G-8 faces setbacks to U.N. goals

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By David R. Sands

As the Group of Eight focuses on the slumping world economy at its summit that kicks off Monday in Hokkaido, Japan, reports say the prospects of achieving the ambitious U.N. Millennium Development Goals to eliminate global poverty by 2015 have dimmed.

"The scale of the shock really threatens to derail macro-stability and [progress toward] the Millennium Development Goals," said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"Even before the price increases, there was already doubt about the achievability of the MDGs and whether we were on a path to meet them," Mr. Strauss-Kahn told reporters last week. "But now the problem is much more important and the ability to reach the MDGs is even lower."

The IMF chief was referring to soaring food and energy prices, which have eroded the hopes of international financial researchers and private aid groups to reach eight global development and economic goals by the target date of 2015.

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Aid groups and many developing nations had put huge stock in the goals, seen as a benchmark to measure global progress on a series of social, economic, environmental and health indicators.

The series of hard targets under a strict deadline include halving the percentage of the world's population living on less than $1 a day, cutting mortality rates for children younger than 5 by two-thirds and reducing the ratio of women who die in childbirth by three-quarters.

The surging world economy of 2003 to 2005, including the emergence of China and India as engines of economic growth, plus strong progress by several African and Middle Eastern countries raised hopes that the goals would be reached.

Economic growth and government fiscal management allowed Malawi, one of Africa's poorest countries, to provide cheap fertilizer for farmers, cut AIDS/HIV infection rates while distributing free drugs to treat the virus, boost salaries for nurses by 50 percent and provide universal primary education for the first time.

But an IMF report introduced by Mr. Strauss-Kahn last week found that low-income countries in particular have been rocked by the surge in prices of basic commodities since 2006.