MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Brazil

Canada

Germany

United Kingdom

United States

Rwanda

Eritrea

Russia India

China

Cambodia

Japan

On the 55th General Assembly of the United Nations (Millenium Assembly), which took place in September 2000 in New York, the member countries agreed upon a mandatory catalogue of steps and a tough deadline: The Millenium Development Goals. On Septem-ber 18th they were passed by the 189 member countries.

The catalogue contains 47 single goals which are to be achieved by 2015. They are divided into 8 categories, including poverty & hunger, education, environment and gender parity among others. A goal is successfully achieved when the correlating indicator reached a certain value.

It‘s only four and a half years to 2015 - a very short amount of time for such far reaching political actions. Even if corruption, reli-gious fundamentalism and other obstacles are not considered. Eit-her way, time is running out and that‘s why we wanted to give you a summary of the progress made until now, the current situation and how much further it is to achieve the goals.Unfortunately the specifi c va-lues of the indicators seem to be known only to the United Nations. We asked the German Federal Ministry for Economic Coopera-tion and Development, but they were unable to help us. We picked 6 developed and 6 developing / least developed countries and focused on comparing the current situation instead.

INTRODUCTIONYou will see well-known but sho-cking facts about education on the next page, followed by some statistics concerning demography. Flip pages and you will gain an insight into the environmental / ecological progress. We will close with the current situation of com-munication technology.

PRIMARY EDUCATION DROPOUT100 %

0 %

* *

50 %

75 %

25 %

USA CAN GBR DEU RUS JPN USA CAN GBR DEU RUS JPN

Primary school enrollment

Persistence to last gradeof primary

100 %

* No data available

The number of children in primary school age who are not attending school has decreased by 33 million since 1999. However, 72 million children worldwide were not in school (2007). Almost half of the-

se children are living in sub-Saha-ran Africa, followed by 18 millions out-of-school children in South Asia. These numbers are worriso-me because they have an impact on other development goals. For

instance, the education level of mothers is correlating directly with the child mortality rate and the nutrition quality of her children. The literacy level of their parents has a positive effect on HIV/AIDS

100 %

0%

50 %

* *75%

25 %

BRA RWA ERI IND KHM CHN BRA RWA ERI IND KHM CHN

prevention and increases the pro-bability of a decent employment.

FOCUS ON DEMOGRAPHY

It is widely known that mothers living in developing countries give birth to more children than in developed countries. The same applies on the other end, more people die and those who do are

younger. There is no single reason, as mentioned on the pages before the development goals infl uence each other. Women in the richest households are 1.7 times more li-kely to visit a skilled health worker

during pregnancy. In addition con-traceptive use is four times higher among women with a secondary education compared to those without any education. This has (as said) an impact on the spread

of HIV/AIDS and the birth rate. The higher death rate is also caused by the insuffi cient medical infra-structure (which implicates hardly available skilled health personnel) and missing money to change it.

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Please note that the seventh gra-phic represents the average value of the six countries on the page.

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D deaths per 1000 people per yearC births per 1000 people per yearB male populationA female population

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Developed industry and moto-rized individual transport cause developed countries to lead when speaking of carbon dioxide emis-sions. Assume every Chinese lived like the average American: China

Improved water sourceAbout 70 % of water withdrawnworldwide is for agricultural needs.

Energy useBecause Japan hasno natural ressourcesit has to import 84 %of its energy needs.

Land covered with forestTrees convert carbon dioxide intooxygen. The forest itself is animportant habitat for many plants,animals and fungi.

9.37

9.7710.97

CO2 emissionsThey are highest indeveloped countries.

would emit 25 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is al-most as much as the whole world in 2007 (about 27 billion metric tons).

Maybe you wonder why Japan has such a big amount of forest, especially when compared to the other developed countries. Most people fi rst think of Tokyo and other overpopulated megacities.

But Japan has many mountains as well. The forest on them wasn‘t cut off because industry and cities do not pay off in this kind of regi-ons.

1.87

4,56 0.12

CO2 emissionsIn Brazil drive about24 times more natural gas cars thanin Germany.

Improved water sourceAbout 1.2 billion people worldwide do not have access to an improved source of water.

Energy useIn Rwanda, only 4 to 5 % ofits population have access to thenational power grid.

Land covered with forestAround 13 million hectares offorest are cut down every year.That‘s almost half of United Kingdom.

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6

10 % of populationwith access to improved water source

60 % of country areforest

6 tons CO2 percapita and year

Energy usecompared toRussia

FACTS ABOUT COMMUNICATION

Knowledge and information are the greatest good in our society, networks are now more impor-tant than ever in the history of mankind. Advanced communica-tion technology helps us to build

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10 Internet users per 100 people

10 telephone lines per 100 people

10 SIM cards per 100 people

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and maintain such networks as well as gaining knowledge and information. One doesn‘t have to be a rocket scientist to conclude that countries with less developed communication infrastructure are

in disadvantage. This fact is called the Digital Divide. It causes coun-tries to drop behind not only eco-nomically but also socially (e.g. be-cause access to independent news and information is much harder or

almost impossible). People in con-cerned countries rely on mobile phones to compensate this defi cit because building IT infrastructure is time-consuming and expensive. Several NPOs that are trying to

help, for example the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child Project). They manufacture low-budget laptops (199 $) so countries can buy one for every child in school.

SUMMARYAs explained in the introduction only the United Nations know the specific indicator values to be reached and as a result how far countries are away from their very ambitious goals. It is likely that the majority will not be achieved any-way. According to the MDG annu-al report 2009 the future is bright when speaking of drinking water, but there are other targets to be fulfilled by 2015 e.g. stopping and

reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other severe deseases. Some people criticize the wording of the goals: The target indicator values are formulated in relation to data from the nineties and hard to reach. This could implicate gre-at, but still not considered impro-vements because they just don‘t meet the requirements. Further-more these requirements are not fair at all: Raising the literacy rate

is much easier for countries that already have an education system.Assuming that the majority of the goals will not be achieved we will just have to wait and see what‘s happening after 2015. Particu-larly considering the fact that in „Hopenhagen“ 2009 the member countries agreed upon agreeing later...

SOURCES

MDG Databankhttp://databank.worldbank.org

MDG annual report 2009http://www.un.org/millennium-goals/pdf/MDG_Report_2009_ENG.pdf

Praktikum Medieninformatik 2010 | Nikolaus Piccolotto, Sven Jordan

Gender Statistics Databankhttp://databank.worldbank.org

MDG annual report 2010http://www.un.org/millennium-goals/pdf/MDG%20Report%202010%20En%20r15%20-low%20res%2020100615%20-.pdf