Setting targets.

There was an impressive display of power on display in September 2000; the heads of state and/or government from 191 nations. Just about everybody who mattered in politics was at this important United Nations meeting. They gathered at the start of a new century to launch a new attack on the old problems of global poverty and social decline.

Out of the gathering came the Millennium Declaration; an ambitious set of eight goals to make the world a better place:

* Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;

* Achieve universal primary education;

* Promote gender equality and empower women;

* Reduce child mortality;

* Improve maternal health;

* Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases;

* Ensure environmental sustainability; and,

* Build a global partnership for development assistance.

Within those eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 18 specific targets have been set and there is a timetable for reaching them.

Most of the goals are to be achieved by 2015. For example, the number of people living in extreme poverty (that is on less than $1 a day) is to be cut in half by 2015.

But, just wiping out poverty on its own is not enough. All the Millennium Development Goals are inter-connected and they reinforce each other. Failing to achieve one goal threatens success with the others. On the other hand, successfully completing one goal makes meeting the others a little easier.

The Canadian International Development Agency gives some examples of this inter-connectedness: "HIV/ AIDS is driven at least in part by lack of education. And, education also suffers because of HIV/AIDS: teachers who are sick can't teach, and kids whose parents are sick or dead can't go to school because they have to work. When people are struggling to survive on less than $1 a day, they cannot think about protecting their environment, or sending their children to school. If people do not have access to safe drinking water, or if they live in slums, their health is at risk and their vulnerability to disease increases."

So, the plan is to deal with all the problems at the same time.

But, already, the plan is in trouble. In January 2005, The Economist reported that "Sub-Saharan Africa has met or is on track to meet not a single MDG."

There are some optimists who say it's not too late to kick-start the development process in Africa. Jeffrey Sachs believes it can be done. Mr. Sachs is a Columbia University professor who led a team of 250 experts in drafting a grand proposal for meeting the MDGs. Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals was handed over to the United Nations in January 2005: all 3,000 plus pages of it.

The massive document aims to counter the pessimism about aid. After decades of watching disappointing outcomes from development aid there is a widespread belief that doling out more money is a waste of time. Mr. Sachs and his team document how much of the aid delivered to developing countries has, in fact, worked.

Life expectancies in the developing world are much higher than they were in the 1960s. Literacy levels are way up, as are the incomes of many. Smallpox has been stamped out and health workers are on track to defeat polio. Crop yields are up and malnutrition is down in plenty of countries.

The World Bank also lists some successes; countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda (with combined populations of 200 million). The World Bank says these nations are relatively well governed and should be extended more aid.

Mozambique, for example, has been receiving about a quarter of its Gross Domestic Product in aid. Between 1990 and 2001, the real income of Mozambicans has gone up by 4.3% a year. Uganda is another heavily aided country where annual income growth has risen by 3.6% over the same period.

But, there are also a lot of failing states, home to about 15 percent of the world's population, and a third of those living in extreme poverty. Countries such as Afghanistan, Angola, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan make this unfortunate list. One thing they all have in common is that they are currently involved in wars or have recently been so.

The dilemma is that these are places where the need is greatest but also places where the likelihood of aid money being misused is the highest. What do we do? Abandon the neediest people in the world to their unpleasant fate, or send aid knowing that most of it will be ill-used when it could benefit people in less dysfunctional states.

Sometimes we have to recognize that we have a problem on our hands for which there is no good answer. This may be one of those occasions.

Professor Sachs and his team have come up with a ten-point plan for reaching the Millennium Development Goals. Here is a summary.

Recommendation 1

Governments in developing countries need to put together strategies on how they are going to meet MDG targets by 2015. These strategy papers should be in place by 2006.

Recommendation 2

The strategy papers should be the foundation for scaling up public investments. Countries "should also provide a framework for strengthening governance, promoting human rights, engaging civil society, and promoting the private sector." Budgets need to be drawn up to identify the amount of development aid needed to achieve goals.

Recommendation 3

Civil society, the local private sector, and international partners need to be drawn into the process of reducing poverty.

Recommendation 4

"International donors should identify at least a dozen MDG 'fast-track' countries for a rapid scale-up of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2005 ..."

Recommendation 5

"Quick Win activities can be launched in 2005 aimed at saving and improving the lives of millions. One example of a Quick Win program is the free distribution of mosquito nets and anti-malarial drugs by the end of 2007. Other suggestions are to end user fees for primary education and health care, and to expand school meal programs.

Recommendation 6

"Developing country governments should align national strategies with such regional initiatives as the New Partnership for Africa's Development and the Caribbean Community (and Common Market), and regional groups should receive increased direct donor support for regional projects."

Recommendation 7

High-income countries such as Canada have to increase their ODA. The average in 2003 was 0.25% of Gross Domestic Product. This needs to grow to 0.44% of GDP by 2006, and 0.7% by 2015 if the MDGs are to be met. In addition, "Debt relief should be more extensive and generous."

Recommendation 8

The World Trade Organization has to work towards high-income countries opening their domestic markets to developing-country exports. This should be done by 2006.

Recommendation 9

"International donors should mobilize support for global scientific research and development to address special needs of the poor in areas of health, agriculture, natural resource and environmental management, energy, and climate. We estimate the total needs to rise to approximately $7 billion U.S. a year by 2015."

Recommendation 10

"The UN Secretary-General and the UN Development Group should strengthen the coordination of UN agencies, funds, and programs to support the MDGs, at headquarters and country level. The UN Country Teams should be strengthened and should work closely with the international financial institutions to support the Goals."

The Investing in Development report has been generally well received. But, of course, not everybody is happy about it. William Easterly says it has shortcomings. Mr. Easterly is very experienced in development having worked for the World Bank for 16 years. In his 2002 book, The Elusive Quest for Growth (ISBN: 0262550423), he challenges many of the assumptions on which most development projects are based.

He says there are dozens of reasons why countries remain poor--bad government, corruption, natural disasters, socialism, war, societies divided by class and ethnicity, and disease to mention a few. He adds that democratic countries that protect property rights, uphold the rule of law, and have good quality services that allow private-sector investors to flourish tend to become richer over the long-term.

There is, of course, a strong link between economic growth and reduced poverty. Countries in East and South-East Asia have seen dramatic improvements in their economies in recent years. Most nations in these regions have met or are on track to meet their MDGs by 2015.

Mr. Easterly's main criticism of the Millennium Development Goals and the plans to achieve them is that they are far too ambitious. He says they will place too much strain on the puny resources applied to them. And, they overestimate by a wide margin the effectiveness of international aid.

Others point to the MDGs and Professor Sach's blueprint for achieving them as much too "top-down" driven. They are written by people trained in Western economics. They believe that what works in Calgary and Cologne will work in Calcutta. That may not be so.

But, Mr. Sachs asked colleagues at the UN's Millennium Project to do some number crunching. He wanted to know how much it would cost to upgrade infrastructure, social services, education, and health care in African countries that are relatively well governed. What the numbers show is that modest investments can yield some impressive results.

In an article in The Economist, Mr. Sachs wrote that: "With only a small portion of what America is now spending on military and reconstruction outlays in Afghanistan and Iraq, it would be possible to enable hundreds of millions of people to break out of poverty." This is how the spending broke down:

* Basic infrastructure--roads, improved soil fertility, irrigation, drinking water, sanitation, modern cooking fuels, electricity--$54 per person, per year up to 2015;

* Basic health care--control of malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis, childhood diseases, safe childbirth, nutrition, family planning--$36 per person, per year up to 2015;

* Education--primary and secondary upgraded to an acceptable level--$18 per person, per year up to 2015;

* Other priorities--$12 per person, per year up to 2015.

For about $120 per person per year the Millennium Development Goals could be met. The countries involved in the study can muster $48 per person from their own resources to put towards the goals. That leaves the international community to come up with $72 per person. But, the rich world is already putting in $12 per person on these projects, so now we're talking about only an additional $60 per person.

Writes Jeffrey Sachs, "Applying these results to six countries--Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda--with a combined population of 180 million, this amounts to only $10.8 billion per year in addition to current aid flows, far less that what was targeted for Iraq alone with its 24 million people."

Most of these countries are ready and eager to get going. At the request of the UN many have drawn up elaborate plans for bringing poverty under control. Ghana drew up its Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy which laid out a five-year program geared to defeating rural poverty.

Then, the 9/11 terror attacks diverted the attention of donor countries. Money was needed for security so programs such as the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy have been put on the back burner.

THE SCALE OF THE PROBLEM

More than one billion people in the world live on less than one dollar a day. Another 2.7 billion struggle to survive on less than two dollars per day. Poverty in the developing world, however, ever, goes far beyond income. It means having to walk a couple of kilometres every day just to collect water and firewood; it means suffering from diseases that were wiped out in rich countries decades ago. It means that every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation and the large majority are children under the age of five.

It means that in deeply impoverished countries less than half the children get even an elementary education. It means that 2.6 billion people do not have basic sanitation, and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water.

SOCIAL MARKETING

To many, Population Services International (http://www.psi.org/) is an odd sort of group. It is a non-profit organization that operates as a private-enterprise business. PSI says it combines the worlds of commerce and charity by borrowing the best of each.

A campaign to reduce malaria infection in Malawi is typical of the PSI approach. Globally, 300 million cases of malaria lead to more than one million deaths each year, most of them African children. The infection is spread from person to person through mosquito bites, usually at night when mosquitoes are most active. Sleeping under a net that the insects can't get through is a simple defence. But, mosquito nets cost money that many African families don't have.

PSI's solution was to use donor money to subsidize the cost of the nets. Then, using radio and TV advertising the nets were sold at low cost just like any other product, in 2003 and 2004, PSI delivered 2.5 million insecticide treated nets in Malawi. The proportion of children under five covered by nets jumped from eight percent in 2000 to 55 percent in 2004. This "social marketing" approach is used to deliver other subsidized goods such as water-treatment systems, condoms, and vitamin supplements.

CONTRAST

Daily revenues from oil pouring into the Arab states of the Persian Gulf in 2005: $720 million

Number of the world's 290 million Arabs living in poverty in 2005: 80 million

Cost of 2005 membership to the Fairview Mountain Golf Club in Oliver, B.C.: $5,000

Cost of immunizing 200 children for live against diphtheria, measles, polio, tetanus, tuberculosis, and whooping cough: $5,000

Steak dinner for two with appetizer, wine, and dessert at Toronto's Harbour Sixty Steakhouse: $243.70--taxes and tip extra

Number of kilos of nutritious grains that can be grown from $243.70's worth of seeds: 5,895