Why we need to bet on 2015

We’ve been a little short in the last few years of the kind of game-changing, tub-thumping moments that can inspire a generation to change the world for the better.

The bite of austerity and inward-looking governments have stymied efforts to put development at the top of the global agenda. International crises in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza and beyond preoccupy politicians, the public and the media with questions that need immediate answers. But with the Millennium Development Goals set to expire at the end of 2015, new goals in the works and the U.N. Climate Change Conference around the corner, leaders need to end the injustice of extreme poverty and protect the world so that everyone can prosper in the long term.

In the open letter published this year on Nelson Mandela’s birthday, Graça Machel, Malala Yousafzai, Desmond Tutu, Mo Ibrahim, Mohammed Yunus and Bono set out the stark choice our leaders have. There are two dramatically different futures we could live in by 2030, we’ve never needed a rabble-rousing moment more, and 2015 is the opportunity we need to invest in. And we should start by underlining three key points to governments and citizens.

1. Rapid progress made on key development goals.

Leaders and their voters should be reminded of the amazing progress already made. The halving of extreme poverty between 1990 and 2010 from 43 to 21 percent of the world’s population — a reduction in absolute terms from 1.9 to 1.2 billion living on less than $1.25 a day — proves that ending extreme poverty by 2030 is in our grasp. Progress in tackling HIV and AIDS has been dramatic: globally 12.9 million people are now on lifesaving antiretroviral therapy, up from just 300,000 in 2002, and now for the first time the number of new people on antiretrovirals has outstripped the number of new infections. For agriculture, the Malabo Declaration adopted by African governments recommits 10 percent of their own budgets to agricultural investments. We know that 78 percent of the extreme poor live in rural areas, and that 63 percent of the poor work in agriculture, mainly smallholders. Growth in agriculture can be up to 11 times more effective at tackling extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa than growth in any other sector. The right investments targeting smallholder farmers and a focus on women farmers can lead to economic growth that can lift people out of poverty for good.

2. Scale of the 2015 opportunity.

The scale of the potential opportunity for 2015 is immense. Politically, 2015 could be the year politicians commit to ending extreme poverty by delivering at a series of key summits, kicking off with a GAVI Alliance replenishment conference in Germany. Fully funded, GAVI can help accelerate the world towards better health results for the MDGs and lay the foundation for ending preventable child deaths by 2030. The G-8 Summit can set the tone for an ambitious, concise set of goals (ideally limited to ten) centered on human and social development, with transparency and accountability as an important pillar. A successful outcome to the Addis Ababa Financing for Development Conference in July 2015 will be critical: leaders must recommit their public finances and prioritise policies to increase domestic resources and combat illicit financial flows. The biggest opportunity will be successful engagement of the world’s citizens and empowering them to hold their own leaders to account. Development done well means institutional strengthening that can lead to accountable service delivery: real government accountability and the opportunity for citizens to feed into that process will be critical elements of the next goals. This will need a data revolution to ensure high quality, open data is accessible as widely as possible by the time the new goals blossom. For that we will need another surge of political will, and dedicating World Population Day on 11 July, 2015 to enabling this revolution would help deliver the kind of goals which ensure citizens are active participants, not bystanders.

3. The human and economic cost of inaction.

Lastly, the choice between action and inaction — and the jeopardy involved — is very real. Sustaining the downward trend to keep extreme poverty rates reducing needs deep political will. With the right investments and policies we could push the number down from 1.2 billion (21 percent) of the world population living in extreme poverty today to just 108 million (1 percent) by 2030. However, a slackening of the effort and a failure to deliver could see that number stagnate at around a billion people, a full 12 percent of the global population, over the same timeframe. That is a difference of almost 900 million people. The human cost of allowing hundreds of millions to sink back into extreme poverty would be devastating. For budget-conscious governments in the north and south, the hard economics of this point should resonate: taking our foot off the gas means livelihoods — and lives — lost and an exponentially increased economic cost of getting back on track in the longer term.

Clearly the outcome of the negotiations on the new goals will be highly subjective, and will be far from perfect. But with the right approach, a concise, clear set of goals will contain ambitious development objectives we can run with.

Nelson Mandela famously said: “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings."

With 500 days to go to the end of 2015, we must connect the dots between people and information and use that to catalyse the fight against injustice. The jeopardy around the fight to end extreme poverty by 2030 means we simply can’t afford to fail.

Aug. 18, 2014, marked the 500-day milestone until the target date to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Join Devex, in partnership with the United Nations Foundation, to raise awareness of the progress made through the MDGs and to rally to continue the momentum. Check out our Storify page and tweet us using #MDGmomentum.