Heads of government from across the world have met in New York to review progress on achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Not a pretty picture.
The UN MDGs. Remember them? A bold 15 year vision greeted the dawn of the new millennium in 2000. All the countries of the world signed up to commitments in eight areas tackling the wicked issues of our age – halving poverty, bringing primary education to all, promoting equality for women, cutting the mortality rate among under fives dying needlessly of preventable diseases.
With just five years to go, the headlines today are of failure on many of the goals and in many of the countries needing progress most. Yet in a curious way, the MDGs are a success story. They have galvanised interest among politicians, the public and the media. The recent failure to get world agreement on climate change shows just how remarkable the MDG agreement was. And marked progress has been made on some of the goals in some of the countries.
Even companies, scratching their heads for much of the last decade about their role in targets set by countries for countries, have tried to step up to the plate. In this edition, our ‘speaking out’ column asks what more they can and should do. For some, the phrase ‘bottom of the pyramid’, coined by CK Prahalad who sadly died in April this year, has inspired a look at their business models and distribution systems, to bring the power of commercial viability to poverty reduction.
Of course too few have yet found scalable ways to do this. Too many have to rely on community investment and philanthropic foundations – and this edition reports a bumper crop of great but commercially limited initiatives.
One fact should encourage greater progress in the final five years. The Institute of Development Studies has pointed out that three quarters of the poorest people in the world actually live in middle income countries like India and Nigeria – precisely the places where many multinationals are looking for strong growth in the next few years. Focus there, at all levels of the pyramid, and the rewards should be good, for investors and poor people alike.
Mike Tuffrey is founding editor of Corporate Citizenship Briefing, and founding director of Corporate Citizenship. In addition, he is an elected member of the London Assembly and has been appointed by the mayor to the London Sustainable Development Commission.
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