The biggest success of the millennium development goals was in reducing levels of

Global Nutrition Targets for 2025

Following the MDGs of 2001–2015, the WHO has set new targets for maternal infant and young child nutrition for the year 2025. This move represents global consensus on the centrality of nutrition in combating disease and death among women and children. Reaching these targets will involve complex issues of poverty reduction, education in general and in nutrition in particular, food fortification and micronutrient supplements for women, infants, and young children.

Box 8.12 shows post-MDG health targets recommended by WHO for 2025 to improve maternal, infant, and young child nutrition. These recognize the importance of nutrition in advancing child health and should help to direct international aid projects.

BOX 8.12

Post-Millennium Development Goal Global Targets 2025: To Improve Maternal, Infant, and Young Child Nutrition

40 percent reduction in the number of children aged < 5 years who are stunted.

50 percent reduction of anemia in women of reproductive age.

30 percent reduction in low birth weight.

No increase in childhood overweight.

Increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the first 6 months to at least 50 percent.

Reduce and maintain childhood wasting to less than 5 percent.

Introduction

Environmental challenges are receiving a growing level of public, private, and governmental attention. This varies from recognition of the vital importance of safe water, through waste disposal (nuclear, medical, industrial, household) and sewage disposal, to global climate change. The direct health effects of poor sanitation are horrendous in the cost to lives and health. Although progress is being made, high levels of danger to rural populations remain, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In the industrialized countries, the sanitary revolution of the nineteenth century was a fundamental achievement of public health, resulting in a doubling of life expectancy.

The dramatic challenges of environmental degradation have come more into focus in the twenty-first century and the issues are by no means resolved. Public concern over environmental issues is higher than in previous decades. While the application of environmentally friendly policies is improving in many countries, it is still not an issue where reduced standards of living are an acceptable part of the solution, and technical solutions are slow in coming to substantive fruition. The international and national political levels address the environment in positive terms with many targets for action but progress remains slower and less comprehensive than the challenge requires. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) defined themes and issues for the twenty-first century as shown in Box 9.1.

BOX 9.1

The 21 Emerging Issues in Environmental Health

Of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 2001 and accepted by virtually all member countries, one is: “to ensure environmental sustainability”, with the following specific targets:

Target 9 – Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs; reverse loss of environmental resources.

Target 10 – Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

Target 11 – Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020 (UNDP, 2008).

The MDGs call for international cooperation to prevent environmental degradation resulting in global warming. Progress in MDGs in terms of drinking water and sanitation is shown in Box 9.2.

BOX 9.2

Progress Towards the Millennium Development Goal on Drinking Water and Sanitation, 2012

Safe water and sanitation is vital to improving health and well-being. The 2001–2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set a target (7C) of reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

The MDG progress monitoring report by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation 2012 states that the drinking water target for sustainable access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2015 was met in 2010, 5 years ahead of schedule.

The 2012 report indicates that that more than 2 billion people have gained access to improved drinking water sources since 1990, but there are challenges of great disparities, with 780 million people remaining without access to improved drinking water sources and 2.5 billion lacking improved sanitation. Sub-Saharan Africa lags behind in this measure for rural dwellers and the urban poor in particular, with the burden of poor water supply mostly falling on girls and women.

Nevertheless, the global achievement indicates commitment of government leaders, public and private sector entities, communities and individuals. The international community (UN Rapporteur on Human Rights to Water and Sanitation) will maintain its surveillance on water and sanitation even following the 2015 MDG target date.

A safe environment is fundamental to health; clean water is as important as shelter and food in a hierarchy of health and survival needs. Access to safe water has increased, but globally 19 percent of the burden of disease among children aged 0–1 years is from diarrheal disease largely due to contaminated water, while 10 percent is due to malaria and another 10 percent to malnutrition, intestinal infestation, and childhood disease clusters all related to poor environmental conditions.

Overshadowing other environmental issues are climate change and global warming as a result of both natural and human-caused phenomena. The result could be massive threats to public health through the spread of diseases related to climate, such as malaria and cholera with flooding and stagnant waters, desertification of highly vulnerable zones of the world, and disruption of safe drinking water and food supplies. Wide-scale natural disaster phenomena of rising sea levels with permanent flooding of coastal areas, hurricanes, and ecological changes of unpredictable severity are anticipated. A wide consensus of scientific opinion raises the level of concern over such disastrous effects such that governments and the public seem to be ready to act to reduce fossil fuel consumption and other root causes of greenhouse gases.

Safe water supplies and waste management are fundamental and still problematic aspects of public health and community hygiene. Incidences of contamination by biological, chemical, physical, or other disease-causing agents in the external environment and the workplace are major public health and political concerns of the twenty-first century. Since the 1960s, a high degree of consciousness has developed regarding these problems. Air, water, ground, and workplace pollution are issues of concern to the public, the business sector, the media, and governmental and non-governmental organizations, and are part of the general culture of our times. The growth of the concepts of right-to-know, consumerism, and advocacy in public health has led to greater sensitivity to these issues in many countries.

Occupational health developed as a separate area of concern from environmental health, but in recent years there has been an increasing recognition of the interaction between workplace and community health hazards such as in asbestos and cancer. Occupational health is included as the second part of this chapter because of common advocacy, professionalism, technology, and regulatory approaches. The level of public response to environmental threats is illustrated by the groundswell of public opinion against environmental decay.

Issues have become more complex and go beyond the prevention of disease and traditional public health. While the resources needed to reduce the environmental neglect from inadequate sanitation and high levels of pollutants in the air, water, and soil are costly, the burden to society of environmental decay can be even greater in the long term.

Twentieth-century advocacy groups and reformers have made major contributions to public policy, which are akin to the achievements of their predecessor reformers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the areas of abolition of slavery, humane treatment of prisoners and the mentally ill, improvements in working conditions in factories and mines, and public health sanitary improvements (see Chapter 1). Globalization, industrialization, and fossil fuel dependency have become an accelerated threat to the global environment. Not only the scientific community, but also governments, the business community, and the general public, are increasingly accepting that human society must order its affairs so that its use of natural resources does not deplete or overwhelm the self-sustaining capacity or natural regenerative powers of the environment. Environmental health is a central issue in the New Public Health in that it is the root cause of much disease and death that is preventable and degrades the environment with irreversible loss to society.

Millennium Development Goals

Nigeria’s MDG achievements in the past few years include the extension of primary health care services to over 20 million people, provision of safe water to over 8 million people, a six-fold increase in the distribution of insecticide-treated nets to protect the under-fives from malaria, and a 98 percent reduction in the incidence of polio, albeit with a resurgence of cases which remains a challenge in pockets in the north of the country.

The under-five mortality has fallen by over 20 percent in 5 years, from 201 deaths per 1000 live births in 2003, to 157 deaths per 1000 in 2000 and 143 per 1000 in 2010. In the same period, the infant mortality rate fell from 100 to 88 deaths per 1000 live births in 2010. Recent interventions including Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses that reflect the underlying causes of child deaths have contributed to these successes. However, these need to be rapidly expanded and accelerated if Nigeria is to achieve MDG4. Nigeria has had striking success in almost eradicating polio, reducing the number of cases by 98 percent between 2009 and 2010. However, a climate of insecurity and violence in parts of Nigeria threatens the solid programmatic advances in polio eradication in Nigeria made in recent years.

Maternal mortality fell by 32 percent, from 800 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2003 (then one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world) to 545 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2008, but rose to 630 in 2010. However, the proportion of births attended by a skilled health worker has remained low and threatens to hold back further progress. An innovative Midwives Service Scheme is expected to contribute substantially to ongoing shortfalls but its impact has yet to be reflected in the data. If the scheme is expanded in proportion to the national gap in the number of midwives, this will further accelerate progress. In addition, more mothers will be covered by antenatal care as access to quality primary health care improves and incentives attract health workers to rural areas (Nigeria MDG Report, 2010).

While the level of violence against Nigerian women in the home remains poorly mapped, pilot studies conclude that it is “shockingly high”. Up to two-thirds of women in certain communities in Nigeria’s Lagos State are believed to have experienced physical, sexual, or psychological violence in the family; in other areas, around 50 percent of women say that they are victims of domestic violence.

In the absence of official studies, research into the prevalence of violence in the family has been conducted by individuals and organizations. In a recent small-scale study of gender inequality in Lagos and Oyo states, 40 percent of the women interviewed said that they had been victims of violence in the family, in some cases for several years. The widespread practice of FGM may be a further indicator of the level of violence against women and children. According to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, acceptance of domestic violence is high even among law enforcement officers and court personnel.

As a means of promoting gender equality, the Strategic Implementation Framework and Plan sets out the objectives, targets, and monitoring framework needed to work towards eliminating gender discrimination and improving the participation of women in national life.

GHIs and Innovative Financing

To achieve the Millennium Development Goals, developing countries will have to spend approximately $60 per capita by 2015, or 100% more than they are currently spending. It is unrealistic for many countries to achieve this increase. In 2001 members of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) met at Abuja, Nigeria. The resulting ‘Abuja Declaration’ committed all members of the OAU to ensure that at least 15% of the domestically financed government expenditure went to health. Even if low-income countries were able to meet their Abuja commitments and divert 15% of government budget to health very few of them would generate enough funds to meet the $34 per capita threshold that the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health in 2001 deemed sufficient to meet basic health needs. Admittedly, this $34 has now appreciated to approximately $50, and some countries would not achieve that target even if 100% of the government budget was diverted to health. DAH from multiple donors, including GHIs, will go some way towards filling this gap, but in addition, GHIs – particularly GAVI and the Global Fund- have championed innovative mechanisms for raising even more funds. Tasked with the challenge of identifying a range of innovative ways to raise money for health systems, a Taskforce for Innovative International Financing (TIIF) was established up in 2008 through the auspices of the International Health Partnership. It identified a tax on airline tickets, a currency transaction levy, and levies on other products and services such as mobile phone use, amongst other innovative ideas (Table 2). If brought to fruition, these mechanisms could increase ODA by $10 B. Through these innovations GHIs are proving to be essential vectors for new ways of raising much-needed money.

Table 2. Innovative financing mechanisms championed through GHIs

These issues are discussed in the 2010 World Health Report which notes, if donors honored their international pledges, external funding would double and there would be no need for innovation (http://www.who.int/whr/2010/en/index.html).

Major Changes and Issues since the 1990s

The 1992 constitution reiterated the earlier educational intention, as spelt out in the Education Act of 1961, by introducing the FCUBE.

With regard to the MDGs, Ghana is judged to be on track to achieve MDG 2 (UPE) by 2015 (and expects to achieve this by 2010), and progress toward UPE received a boost in 2005 with the introduction of capitation grants and the associated removal of all fees and levies on basic education (effective since the start of the 2005/6 academic year); this caused, for example, enrolment of 6–11-year-olds in primary schools to jump by 400 000 in 2005/6, an increase of 14% on the previous year. This increase in enrolments could, by 2015 result in a mini-surge of JSS graduates entering the labor market and also in those seeking postbasic education and training. While capitation grants have undoubtedly increased enrolments, questions still remain concerning the extent to which quality can be improved, or even maintained, given the large increase in student numbers. Indeed, a concern for government now is the need to train more teachers and provide more schooling infrastructure in order to maintain quality. Even with the capitation grants, there are still likely to be large numbers of children and youth out of school.

Since 2002, the NPP government has followed a dual-track education policymaking process. In parallel to the ESP, an education strategy document was drawn up, which had a focus on basic education; the government in 2002 commissioned a panel of academics and other educationalists to examine the education system in Ghana. Some of the main recommendations of this commission (GoG, 2002) were adopted by government in the 2004 White Paper on The Report of The Education Reform Review Committee (GoG, 2004b). The White Paper, among other things, proposes to expand postbasic education and to vocationalize the secondary level (see Case study 1 on the education reforms). This turn of events, toward postbasic education and training, is obviously one met with some concern, particularly among donors who are focused on the MDGs, like Department for International Development (DFID). DFID Ghana is well aware of this apparent move away from basic education toward postbasic education, and has voiced its concerns to the government and to other donors. A 2005 DFID Ghana report on the education sector notes that the new White Paper is strikingly different in its priorities.

Since 2001, there has been a renewed government focus on skills development and its relationship with combating unemployment. This renewed focus, driven by democratic, poverty-reduction, and economic imperatives, has been reflected in a number of government documents; for example, the 2003/5 GPRS I, the 2006/9 GPRS II, and the 2004 Draft TVET Policy Framework for Ghana. TVET, delivered through public and private schools, VTIs, and traditional apprenticeships, continues to be seen as an important link to work. Between 2003 and 2005 the GoG funded short-duration skills training through the STEP – a direct response to government concerns regarding unemployment. The 2004 education White Paper and the 2004 TVET policy framework have set a challenging agenda for skills reform in Ghana.

Global Partnership for Development

The eighth goal in the MDGs calls for a partnership between the developed and the developing world, and official development assistance (ODA). The ODA includes measures to ensure debt sustainability on a long-term, rule-based basis, along with predictable and non-discriminatory multilateral trading, and financial systems to address the special needs of the least developed countries. The developed nations undertook to share responsibility for ensuring the global partnership. The UN General Assembly proposed an ODA target of 0.7 percent of the donors’ national income but the OECD countries have contributed to just around half of the promised amount for many years, which fell to about one-third in the 1990s. World leaders met in 2002 at the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, and established a new framework for a global development partnership (MDG8) (Table 16.3). Since then, the signatories have started to deliver on commitments made during the conference and aid has reached a record high of US$79 billion, with countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden honoring the initial commitment in the Declaration by the UN General Assembly.

It is vital for developing countries to increase their participation in the global economy, and this depends on reduction in trade barriers imposed by developed countries on imports from developing countries and tariffs on goods that are strategically important to developing economies, such as textiles, clothing, and farm products. Steps need to be taken to write off the debts on very poor countries, especially the economically stagnant African economies.

Economic growth in Africa since 2000 has been strong and grew by 4.3 percent in 2010 and 5.3 percent in 2011 based on high prices and growing investment in commodity production. However, this has not been translated into increased employment, industrial development, or investment in infrastructure, social, and health programs. The contrast with East Asian growth is startling: in East Asia, GDP grew from US$305 per capita in 1970 to US$8483 in 2010 (an average annual growth of 60.6 percent), while Africa’s growth was from US$246 per capita to US$1701 in the same period, a respectable average annual increase of 14.8 percent. The total debt burden on African economies was estimated to be US$206 billion at the end of 2000, reaching US$300 billion in 2009 (UN Economic Commission for Africa, 2013).

Global Public Goods and the Millennium Development Goals

In the discourse of applied ethics, the concept of global public goods relates closely with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs were developed out of the eight chapters of the United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000. One way of looking at the concept of global public goods in this sense is that it facilitates the core global goods in the MDGs being expressed in a format relevant to regulatory debates.

The following are the eight MDGs and 21 targets:

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 dollar a day.

Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people.

Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

Achieve universal primary education.

Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

Promote gender equality and empower women.

Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and at all levels by 2015.

Reduce child mortality.

Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-5 mortality rate.

Improve maternal health.

Reduce by three-fourths, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.

Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health.

Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.

Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it.

Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

Ensure environmental sustainability.

Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs;reverse loss of environmental resources.

Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss.

Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

Achieve, by 2020, a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers.

Develop a global partnership for development.

Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule based, predictable, and non-discriminatory. This includes a commitment to good governance, development, and povertyreduction—nationally and internationally.

Address the special needs of the least developed countries. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports, enhanced program of debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries, cancellation of official bilateral debt, and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction.

Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing states.

Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.

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.

The G-8 Finance Ministers, meeting in London in 2005, agreed to fund the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the African Development Bank sufficiently to cancel $40–$55 billion of debt, allowing developing nations to rechannel resources into programs for improving health and education while alleviating poverty in accordance with the MDGs.

It has, however, been argued that fulfillment of the MDGs does not constitute satisfaction of global public goods. This conclusion arguably arises from the contentious claim that global public goods must be financed by states (e.g., by foreign aid programs) because satisfying global public goods must by definition involve advancing state self-interest. Such an argument, however, appears to be a conceptual attempt to constrain the concept of global public goods so that it does not encourage the development of supranational funding arrangements to assist masses of people directly, so undermining state sovereignty (and the satisfaction that it brings to power elites including private corporate actors working in close conjunction with ruling elites in the market-state phenomenon).

5.1.1 Millennium Development Goals

Unlike the CRC discussed earlier, which issued the statement that human rights extend to children, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) constituted the first global intervention aimed at improving life conditions for people globally. In September 2000, at the Millennium Summit—the largest ever gathering of its kind—world leaders adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty. The advantage of the UN Millennium Declaration over the CRC was time-bound targets, known as the MDGs which concluded with 2015. MDGs ranged from halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education (UNICEF, 2010). The Millennium Declaration also explicitly addressed the need to protect children from conflict, violence, abuse, and exploitation. MDGs galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world's poorest and most vulnerable (United Nations, Department of Economic & Social Affairs, 2007).

As with other United Nations conferences and summits, the Millennium Summit generated global consensus on a shared vision for development based on a participatory process. This comprehensive set of developmental goals, of which the MDGs are an integral part, is referred to as the UN Development Agenda. It served as the internationally shared framework for development, with clear expectations for action at the global, regional, and country levels. The agenda covered interlinked issues ranging from poverty, gender equality, social integration, health, population, employment, and education to human rights, the environment, sustainable development, finance, and governance.

This initiative by the UN not only drew attention to issues of equity and social justice for all human beings and as citizens but also fostered the spirit of partnership. The UN's participatory nature of the deliberation process engaged all the key stakeholders: governments, UN system organizations, other intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, civil society, and the private sector. This process produced a global partnership for development, with a framework for mutual accountability (United Nations, Department of Economic & Social Affairs, 2007). Resources for the MDGs came from multinational, national, and private foundation funds. While many global frameworks have been adopted, the MDGs were the first to include goals with accountability expectations, thus becoming an unprecedented global intervention.

The MDGs provided the global developmental framework for the past 15 years. The MDG's 2015 Report (United Nations, 2015) reviewed the progress made toward the goals. The data and analysis presented in this report prove that with targeted interventions, sound strategies, adequate resources, and political will even the poorest countries can make unprecedented progress. In brief, the MDGs helped lift more than 1 billion people out of extreme poverty, made inroads against hunger, improved school enrollment rates, and protected the planet. The MDG process created new partnerships, improved public opinion about such global development processes, and demonstrated the value of setting ambitious goals. In the following sections, we review MDG results that improved the lives of children and youth aged 0–30 years. Except when we specify regions, the results apply globally.

MDG 1 aimed to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. While this MDG did not specifically target children, young people around the world are disproportionately poor. Over the past two decades, there was a significant decline in extreme poverty. In 1990, nearly 50% of the population in the developing world lived on less than $1.25 a day; that proportion dropped to 14% in 2015, far exceeding the targeted goal.

MDG 2 aimed to achieve universal primary education. The primary school net enrollment rate in the developing region reached 91% by 2015, up from 83% in 2000. The number of primary school-age children not in school fell by almost half worldwide, to an estimated 57 million in 2015, down from 100 million in 2000. Similarly, the literacy rate among youth aged 15–24 increased from 83% to 91% between 1990 and 2015, with the gap between women and men narrowed. While this goal of universal enrollment in primary education was not achieved, progress in this area was significant.

MDG 3 focused on promoting gender equity and women's empowerment. School enrollment of girls increased across the developing region. In Southern Asia in 2015, 103 girls enrolled in school for every 100 boys compared to 74 girls for every 100 boys in 1990. Significant gains were also seen in the employment and status of women, important for positive outcomes for children.

MDG 4 aimed at reducing child mortality. The global under-five mortality rate declined by more than half, dropping from 90 to 43 deaths per 1000 live births between 1990 and 2015. In sub-Saharan Africa, the annual rate of reduction of under-five mortality was over five times faster during 2005–2013 than it was during 1990–1995. Measles vaccination helped prevent nearly 15.6 million deaths between 2000 and 2013, and the number of measles cases declined by 67% for the same period.

MDG 5 aimed to improve maternal health, highly relevant to children. Since 1990, the maternal mortality rate declined by 45%. In Southern Asia, the maternal mortality ratio declined by 64% between 1990 and 2013, and in sub-Saharan Africa, it fell by 49%. Globally, more than 71% of births were assisted by skilled personnel in 2014, an increase from 59% in 1990. In Northern Africa, the proportion of pregnant women who received four or more antenatal visits increased from 50% to 89% between 1990 and 2014. Contraceptive prevalence among women aged 15–49, married or in a union, increased from 55% in 1990 to 64% in 2015.

MDG 6 focused on combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, all of which affect children disproportionately. New HIV infections fell by approximately 40% between 2000 and 2013, from an estimated 3.5 million cases to 2.1 million. By 2014, 13.6 million people living with HIV were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART). ART averted 7.6 million deaths from AIDS between 1995 and 2013. Over 6.2 million malaria deaths were averted between 2000 and 2015, primarily for children under-five years of age in sub-Saharan Africa. The global malaria incidence rate fell by an estimated 37% and the mortality rate by 58% (United Nations, 2015).

The MDG's Report 2015 (United Nations, 2015) not only highlighted the significant achievements made on many of the MDG targets worldwide but also pointed to the uneven progress across regions and countries and significant areas for further continued action. Despite these advances, millions of people are still being left behind, especially the poorest and those disadvantaged because of their sex, age, disability, ethnicity, or geographical location. Targeted efforts are needed to reach the most vulnerable groups. The review of progress on the MDGs also concluded that data for evidence-based decision making and accountability will be crucial for the post-2015 development agenda (United Nations, 2015).

Scope and Methodology

The UN’s DevInfo Database provides the official UN statistics used to monitor countries’ progress toward their MDG. These goals cover eight areas related to human development, such as the eradication of poverty, hunger, and preventable diseases; promotion of universal education gender equality; and progress toward sustainability in almost every country and territory in the world. The data is collected from reporting agencies (typically national statistics offices) in each country charged with monitoring MDG. Users can view the list of reporting agencies with related links in the DevInfo Catalog (http://www.devinfo.org/libraries/aspx/Catalog.aspx).

How can the Global Community Organize to Achieve the Global Nutrition Goals?

Around the turn of the century, the global community set several development goals to guide countries toward progress on various development indicators. These came to be known as MDGs; there were eight specific targets that were set and they were not fully accomplished by 2015, the target year. The development community again geared up to define a new set of goals, calling them SDGs (see Box 2.2). But let us look at how the nutritional trends described earlier in the chapter are connected to the recently set nutritional goals, and see how important they are as we address the nutritional challenges in order to achieve the larger development goals, and vice versa.

Box 2.2

Sustainable Development Goals

Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.

Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.

Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all.

Goal 9: Build a resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation.

Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries.

Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.

Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.

Goal 15: Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss.

Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels.

Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.