In his lat­est com­men­tary, Jef­frey Sachs was asked to com­ment on his hopes for poverty fight­ing efforts in the next decade.

Sachs remarks on how the Mil­len­nium Devel­op­ment Goals ral­lied the world dur­ing the past decade. Poor nations used it’s clear goals and tried to meet them. While the lead­ers of the rich nations made well mean­ing pledges but largely did not fol­low through with them.

Sachs writes about his hopes for the MDG’s in the next decade, we found the com­men­tary at the Ottawa Cit­i­zen.

The Mil­len­nium Dec­la­ra­tion addressed poverty with unusual clar­ity. First, rather than defin­ing poverty in a sim­plis­tic and reduc­tion­ist man­ner (for exam­ple, focus­ing on house­hold income), the MDGs adopted a holis­tic vision of poverty, includ­ing income, hunger, dis­ease, dis­crim­i­na­tion against girls and women, lack of school­ing, and envi­ron­men­tal degradation.

Sec­ond, poverty reduc­tion goals were put in clear, quan­ti­ta­tive terms. As an exam­ple, child mor­tal­ity is to decline by two-thirds as of 2015, rel­a­tive to the base­line rate of 1990.

Third, a dead­line was given for each goal and tar­get, gen­er­ally the year 2015. The world, in short, adopted a multi-dimensional con­cept of poverty, and estab­lished real­is­tic time-bound and quan­ti­ta­tive goals for its reduction.

Of course the MDGs are not the only process dri­ving poverty reduc­tion. Much is occur­ring through eco­nomic devel­op­ment that was already pow­er­fully under­way in some parts of the world, includ­ing rapidly grow­ing emerg­ing economies such as China and India. Indeed, the rapid “catch­ing up” growth of many emerg­ing mar­kets gives hope and demon­stra­tion that goals such as the MDGs can be achieved more widely. Poor coun­tries have the poten­tial for rapid progress in today’s glob­al­ized econ­omy pre­cisely because they suf­fer a tech­no­log­i­cal back­log com­pared with the world’s tech­no­log­i­cal lead­ers. If the poorer coun­tries fig­ure out ways to bridge the tech­no­log­i­cal divide, for exam­ple by favour­ing mass edu­ca­tion and by export­ing low-wage goods and using the for­eign exchange to import tech­nol­ogy, then rapid catch­ing up is possible.

Yet the MDGs remind us of three things. First, the reduc­tion of poverty is more than eco­nomic growth. Even if there is rapid eco­nomic growth, many of the poverty-reduction goals will not be ful­filled unless the pub­lic sec­tor also makes tar­geted invest­ments, such as emer­gency obstet­ri­cal care to fight mater­nal mor­bid­ity and mor­tal­ity, or AIDS treat­ment, or envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion. Sec­ond, eco­nomic growth itself requires com­ple­men­tary actions by the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor. The achieve­ment of rapid growth in China depends on mar­ket forces, but not on mar­ket forces alone. The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has invested heav­ily in infra­struc­ture, edu­ca­tion, and tech­nol­ogy, to bol­ster private-market forces.

Third, some parts of the world are stuck at the bot­tom, in a “poverty trap.” They are so poor that they must use all of their cur­rent income just to stay alive, and even then, it’s not enough. In those cases, inter­na­tional devel­op­ment assis­tance is vital to break the poverty trap and to ini­ti­ate self-sustaining growth. Sub-Saharan Africa is the major region in the world, but not the only one, suf­fer­ing from deep poverty traps.

The achieve­ment of the MDGs, there­fore, requires a mix of public-sector and private-sector actions. Mar­ket forces are crit­i­cal, but not suf­fi­cient. And mar­ket forces can be destruc­tive, of the envi­ron­ment and of minori­ties and excluded groups, who may see their cus­tom­ary rights over­rid­den by the rich and powerful.

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