The next 50 years could see a fourfold increase in the size of the
global economy and significant reductions in poverty, provided that
governments act now to avert a growing risk of severe damage to the
environment and profound social unrest, according to a new World
Bank report.
In
nearly 50 years, the world could have a gross domestic product of
$140 trillion and a total population of nine billion people, up
from six billion today. Without better policies and institutions,
social and environmental strains may derail development progress,
leading to higher poverty levels and a decline in the quality of
life for everybody, according to the World Development Report
2003.
The World Bank is calling on heads of state, ministers, private
sector leaders,and civil society representatives at next week's
World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg to reach
agreement on steps that can be taken now to ensure that
poverty-reducing growth does not come at great cost to future
generations.
Misguided policies and weak governance in past decades have
contributed to environmental disasters, income inequality, and
social upheaval in some countries, often resulting in deep
deprivation, riots, or refugees fleeing famine or civil wars.
Today, many poor people depend on fragile natural resources to
survive. Similarly, trust between individuals, which can be eroded
or destroyed by civic unrest, is a social asset with important
economic benefits, since it enables people to make agreements and
undertake transactions that would otherwise not be possible.
Development polices need to be more sharply focused on protecting
these natural and social assets, the report said.
The World Development Report 2003 suggests new alliances are needed
at the local, national and global levels to better address these
problems. The burden for development must be shared more widely.
Rich countries must further open their markets and cut agricultural
subsidies that depress incomes of third world farmers, and they
must increase the flow of aid, medicines, and new technologies to
developing countries. Governments in the developing world, in turn,
must become more accountable and transparent, and ensure that poor
people are able to obtain secure land tenure, as well as access to
education, health care, and other basic services.
The report says that the next few years offer the opportunity to
shape investment patterns to make more efficient use of natural
resources, to protect the environment, and to bring deep reductions
in poverty. The Bank is urging world leaders to take advantage of
the spirit behind such recent milestones as the Monterrey
Consensus, the compact adopted by the United Nations at the March
2002 International Conference on Financing for Development; and the
New Partnership for Africa's Development, an initiative by African
leaders; to establish a global effort for attaining sustainable
development.
"Low income countries will need to grow at 3.6 percent per capita
to meet the United Nations' Millennium Development Goal of halving
poverty by 2015, but this growth must be achieved in a manner that
preserves our future," said Ian Johnson, Vice President of the
World Bank's Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development
Network. "It would be reckless of us to successfully reach the
Millennium Development Goals in 2015, only to be confronted by
dysfunctional cities, dwindling water supplies, more inequality and
conflict, and even less cropland to sustain us than we have
now."
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Developing countries depend on their agricultural sectors for
around one quarter of their total output. However, farmers in these
regions are faced with many hurdles to boosting their living
standards in the years ahead.
Rich country subsidies depress agricultural prices and stifle
opportunities for exporters in the poorest countries.
Poor roads, a scarcity of finance, lack of access to new
technologies,and growing environmental degradation also threaten
the livelihoods of poor farmers in many parts of the world.
To
help the poorest in the developing world rapidly boost their
incomes, the World Bank is urging rich countries to stop spending
$1 billion a day on agricultural subsidies, to accelerate the
transfer of new technologies, and to provide more aid, particularly
to Sub-Saharan Africa, which is struggling to raise agricultural
productivity in the face of rapid population growth.
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The latest World Development Report (WDR 2003) stresses that the
burden of guaranteeing sustainable development must be shared
locally, nationally, and globally:
7
Developing countries need to promote participation and substantive
democracy, inclusiveness and transparency as they build the
institutions needed to manage their resources.
7
Rich countries need to increase aid, cut poor country debts, open
their markets to developing country exporters, and help transfer
technologies needed to prevent diseases, increase energy efficiency
and bolster agricultural productivity.
7
Civil society organizations contribute when they serve as a voice
for dispersed interests and provide independent verification of
public, private and nongovernmental performance.
7
Private firms contribute when they commit to sustainability in
their daily operations, and also create incentives to pursue their
interests while advancing environmental and social objectives.
"The world must act to help its poorest people manage their own
resources and build their productivity and incomes now, to empower
these communities and help them prepare for the demands of the
decades ahead," said Nicholas Stern, World Bank Chief Economist and
Senior Vice President. "Rich countries can take such a step by
opening their markets to developing world exports, and by
abandoning agricultural subsidies and other barriers to trade that
depress prices and limit market opportunities for the very goods
that poor people produce most competitively."
The WDR 2003 estimates that the global population will reach nine
billion people by 2050, and stabilize by the end of the century at
10 billion or less.
By
mid-century, two-thirds of the world's population will live in
cities. The demands for energy, water, housing and education will
be enormous.
Yet these trends also offer windows of opportunity, according to
the report. Most of the capital stock - apartments, shops,
factories, and roads - that will be needed by the growing
population in coming decades does not yet exist. Better standards,
increased efficiency, and new, more inclusive means of
decision-making could mean that this new capital stock could be
built in ways that puts fewer strains on society and the
environment.
Similarly, as population growth slows, economic growth will
translate more readily into lower poverty and higher incomes per
capita - provided that economic and population growth over the next
few decades has been handled in a way that does not destroy the
natural resources that underpin growth or erode critical social
values, such as trust.
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The World Commission on Water estimates that water use will jump 50
percent over the next 30 years.
As
much as half the world's population- largely in Africa, the Middle
East and South Asia - will face severe water shortages by 2025.
Effectively managing the world's water resources and ensuring
delivery to rapidly-growing urban areas, rural communities, and
industries will increasingly require internationally coordinated
efforts.
Many developing countries will need to make sizeable investments in
water infrastructure. In the past, inappropriate pricing policies
have led to massive waste, and have not provided benefits to poor
people, who often lack access to water connections.
Water supply is an essential element in many other poverty
reduction efforts, such as nutrition, and disease prevention
programs.
Next week's Summit in Johannesburg will consider ways to ensure
poor people have wider and continuous access to clean water.
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"The $140 trillion world of five decades time simply cannot be
sustained on current production and consumption patterns," Stern
said. "A major transformation - beginning in the rich countries -
will be needed to ensure that poor people have an opportunity to
participate, and that the environment is not damaged in a way that
undermines their opportunities for the future."
Coordinating globally and acting locally will be critical to
ensuring that gains in social indicators - such as incomes,
literacy rates, or access to sanitation - of the past 20 years are
not reversed by population growth pressures and unsustainable
economic expansion.
"The goal for the World Summit in Johannesburg should be to
establish truly global alliances, with partners from all sectors,
that will transparently and fairly work towards ensuring that
development gains do not exhaust our environment and its resources,
or threaten social upheaval because they exclude poor people,"
Johnson said. "In the quest to deliver a better life for poor
people, we must plan for better management of critical public
resources: water, energy, health, agriculture and
biodiversity."
The challenges are daunting. The average income in the richest 20
countries is already 37 times that in the poorest 20 nations.
Globally, 1.3 billion people live on fragile lands - arid zones,
slopes, wetlands, and forests - that cannot sustain them. Both the
gap between rich and poor countries and the number of people living
on fragile lands have doubled in the past 40 years.
Around half of the world's wetlands disappeared in the last
century. Water use is expected to jump 50 percent over the next 30
years and yet pollution and climate changes are already threatening
water supplies, particularly in Africa, the Middle East and South
Asia. By 2025, it is likely that three quarters of the world's
population will live within 100 kilometers of the sea, placing huge
strains on coastal ecosystems.
Since the 1950s, nearly two million hectares of land worldwide -
representing 23 percent of all cropland, pastures, forest, and
woodland - have been degraded, and tropical forests are
disappearing at the rate of five percent a decade.
More than a third of terrestrial biodiversity is squeezed into
habitats that altogether represent just 1.4 percent of the Earth's
surface.
In
the latest World Development Report, the World Bank notes that the
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 10 years ago did much to heighten
awareness of the policy challenges necessary to achieve sustainable
development. Since then, the need for more effective local,
national and international institutions to design and implement
these policies has become increasingly evident, the report
says.
The 2003 report describes promising innovations around the globe
that address these problems. It argues that rich and developing
countries build upon these efforts to make sustainable development
a reality and enable poor people to participate in economic
growth.
"In the next 50 years, the world's population will begin to
stabilize and the majority of people will live in cities for the
first time in history," said Zmarak Shalizi, lead author of the WDR
2003. "By thinking long term and acting now, we can take advantage
of these windows of opportunity to shift development to a more
inclusive and sustainable path, and achieve steep reductions in
poverty in the decades ahead."
The WDR 2003 suggests that sustainable development will
require:
7
Achieving substantial growth in income and productivity in
developing countries.
7
Managing the social, economic and environmental transitions to a
predominantly urban world.
7
Attending to the needs of hundreds of millions of people living on
environmentally fragile lands.
7
Reaping the "demographic dividends" seen in declining dependency
rates and slowing population growth.
7
And avoiding the social and environmental stresses - at local and
global levels - likely to emerge on the path to a $140 trillion
world economy.
Across the developing world, new rules, organizations, and other
institutional innovations are already leading to better
environmental outcomes. Air pollution is declining in Mexico City
and in some Chinese cities. All but a handful of countries have
eliminated lead from gasoline. In the past 10 years, the percentage
of people in low and middle-income countries with access to
sanitation has climbed to 52 percent, from 44 percent.
Countries as different as China, Morocco and Cameroon are
experimenting with new institutional approaches to these problems,
often involving increased participation of the private sector and
civil society. In Brazil, for example, the government has made it
possible for poor people in some locales to secure title to their
homes and land, so that even those with only the barest means of
shelter feel confident they will not be evicted. With security of
tenure, even poor people are able to invest to improve their homes
or their businesses.
Most importantly, poor people must have a greater say in the
process that will shape their lives in the decades ahead. Decisions
need to be taken in an inclusive and consultative manner that
recognizes the views of poor people while also empowering them with
greater control of their own resources.
| UN Millennium Development Goals For 2015
1.
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
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Halve the proportion of people with less than one dollar a day.
7
Halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
2.
Achieve universal primary education
7
Ensure that boys and girls alike complete primary schooling.
3.
Promote gender equality and empower women
7
Eliminate gender disparity at all levels of education.
4.
Reduce child mortality
7
Reduce by two thirds the under-five mortality rate.
5.
Improve maternal health
7
Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio.
6.
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7
Reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
7.
Ensure environmental sustainability
7
Integrate sustainable development into country policies and reverse
loss of environmental resources.
7
Halve the proportion of people without access to potable water.
7
Significantly improve the lives of at least 100 million slum
dwellers.
8.
Develop a global partnership for development
7
Raise official development assistance.
7
Expand market access.
7
Encourage debt sustainability.
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(china.org.cn August 22, 2002)