Millennium Development Goals

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
2. Achieve universal primary education.
3. Promote greater gender equality and empower women.
4. Reduce child mortality.
5. Improve maternal health.
6. Combat HIV/AIDs, malaria and other diseases.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
8. Develop a global partnership for development.

Integrating Environment and Development

The greatest challenge of the 21st century is to provide every human being on the planet with a long, healthy, and fulfilling life, free of poverty and full of opportunities to participate in the life of their community. The Millennium Development Goals flow from the Millennium Declaration signed by 189 Governments, of which 147 were represented by their Heads of State, in September 2000. The MDGs set clear targets for reducing poverty and other sources of human deprivation, and for promoting sustainable development. There are eight goals (summarized in the box below) and 18 concrete targets for development.

The MDGs provide a common framework for the international development community, giving a guide for policy and programme development and the assessment of their effectiveness. The targets are ambitious, and include curbing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women by 2015.

The MDGs also underline, in goal eight, the shared responsibilities of developing countries, and countries with economies in transition, to pursue poverty reduction and good governance, and of developed countries to support the efforts of developing countries and countries with economies in transition by increasing aid, opening trade to exports from developing countries and countries with economies in transition, and providing debt relief.