What If We Don't Reach the 21st Century Goals?

Success or failure in reaching these targets will have a profound impact around the globe. While the goals may seem somewhat abstract to the average citizen of the developed world, failure to reach them would deeply touch the lives of millions of people. The goals are intrinsically interrelated. Success toward any goal makes realizing the others that much easier. Conversely, setbacks in reaching any of the 21st Century Goals make the others that much harder to attain. For example, reaching the goal of cutting malnutrition by 50 percent will likely be impossible without significant progress in improving basic education and boosting per capita incomes.

A better understanding of the implications of not reaching the 21st Century Goals, and the importance of not approaching these goals in a piecemeal fashion, can easily been seen by looking at several models based on the impact of development. Take the goal of universal basic education. In 1995, about 80 percent of girls of primary school age in developing countries actually attended school. The 21st Century Goal is to reach 100 percent enrollment for both girls and boys by 2015. As we have seen, girls' education leads to other improvements in economic and social conditions. Girls with more education are better able to acquire knowledge that will improve their lives and those of their family members. They are more likely to earn income outside the home. They are likely to have fewer children, and these children are likely to be healthier.

In Brazil, for example, women with no education have an average of five children, while those who attend even just four years of school average three children. The infant mortality rate for children born to women with no schooling is about one in 10, while women with four years of school see rates of about one in 20. Rates for malnutrition and immunization of children show similar disparities.

This Brazilian data can be used to give a rough estimate of the global consequences of falling short of the girls' education target. Suppose that the net enrollment ratio for girls is raised only to 90 percent - not 100 percent - worldwide by 2015. That would mean 33 million girls of primary school age would not be in school in 2015. Later in life, those 33 million girls will have 67 million more babies than if they had been given four years of school when young. About 11 million more of those babies will die in their first year. There will be 25 million more children experiencing moderate or severe malnutrition, and 63 million fewer children in the world would go without inoculations against the most common diseases. Clearly, it behooves the world to achieve the 21st Century Goal for universal basic education.

There is a similar interrelation between development goals in the areas of agricultural technology, nutrition, the environment and population growth. Most of the Earth's land that is best suited for agriculture is already being farmed. Globally, farmland makes up about 6 million square miles, an area somewhat smaller than South America.

If agricultural yields do not keep pace with growing populations, another 3 million square miles of land would need to be farmed by the middle of the next century to keep pace with the explosion in the number of new, and hungry, mouths to feed. To put it in perspective, 3 million square miles is an area about the size of Australia. Forests and other environmentally sensitive areas would likely be severely harmed in the search for additional, marginal farmland.

As Norman Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his pioneering breakthroughs in agronomy, has noted, "World peace will not be built on empty stomachs and human misery. Deny farmers access to modern technology, and the world will be doomed, not from environmental degradation, as some would have us believe, but from starvation and social and political chaos." While the 21st Century Goals are simple and clear, whether we achieve them or not will be felt in almost every facet of life in both developed and developing nations.