He argued that on present trends, none of the International Development Goals on health and education were likely to be achieved at the global level, while progress towards the goal of halving the number of people in poverty was likely to remain distinctly patchy. It is time to make it clear, . The difference between these figures is worth a hundred billion dollars a year. For millions of children, this is the difference between life and death. Despite the pledges there is little sign of the UN target being widely met.
Governments instead prefer to hide behind talk of better aid targeting.
But the reality is that there is no chance of developing countries as a whole making satisfactory progress towards prosperity and sustainable development without a very substantial increase in levels of assistance from the rich world to the poor. There is now also the climate change factor to consider. Across large swathes of Africa and Asia in particular, climatic disturbances have wrecked harvests over a prolonged period while the economic disruption caused by the AIDS pandemic is also hampering the achievement of development targets. With growth slowing in the United States and stagnant in Japan and with Europe still in the grip of relatively high unemployment, there are tremendous pressures on all governments to reduce public expenditures. Faced with the need to keep taxes low on the one hand and an obligation to provide the wherewithal to make good on their Millennium pledges to the developing world on the other, there is no question about who will win.