The Millennium Development
Goals
and
Global
Public Goods
Office
of Development Studies, UNDP, New York
March
2002
| Millennium
Development Goals |
Links
to Global Public Goods
|
| Goal 1:
Eradicate poverty and hunger
|
The attainment of this goal will in
large measure depend on success in achieving the other MDGs. In
addition, however, the attainment of this goal requires that people
find access to renumerative work and enhanced market access
opportunities. How can this be achieved? No doubt, this is a complex
goal. However, there are doable things that can be done; and they
concern GPGs:
- Integrated markets are GPGs par excellence. The only problem
of markets is that their institutions and instruments are often
geared towards the needs and interests of the "big"
market actors. Yet a lot can be learned from the successful
financial engineering that has been accomplished during the past
years for the richer players: it is possible to bundle, let us
say, the insurance needs of small farmers against volatility in
commodity markets and take them to the existing insurance
markets.
- It is possible, for example, to expand the mandate of MIGA and
to combine it with an insurance for developing countries against
external shocks (e.g. changes in interest or exchange rates).
- Similarly, one could think of new, innovative health insurance
schemes and explore the experiences existing in this respect in
some developing countries, such as Thailand.
- And of course: one could think of further removing, as
repeatedly suggested at international conferences, agricultural
subsidies.
In short, in order to eradicate poverty it would be desirable not
only to enhance the level of ODA, as is no doubt required, but also
to improve the economic opportunities available to billions of
people. This will probably open up the most durable and sustainable
avenues towards poverty reduction that we can think of. |
| Goal 2:
Achieve universal primary
education |
In all countries primary education has
been recognized as having important positive externalities, i.e.
benefiting not only the person, who receives education but also
society as a whole. A link has been found between, for example,
girls' education and (lower) fertility rates (and hence, slowing
world population growth), higher productivity (and hence, economic
growth), and improved health ( and hence, communicable disease
control). In a globalizing world it is fully justified to view
"basic education for all" as a global public good: the
societal benefits of basic education accrue to people the world
over. |
| Goal 3:
Promote gender equality and
empower women |
The "regime" or norm of
equity and equality is an intriguing global public good. Imagine,
for example, that only women in a particular country were
considered equal with men and not those in the rest of the world. It
could then happen that even the equality of the women in that
country
would, one day, be queried. If, however, all women, worldwide, are
considered equal, each stands a better chance to be able to assert
her rights and status. Nobody alone can be treated equally or
equitably. This is a cooperative effort. And the larger the number
of people treated in this way, the firmer and more credible the
norm. Hence, global norms, including universal human rights, are in
effect global public goods par excellence: non-rival, and therefore,
it also makes no sense to exclude anybody from enjoying the norm. If
the norm is violated, well, it may be that some men are out to
capture private gain (gain for the male world). |
| Goal 4:
Reduce child mortality |
In discussing goals 4, 5, and 6, we
have to distinguish between two GPG dimensions. The first
dimension is that people's health depends on several inputs that
have a GPG character. GPGs for health: pharmaceutical R&D
or knowledge, the international trade regime (esp. TRIPs), global
disease surveillance, etc. Especially in the case of some
communicable diseases, other people's health is from the viewpoint
of individual persons also part of the global health environment.
The second dimension is a country's disease burden:
where the disease burden becomes excessive, as currently in Africa
countries and other LDCs, it produces serious cross-border
spillovers in terms of faltering economic growth, political unrest
and other aspects that tend to accompany the failing of states.
Excessive disease burdens are morally and ethically to be deplored
but they also constitute global public bads.
Therefore, it is often economically and politically desirable, to
make certain key ingredients, especially pharmaceutical knowledge,
somewhat more "public by design" (along the lines
suggested by Jeffrey Sachs and the Commission on Macro-economics and
Health). |
| Goal 5:
Improve maternal health |
See above |
| Goal 6:
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and
other diseases |
See above |
| Goal 7:
Ensure environmental
sustainability |
From a GPG viewpoint, this is a
particularly intriguing goal, because it points to the possibility
for developing countries to access important new income earning
opportunities. The developing countries hold the key to many global
environment problems, or put differently, they own (might own in
future) many of the scarce environmental resources that the world
urgently needs. If organized properly (i.e. if clear property rights
were established and efficient new global trading arrangements
arranged) important North-South resource transfers could occur which
would channel to developing countries urgently needed resources and
make it possible for them to invest in achieving the MDGs.
At the same time, some of the current environmental problems,
such as the "water wars" could be probably resolved more
easily, if they were, maybe, facilitated more regionally (e.g.
through NEPAD) or more globally, e.g. through the Global Water
Partnership. Put differently, some national/regional public goods
can benefit from (what we in UNDP call) intermediate global public
goods, such as a global partnership (which has the properties of a
GPG but is not an end in itself). |
| Goal
8:
Develop a Global
Partnership for Development |
We are living in (as we in UNDP say)
"a new era of publicness": people demand more say in the
matters that affect their life; business feels more socially
responsible, i.e. has more public concerns (and this probably,
because it has, in growing measure, "gone public", i.e. to
the stock and bond markets), and governments everywhere have been
pressured to be more transparent and accountable. ALL actors,
not just the state, embody public interests today, some of course
more than others, but nevertheless, they do. This has created a
real, not just an ideological, basis for public-private
partnerships.
Moreover, to the extent that national borders have become porous
and the public domains of countries interlocked, there is also a
need for intergovernmental arenas to become more public: to create a
seat around the table for all countries. This because all countries
today face jointly the task of providing through collective,
cross-border actions GPGs. |
Useful Links on Millennium Goals:
United Nations
Millennium Declaration
Millennium
Development Goals: goals and indicators
UN
Department of Economic and Social Affairs - Statistics Division's
Millennium Indicators Site
|
