Credibility crunch

Food, poverty, and climate change: an agenda for rich-country leaders

The year 2008 is halfway to the deadline for reaching the Millennium Development Goals. Despite some progress, they will not be achieved if current trends continue. Aid promises are predicted to be missed by $30bn, at a potential cost of 5 million lives. Starting with the G8 meeting in Japan, rich countries must use a series of high-profile summits in 2008 to make sure the Goals are met, and to tackle both climate change and the current food crisis. Economic woes must not be used as excuses: rich countries’ credibility is on the line.

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Summary

No one has to be poor in 2008. No woman need die giving birth for want of simple medical care. No child should die of pneumonia because of a lack of medicine. No girl should have to watch her brothers leave to go to school while she stays at home. No family should see floods wash away its food. No woman should have to watch her children risk their lives drinking dirty water, or go to sleep with empty bellies.

This year, 2008, is the halfway point towards the deadline for reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), agreed by 147 nations in the year 2000. They focus on tackling poverty, hunger, gender inequality, education, health, water, sanitation, and the environment. These goals were not chosen as impossible dreams. They were chosen because they are realistic targets that, with concerted action, can and should be reached – and in fact exceeded – in order to banish extreme poverty to the history books.

Poverty is literally man-made. Men hold most of the power in the world, and must take responsibility for the brutal poverty and insidious inequality that is the blight on the lives of so many. Prioritising equality for women and girls is a prerequisite of any progress. Ending poverty will require money and dedicated UN leadership.

The G8 and other rich nations have the power and the opportunity to make poverty history. They have the power to end the current food crisis and to tackle climate change. It is not yet too late, but it will be if rich nations don’t act soon.