Millenium Development Goals (MDGs)

World leaders put poverty eradication and sustainable development at the heart of the global agenda with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), endorsed by 189 countries at the United Nations Millennium Summit two years ago. The MDGs provide time-bound targets for combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, discrimination against women and environmental degradation, and have emerged as a key organizing framework for global and national sustainable development efforts over the next decade and beyond. Reversing environmental decline and making environmental management work for the poor is critical to achieving the MDGs, particularly the overarching goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. But this requires more effective approaches to and strengthened capacities for integrating poverty eradication and environmental management at all levels of action. The relationship between the environment and MDGs is shown in Figure as below.

The Millennium Development Goals are an ambitious agenda for reducing poverty and improving live that world leaders agreed at Millennium Summit in September 2000. For an each goal one or more targets have been set most 2015, using 1990 benchmark:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Target for 2015. Halve the proportion of people living on lkess than a dollar a day and those who suffer from hunger.
• Achieve universal primary education. Target for 2015. Ensure that all boys and girls complete primary school.
• Promote gender equality and empower women. Target for 2005 and 2015. Eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education preferably 2005 and all level by 2015.
• Reduce child mortality. Target for 2015. Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five.
• Improve maternal health. Target for 2015. Reduce by three-quarters the ratio of women dying in childbirth.
• Combat HIV, malaria and diseases. Target for 2015. Halt and begin to reserve the spread of HIV/AIDS and incidence of Malaria and other major disease.
• Ensure environmental sustainability. Targets : (1) Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources; (2) By 2015, reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water; (3) By 2020 achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.
• Develop a global partnership for development. Targets: (1) Develop further an open trading and financial system that includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction nationally and internationally; (2) Address the least developed countries special needs, and the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States; (3) Deal comprehensively with developing countries debt problems X Develop decent and productive work for youth

More integrated and inclusive approaches are needed that engage all stakeholders and address the key drivers behind environmental degradation. This poses major challenges to countries and their development partners. In describing their own poverty, the poor often highlight the crucial role of the environment and environmental change to their well-being and ability to control their lives:

• Livelihoods - the poor often depend directly on a diversity of natural resources and ecosystem services for their livelihoods, and therefore are the most severely affected when the environment is degraded or their access to natural resources is limited or denied.
• Health - the poor suffer most from unclean water, indoor air pollution and exposure to toxic chemicals, and environmental risk factors are major source of health problems in developing countries.
• Vulnerability - the poor are particularly vulnerable to environmental hazards (such as floods, prolonged drought and attacks by crop pests) and environmental-related conflict and have the least means to cope when they occur.

The multidimensional and dynamic nature of these poverty-environment linkages poses two fundamental challenges for environmental management the need to manage and sustain the long-term capacity of the environment to provide the goods and services on which human development depends, and the need to ensure secure and equitable access by the poor to environmental assets and the benefits that they can provide.

A recent review of policy options to more effectively link poverty reduction and environ mental management highlights four priority areas for sustained policy and institutional change:

• Improving governance to create a more enabling policy and institutional environment for addressing the poverty-environment concerns of the poor, with particular attention to the needs of women and children.
• Enhancing the assets and capabilities of the poor to expand sustainable livelihood and to reduce the poor vulnerability to environmental hazards and natural resource-related conflict.
• Improving the quality of growth to promote sound environmental management and protect the environmental assets and live hood opportunities of the poor.
• Reforming international and industrial-country policies to address the poverty and environment concerns of developing countries and the poor and to ensure greater access to global public goods.

These policy and institutional changes are mostly outside the control of environmental institutions. More cross sectional approaches are needed that integrate poverty-environment issues into mainstream development planning and resource allocation processes-including national poverty reduction and sustainable development strategies, macroeconomic policies and sector plans and budgets. This is necessary in order to forge a more coherent and effective response to poverty-environment issues, and to ensure that adequate domestic and external resources are being allocated and effectively targeted.Meeting this challenge will require more effective partnerships between the state, civil society, the private sector, development agencies and people living in poverty.