Foreword
Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2013 gauges progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through the lens of the changing urban-rural landscape. The goals encompass and promote a universal standard of being free from grinding poverty, being educated and healthy, and having ready access to clean water and sanitation. Urbanization has helped reduce poverty through the creation of new income opportunities, and has increased both access to and quality of services. However, the number of people living in urban slums is also rising, and cities often contribute to environmental degradation. At the same time, three quarters of the poor still live in rural areas, and better provision of basic services in those areas is essential to open up opportunities for the rural population. With this in mind, GMR 2013 calls for complementary rural-urban development policies and an integrated strategy of planning, connecting, and financing.
Against the backdrop of this changing urban-rural landscape and the macroeconomic growth that it has generated, success in reducing the proportion of people whose income is under $1.25 a day is a signal achievement. This proportion fell from 43.1 percent in 1990 to 20.6 percent in 2010. However, that still leaves 1.2 billion people in extreme poverty. This stark reality is only part of the story, since the seven other goals are equally vital to improving the human condition.
The other targets and goals are crucial to human well-being, and they reinforce improvements in other areas. For example, providing access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, part of MDG 7, is essential if people are to be healthy enough to complete school and join the job market. Improved sanitary conditions and better education help reduce infant and maternal mortality. In all of these areas, women play a key role, and ensuring equal opportunities for women is absolutely essential.
Yet, continued progress toward the MDGs will be increasingly difficult to achieve without far better stewardship of the environment. Pollution can get in the way of people’s health and thus their productivity, whether on the farm or in cities. Poor people are the least able to protect their children from the effects of pollution on health and educational outcomes, which can in turn mean setbacks once they reach adulthood. Climate change is intensifying, putting the prosperity of future generations at risk and imperiling hard-won development achievements.
Global partnerships for development, which are enshrined in MDG 8, are necessary to tackle everything from supplying affordable essential drugs in poor countries to help ing landlocked and small island developing states. To ensure that such partnerships can be deployed effectively, the international community needs to do a better job of facilitating joint public-private partnerships and harnessing technology to solve today’s development challenges. For example, we need more dynamic innovation and more systematic sharing of lessons of experience. Also, resources matter. Enduring development solutions can only be realized if donors deliver on their pledges and, through improved effectiveness, help countries absorb aid more productively.
With fewer than 1,000 days remaining until the current set of MDGs expire, it is imperative that all of us, wherever we are, make a greater effort to help more people escape poverty and improve their overall well-being. Accelerating progress toward the MDGs and maintaining that momentum beyond 2015 is not only the right thing to do, it is also in the best economic interests of nations.
Jim Yong Kim
President
The World Bank Group
Christine Lagarde
Managing Director
International Monetary Fund