely to achieve the percent of prevalence of underweight children less than five years of age. They have also achieved the percentage of people who report experiencing hunger. Goal two is just as accomplished as goal one.

The first MDG states that the percentage of population below the poverty line should be halved between 1990 and 2015. In addition, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger should also be halved. To measure the progress of MDG 1 in India we viewed two indicators out of 9 indicators of MDG 1. The selected indicators are percentage of population living below poverty line and prevalence of underweight children.

The twelfth goal of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to “Ensure Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns” ("Open Working Group”).