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Learn from China's success in meeting MDGs

By Khalid Malik (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-26 14:53

At the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, 189 member states unanimously adopted the Millennium Declaration, collectively agreeing "to free all men, women, and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty".

To support this bold ambition a set of clear and comprehensive goals were adopted, committing the world to specific targets for progress in eight key areas by 2015.

These Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have become the main yardstick for global progress in the battle against deprivation and are followed closely around the world.

Eight years on, we are more than halfway to the MDG endpoint and must collectively take stock of our progress. More importantly, we must identify the gaps, learn from the successes and find ways to increase our efforts if we are to meet the goals on time. That is the purpose of the high-level event on the MDGs at the UN General Assembly in New York.

The most recent global report on the MDGs shows that much progress has been made. Access to primary education is over 90 percent in all but two regions of the world, putting 40 million more children in school, and 1.6 billion people have gained access to safe water sources since 1990.

Three million fewer children die from disease every year. Gender disparities in primary and secondary school enrolment have fallen by 60 percent, and rates of new infections and deaths from HIV/AIDS have been reversed. The goal of halving poverty is within reach.

Progress has however been uneven across the globe. China is a star performer, having already achieved the goals on halving poverty and hunger, and providing universal access to primary education while it is firmly on track to meeting most of the rest by 2015.

Thanks to its size and rapid progress, however, China is also impacting global estimates. While the share of the world living in poverty has fallen by 16 percent since 1990, nearly 10 percentage points are thanks only to China. The goal of halving poverty in the rest of the world remains a tremendous challenge.

The MDG update illustrates that in fact many of the goals are still far from being met at the global level. A quarter of all children in developing countries remain undernourished and risk lifelong impairment as a result. Nearly 100 countries are expected to fail at creating gender balance in education. Half a million women still die every year in connection with childbirth. Donor countries have reduced aid flows instead of increasing them as promised.

Therefore, the world must redouble its efforts if the MDGs are to be achieved. It is clear that more of the same will not be enough - development assistance must be improved in several ways:

Increased investment. The group of donors must honor the funding commitments they have repeatedly made, from Monterrey to Gleneagles to Tokyo, and just as repeatedly failed to live up to. At the same time, developing country governments have to commit the necessary share of their own resources, which in many places have grown rapidly in recent years thanks to the rising prices of oil and commodities, toward the MDGs and make them a key priority.

As the UN Millennium Project demonstrated, we know of a large number of simple interventions that make a big difference, from mosquito nets and cholera vaccinations to water wells and biogas tanks. But we lack the resources to roll them out on the scale necessary to significantly change the development dynamic. Policies matter, but so does money.

Faster learning. While the response to many basic problems is well known, other challenges are more complex and require sophisticated solutions. Development agencies, governments and practitioners must put more effort into understanding what works and why, through solid fact-based evaluations of impact that are widely shared and discussed. Only by admitting our failures and analyzing our successes can we focus on the initiatives that really make a difference.

More ownership. One key lesson from China's achievements is that there is no substitute to local commitment to social progress. National support through policy reform and funding combined with energetic local implementation is the key recipe for success.

The policies must be based on grassroots realities: No one can teach us more about how to combat the indignities of poverty, ill health and lack of opportunity than the ones who bear these burdens. Finding better ways of responding to the needs of communities by placing them at the heart of development is critical to serving them well.

Better governance. Putting people first will require strengthened commitment by political parties and leaders to build a vision of the future based on the needs and wishes of their people - and to unwaveringly implement that vision with an emphasis on long-term goals.

A sustained and concerted national drive toward development, shared across the political spectrum, is absolutely critical to delivering the change required to really improve people's lives.

Transformative policies. Simply increasing resources in doing business as usual will not be enough. We need to focus on transformative investments that render a sum larger than its parts. Significant nationwide increases in health and education spending that bring human capacities to another level will allow society and the economy to leap to a higher development path.

China shows this: in 1980, its per capita GDP was between that of present day Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone; but its health and education levels are on a par with Russia and Morocco today. These human investments made possible a fundamentally different development path as economic policies were reformed.

New partnerships. We must get better at accelerating change by leveraging the products, resources and powerful incentives of the private sector in servicing the poor. An increasing number of corporate leaders are realizing that the next growth market is in developing areas of the world.

This presents a tremendous chance for donors and governments to offer new opportunities to poorer people - but it will challenge development specialists to be more open, responsive and creative in the way we engage with the private sector.

China is demonstrating many of these aspects as it goes beyond the MDGs to formulate even bolder ambitions for socioeconomic development, such as ensuring access to secondary education, raising the poverty line and extending health insurance and social safety nets into rural areas.

By virtue of its outstanding achievements as well as its unique perspective as the first developing country to grow into a substantial donor and economic partner for low-income countries, China can contribute a great deal.

A profound understanding of the lessons from China can inform local policymakers in considering their own development strategies, while increased trade and investment from China can provide developing economies with a much needed boost.

I hope and believe that China will engage fully with the development community to find new and better ways of creating a world free of poverty, disease and human deprivation.

The author is United Nations resident coordinator in China.