what is the concept behind the millennium development goals
Millennium Development Goals The MDGs originated from the United Nations Millennium Declaration. The Declaration asserted that every individual has dignity; and hence, the right to freedom, equality, a basic standard of living that includes freedom from hunger and violence and encourages tolerance and solidarity. The MDGs set concrete targets and indicators for poverty reduction in order to achieve the rights set forth in the Declaration.[3]
Our Common Future The Brundtland Commission Report recognised that human resource development in the form of poverty reduction, gender equity, and wealth redistribution was crucial to formulating strategies for environmental conservation, and it also recognised that environmental-limits to economic growth in industrialised and industrialising societies existed. The Brundtland Report claimed that poverty reduces sustainability and accelerates environmental pressures – creating a need for the balancing between economy and ecology.[2] As such, the Report offered “[the] analysis, the broad remedies, and the recommendations for a sustainable course of development” within such societies (1987: 16). However, the Report was unable to identify the mode(s) of production that are responsible for degradation of the environment, and in the absence of analysing the principles governing market-led economic growth, the Report postulated that such growth could be reformed (and expanded); this lack of analysis resulted in an obfuscated-introduction of the term sustainable development.[3]