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The great MDG Summit in New York is over. It was a good party. Ten years after the UN Millennium Declaration in 2000, and the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals, it was time to take stock, renew resolve, shame donor country laggards, heap praise on developing countries with success stories and sympathize with those that have special disabilities — the least developed countries, landlocked nations and small island states. It was also a time to compare how you were doing with respect to your neighbors and competitors. But above all it was a time for heads of state to gather, to reaffirm their faith in a global approach to pervasive problems. It was also time to see how much had been done and how much remains to be done. A traffic light system — green for on-track, yellow for just chugging along and red for off-track — was used to show where new resources and new energy needed to be directed.

The MDG Summit was indeed an important occasion. Recall that the Millennium Declaration was endorsed by no less than 189 heads of state, a true global record.

It was nothing less than a once-in-a-generation paradigm shift in developmental thinking and it should also be considered a philosophical revolution.

It signalled not only a heightened awareness of global poverty in all its forms in a world characterized by unparalleled economic growth, trade and technology, but also attempted to see what can be done about it, first through a redefined development partnership between bilateral and multilateral donor and financial institutions, and second through an increasing role in setting policy by the national governments themselves.

The core of this new philosophy is that development consists not only of raising the income and consumption thresholds of individuals and households, but also expanding their capabilities and freedoms, thus enabling them to live long and fulfilling lives.

Such “human” development aspect of economic and social progress had been debated for much of the 1990s in the UN Development Program’s reports.

The 2000 Millennium Declaration — and the MDGs and associated indicators that followed them — represented a noticeable change from the development debate of the 1980s and 1990s.

The debate is not, however, altogether settled.

As a 2009 World Bank report points out, what was not clear following the Millennium Declaration was the extent to which signatory countries were expected to “adopt” or “adapt” the indicators that were used to define progress toward those goals.

The difference between the two is more important than it might first appear.

Take the case of poverty indicators used in the tracking of MDG 1 (eradicating extreme poverty and hunger).

Many countries chose to use a nutrition-based measure of absolute poverty rather than the internationally comparable poverty line of $1 or $1.25 dollars a day per person.

Many developing countries have in fact used national poverty lines based on a combination of the 2,100 calories/day WHO standard and a minimum-needs non-food basket.

For purposes of tracking the progress in reducing absolute poverty between 1990 and 2015, these poverty lines are quite adequate at the country level.

However, international comparisons would require some agreed international cut-off line such as the $1 a day threshold.

Whatever solution is preferred nevertheless remains arbitrary given differences in consumption habits, weather, local epidemiology, etc.

MDG 8 — developing a global partnership for development — is another example.

While the focus is on development partnerships, the initial concern at the time of the Millennium Declaration was that projected declines in global development aid would hinder the timely achievement of the MDGs.

A second concern was to find ways to improve access to markets in developed countries.

Subsidies in rich countries discouraged entry of products — especially agricultural goods — from developing nations.

Another problem is the multiplicity of aid channels and conditions administered by a wide range of bilateral and multilateral agencies.

It increased the management burden on recipient countries and raised coordination issues for donors and lenders.

These concerns were exacerbated by the perpetual problem of indebtedness of poor countries, which is partly due to weak debt management and capacity issues and also due to the impact of a series of calamities ranging from natural disasters to social conflicts.

Over the last decade, the nature of the partnership between developed and developing countries has gained in both scope and structure, pushed in part by the need to promote global security and institutional stability (e.g. the dangers of failed states) and also by the rise of new powers India and China.

Despite the failure of the Doha round, there have been new efforts to build global development partnerships.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that despite several promises to raise foreign aid by $34 billion each year until 2010, the goal of 0.7 percent of GNP aid targeted for developed countries is far from being realized.

This has a major knock-on effect on MDG targets since the availability of aid resources is seen as a major tool in helping attain the MDGs by 2015.

The problems of deciphering whether a country is “on track” or “off track” in its pursuit of the MDGs are thus highly complex.

The simple numbers and traffic light rankings hide an entire array of empirical measurement, implied associations and overall judgment based on experience and discussion.

There are also other problems. Take the case of MDG 3 on gender empowerment. Here is a case of a goal which is often cited as a “trigger” for a number of other indicators and targets.

Female empowerment in terms of employment and education leads to higher economic growth, lower infant and maternal mortality, greater health awareness and so on.

The same, it is argued, is true of foreign aid and trade partnerships.

These goals therefore exhibit the characteristics of trigger variables that expedite progress in attaining other MDGs.

While all MDGs are related since all are needed to have a happy and fulfilling life, trigger MDGs seem to be more significant in the early phases of development when not all goals can be achieved at the same rate.

At the country level, this raises both a conceptual and a practical question.

How should we interpret the probability of MDG achievement within a given time frame (e.g. 2015) if the country or region scores low on gender empowerment but high on a range of other indicators?

Although the question is often sidestepped in the belief that every MDG (apart from 8) embodies a human right and therefore cannot be ranked relative to every other MDG, the practical importance of these questions in predicting likely progress in 2015 and beyond could not be overlooked.

Now that the party is over and the heads of state have gone back home, the job of figuring out how to reach the MDGs by 2015, less than five years away, must begin in earnest.

The first step should be to use the traffic light system to foster an in-country development consensus.

The second is to configure how to sequence trigger indicators and targets.

In a strategic approach to MDG attainment, the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line.



Satish Mishra is the managing director of Strategic Asia, Jakarta-based a consulting firm that promotes cooperation among Asian countries. He can be reached at satish.mishra@strategic-asia.com.