In his Christmas message, investment analyst John Mauldin quotes GaveKal’s Louis Gave on the good news in the global economy, that the UN has achieved some of its Millennium goals of alleviating global poverty.
The UN has eight goals that were set out at the beginning of the century and in a progress report issued in September, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon laid out the program’s successes.
Of the eight goals, Ban Ki-moon cites reducing poverty, increasing access to safe water, improving the lives of slum dwellers and achieving gender parity in primary schools as being successes under the plan, although there’s much room for improvement.
“The picture is mixed,” Mr. Ban said. “We can do better. The best way to prepare for the post-2015 era is to demonstrate that when the international community commits to a global partnership for development, it means it and directs its resources to where they are most needed.”
A sad statistic is that aid to the 40 poorest countries fell by 7.9% in 2012 and the Doha round of global trade talks, where the hope is trade liberalisation will help the most disadvantaged economies, remains stalled.
From a technologist’s point of view the adoption of the internet and IT is of interest with the report claiming the number of internet users in the developing world grew 12% while broadband penetration increased by a quarter.
While those numbers are encouraging, it’s hard though not to think that in the poorest countries access to more fundamental agricultural technologies and infrastructure – such as reliable electricity, water and roads – is more critical to development than the internet and ICT.
At Christmas, it’s worthwhile those of us in the affluent developed world consider how fortunate we’ve been to be born in a place and time that makes us the best fed and most comfortable humans that have ever lived.
That good fortune isn’t shared by everyone on our planet and that’s something we should be considering when we look at the consequences of our personal economic, political and technology choices.