MDG 2.0?

We are within three years of the deadline the world set to hit the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).  While it is too early to declare victory or defeat, I fear that it is the 8^th inning, we are down by four runs, and poverty has Mariano Rivera coming in from the bullpen in to shut down the development All-Stars in the 9^th inning.  

While we have admittedly made substantial progress in the last decade in cutting extreme poverty in half, expanding primary school enrollment, particularly for girls, and improving access to clean drinking water, we are far behind where we need to be in other areas like improved childhood nutrition and access to sanitation solutions.  

Optimists believe we can still hit the goals if we try hard enough, pessimists are doubtful given the current economic crisis, and cynics think that we are fiddling while Rome burns.

At the United Nation’s last month, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon convened a “High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda” (I am not kidding about the name) to take stock of progress to date and outline options for new development goals. 

So what if rather than another top-down, large aid strategy, the HLPEPP2015DA (um, how about the HLP for short?) flipped development on its head and listened to what the poor want and need.  What if rather than setting out another eight broad, perhaps unachievable goals, they committed to finding the eight highest impact solutions with the strongest evidence linking use at the household level and economic development?

What if the MDG 2.0 had targets for adoption of clean cook-stoves to improve maternal health and enhance local sustainability?  What if another goal were to provide comprehensive affordable eye-care services, which have been proven to increase education and incomes?  Or, what about solar lanterns, drip irrigation, affordable primary schools, secure mobile banking services, etc.  In some cases, the market might take care of these services, and in others, like ARVs, vaccines or anti-malaria bednets, wide-scale subsidies may still be needed to make the products affordable.

And I am not even sure what the right eight products might be, but I am sure that the HLP can learn from the experience of Millennium Promise, the likes of the Poverty Action Lab and the portfolios of Acumen Fund and the Grassroots Business Fund, among others, as to what bundle of goods could make the most difference in the lives of the poor.   

Lets hope that a new development agenda, MGD 2.0, can learn from the experience of MGD 1.0, and that we start to see wide-scale, sustainable and efficient distribution of these high-impact goods and services making a measurable difference in the lives of the poor.