The Millennium Development Goals and the Environment

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest.

More specifically, the 7th MDG aims at ensuring environmental sustainability and targets to:

• Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources,  
• Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, and
• Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020

Beyond the 7th MDG, inter-linkages between development, poverty reduction, and the environment are numerous.

Poverty and environment

Since “the environment” actually means soil- to grow food; water- to drink, wash and irrigate crops; and air to breathe, and a host of natural food and medicinal products, it becomes clear that preserving “the environment” actually means safeguarding food production; sustaining livelihoods and preserving health. Poverty reduction, economic growth and the maintenance of life-supporting environmental resources are therefore inextricably linked (OECD, 2001).

• Linking Poverty Reduction and Environmental Management
• Linking Poverty Reduction and Water Management
• Exploring the Links: Human Well-being, Poverty and Ecosystem Services
• Connecting poverty & ecosystem services- A series of seven country scoping studies
• Poverty Reduction Strategies and the Millennium Development Goal on Environmental Sustainability
• Poverty and the Environment: Measuring the Links, DFID
• Poverty-Environment Gender Linkages, OECD
• UNEP Poverty and Environment unit
• Poverty and Environment Partnership
• The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006

Gender and development

Of six billion inhabitants of the planet, 1.2 billion barely survive in conditions of misery, with daily per capita incomes under $1. Seventy percent of these are women (IUCN). In this context, gender equality and equity are matters of equal rights. But adopting a gender approach is also a way to better target policies and projects to the needs, priorities and roles of both women and men, for a higher efficiency of development and poverty reduction efforts.

• Environmentally Sustainable Development and Poverty: A Gender Analysis, IDS
• Gender and Development: Frequently Asked Questions, IDS
• Gender and Development: Facts and Figures, IDS
• Poverty and environment, gender makes the difference, IUCN
• Millennium Development Goals, gender makes the difference, IUCN
• UNIFEM Gender Issues

Millennium Development Goals and Water (More)

More from the major groups

UN Conference of NGOs: Achieving the Millennium Development Goals
6-8 September 2006, United Nations, New York

The Conference aims to build on what has already been accomplished by greater NGO and civil society participation in many of the debates taking place at the United Nations, including Informal Interactive Hearings by the General Assembly President with NGOs, civil society and private sector representatives. Speakers at the Conference are being asked to illustrate their work on the ground by real-life examples of effective partnerships to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). To ensure the widest possible exchange of views and experiences, all NGO delegations will include one representative under the age of 30.

For more information, see www.unngodpiconference.org