Ending world poverty

Another day of hope for the world’s poor came as a number of world leaders assembled at the United Nations promised to end extreme poverty within 15 years. The signatories to the accord included a wide range of leaders that included German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This meant that the pledge has brought the developed and developing worlds together in the fight to eliminate extreme poverty. The world leaders adopted an ambitious set of UN goals which were to be backed up by trillions of dollars in spending capacity. The agreement has been billed as the most comprehensive anti-poverty plan ever with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets adopted at the start of the UN General Assembly meeting. The agreement was the fruit of three years of endless negotiations that finally culminated in this consensus. This new global agenda was welcomed by Pope Francis as an ‘important sign of hope’ in his first speech to the UNGA. The Pope urged global leaders to deliver on their promise to transform the world by 2030.
The fact is that these goals look good on paper but will meet a meek fate if they are left to the designs of real politics. With the SDGs set to replace the Millennium Development Goals, one need only to be reminded of the fact that the MDGs themselves are not near being met as the much more ambitious SDGs were being agreed upon. The agreement of SDGs, which has been described by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as a ‘to-do list for people and planet’, seems to be yet another piece of paper that will be celebrated for a few days before it becomes one more glaring indictment for what we could have done but did not do for the betterment of all of the residents of this planet. The new UN agenda to end poverty, ensure health, promote education and combat climate change will come at a cost of between $3.5 and $5 trillion per year till 2030. German Chancellor Merkel has already warned that the goals cannot be fulfilled until the wars ravaging the planet are not ended. After 15 war and famine-filled years from 2000 to 2015, another two decades of war and famine are certainly beyond what the planet can afford. Given the realising threat of climate change altering the ecology of our planet forever, the world’s commitment to the SDGs will now no longer be about the future of the world’s poor, but the future of our world as we know it.