UN Advisor Sees Progress In Reaching Goals To End Poverty

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The top U.N. advisor pressing for countries to meet U.N. targets for poverty reduction by 2015 said Wednesday there was reason for optimism that the world was inching closer to meeting them.

Jeffery Sachs, director of the U.N. Millennium Project, reported "notable progress" in introducing programs needed to end poverty and hunger.

But he was not prepared to predict whether the goals will be met.

"We'll know it when we don't make it, or we'll know it when we do make it," he told a news conference.

Looking back on the goals adopted by world leaders in September 2000 to promote development and health care in the world's poorest countries, Sachs said that despite slow progress, the year could be ended on a note of optimism.

"There has been notable progress, in my view, in thinking about how to make progress in these goals" by coming up with "practical steps that can be taken," Sachs said.

He cited the example of a summit on malaria hosted at the White House last week by U.S. President George W. Bush.

Sachs said such programs promote the fact that deaths from malaria can be prevented.

Because of such programs, he said he expects to see malaria "under control by 2010."

Still, few references to the specific goals are made in Washington, he said, adding that the mention of the millennium development goals, known as MDGs, keeps attention on the issues they address. The ambitious goals for 2015 include fighting poverty,promoting universal primary education and gender equality, reducing child mortality, combating HIV/AIDS and malaria, ensuring environmental sustainability and providing clean water and sanitation.

"These goals are not our normal kinds of goals, these are life and death goals," Sachs said.

Despite the gains achieved, overall progress in reaching the goals has been too slow, he said.

Sachs has served as the director of the U.N. Millennium Project, commissioned by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in 2002 to develop an action plan for the world to achieve the goals. He is also the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia, which promotes sustainable development and approaches to meeting the needs of world's poor.

Sachs will continue serving as special adviser on MDGs to the U.N. Development Programme, which coordinates poverty reduction programs in developing countries.