VOA标准英语2011--Are Millennium Development Goals Just a First Step?

Are Millennium¹ Development Goals Just a First Step?

 

In September 2000, the United Nations approved the Millennium Declaration. It set the stage for the Millennium Development Goals, which are due to be achieved in 2015. But have the MDGs brought meaningful results or are they just a first step?

The goals aim to reduce poverty, hunger and disease, while improving health, education, gender² equality and the environment.

“There’s a debate that’s brewing³ about what happens after 2015 when these targets come to their natural end. Should there be more targets? Should you get really ambitious about ending world poverty in, say, 2030 or something like that? And we thought it might be useful to take a look at what’s actually been achieved over the last 10 years or so and ask a series of questions about the impact of the MDGs,” said Andy Sumner has evaluated their effectiveness in his paper More Money or More Development: What Have the Millennium Development Goals Achieved?

Sumner is a fellow in vulnerability and poverty reduction at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.

He said, “We wanted to ask if the MDGs had changed the nature of the debate in terms of, had they shifted priorities, at least in policy discussions. We wanted to ask, had the goals led to greater mobilization of resources, so more money for development. And we wanted to see if they actually led to changes in policy and changes in outcome in terms of has poverty reduction been faster over the last 10 years compared to previous periods. Could you say that the MDGs were part of that success story?”

Toothless

IDS fellow Andy Sumner

That’s a lot to ask, he said, of what he calls a “legally toothless document

“Actually, the MDGs themselves, these U.N. goals, were never signed up to by heads of state. What was signed by heads of state was a declaration called the Millennium Declaration in 2000, which the targets were then drawn⁴ out of. Toothless in the sense that if they’re not met, no one’s really accountable for that. And maybe that’s a question to put forward if there’s another set of international goals on reducing poverty,” he said.

Following the declaration, many reports were issued estimating costs and proposing policy changes. Sumner said this suggested, at least, a “widespread hope that the MDGs could make a real difference in speeding development progress.”

“What we found was rather a kind of mixed picture. I think it’s fair to say the MDGs changed the nature of the debate in the sense that they made global poverty reduction something that was mentioned at many G8 summits, for example, but less so at the G20 since the financial crisis. So clearly they moved poverty reduction and social spending and health and education very much onto the center ground, where perhaps in the past, they hadn’t been quite so central, those kind of social issues,” he said.

It’s also likely,” he said, “the Millennium Development Goals led to more money being spent in terms of aid.

Differing viewpoints

But judging their effectiveness can depend on whether you take a broad or narrow view. Sumner said the original intention was that they be global goals.

“So, do you judge these things at a global level? So, for example, of the seven key U.N. poverty goals here, three of them are on track to be met and three of them are not too badly off-track. One is very off-track, maternal⁵ mortality. No one’s quite sure if the data’s meaningful. There’s a real area of contention⁶ about the data for maternal mortality. But if you judge it at country level, then things have been largely helped by massive progress in China, for example, and other large countries. It comes down to how you judge these things and of course that was never clear at the outset,” he said.

He added the goal to cut poverty in half by 2015 would suggest there’s still some unfinished business.

“What might you achieve by say 2030? We’re trying to assess what might be reasonable for 2030. And we think it’s not out of the question that certain aspects of extreme poverty could be eradicated⁷ by 2030. So the MDGs, the Millennium Development Goals, were the kind of first stage of getting halfway⁸. And then you might want to aspire⁹ to end extreme poverty by 2030 and that might be reasonable,” he said.

Sumner said there’s a symbolic¹⁰ value in the world saying it cares enough about poverty to set goals to reduce it. In fact, he says, it may be one of the few areas where there’s widespread international agreement. The question now is what happens after 2015? Will updated goals be proposed to follow-up on the Millennium Development Goals.

1 millennium   

n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世

参考例句：

• The whole world was counting down to the new millennium.全世界都在倒计时迎接新千年的到来。
• We waited as the clock ticked away the last few seconds of the old millennium.我们静候着时钟滴答走过千年的最后几秒钟。

2 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

3 brewing   

n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• It was obvious that a big storm was brewing up. 很显然，一场暴风雨正在酝酿中。
• She set about brewing some herb tea. 她动手泡一些药茶。

4 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

5 maternal   

adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的

参考例句：

• He is my maternal uncle.他是我舅舅。
• The sight of the hopeless little boy aroused her maternal instincts.那个绝望的小男孩的模样唤起了她的母性。

6 contention   

n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张

参考例句：

• The pay increase is the key point of contention. 加薪是争论的焦点。
• The real bone of contention,as you know,is money.你知道，争论的真正焦点是钱的问题。

7 eradicated   

画着根的

参考例句：

• Polio has been virtually eradicated in Brazil. 在巴西脊髓灰质炎实际上已经根除。
• The disease has been eradicated from the world. 这种疾病已在全世界得到根除。

8 halfway   

adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途

参考例句：

• We had got only halfway when it began to get dark.走到半路，天就黑了。
• In study the worst danger is give up halfway.在学习上，最忌讳的是有始无终。

9 aspire   

vi.(to，after)渴望，追求，有志于

参考例句：

• Living together with you is what I aspire toward in my life.和你一起生活是我一生最大的愿望。
• I aspire to be an innovator not a follower.我迫切希望能变成个开创者而不是跟随者。

10 symbolic   

adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的

参考例句：

• It is symbolic of the fighting spirit of modern womanhood.它象征着现代妇女的战斗精神。
• The Christian ceremony of baptism is a symbolic act.基督教的洗礼仪式是一种象征性的做法。