Millennium Development Goals

Eight Goals

The eight major MDGs consist of the following: (1) eradicating extreme hunger and poverty through reducing the proportion of individuals earning incomes less than a U.S. dollar per day and increasing equal-opportunity and productive employment; (2) achieving universal primary education; (3) promoting gender equality and empowering women, particularly with reference to education; (4) significantly reducing child (< five years) mortality; (5) improving maternal health, including reducing the maternal mortality ratio; (6) reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases and increasing the accessibility of treatment options; (7) ensuring environmental sustainability including reducing the loss of biodiversity and environmental resources, halving the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation and clean drinking water, and integrating sustainable practices [Page 307]into governmental policies; and (8) developing a global partnership for development that includes measures for reducing tariff and international debt and establishing a nondiscriminatory trading and financial system.

Sustainable food/nutrition security, at the nexus of a number of issues from energy/water/health security to climate change, is emerging as one of the major challenges of the 21st century and occupies the central place in MDGs as far the developing countries are concerned. Hence, this article addresses the food security issues and their linkages to MDG 1, especially in developing countries in the context of burning debates on the sustainability of agricultural production.

MDGs and Food Security: The Policy Quagmire

In spite of their recurring political endorsement, the MDGs have been subject to a wide range of criticism, as, ironically, we have hunger and malnutrition even when we have adequate food stocks. Indeed, there has been much debate about the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of the MDGs and their predecessors, the International Development Targets, as targets that are easily set but seldom met. This is primarily a result of data gaps, lack of timely information, inconsistent indicators, frequent revisions, and negligence of indigenous traditional ecological knowledge. For instance, there are strong lobbies for agricultural biotechnology (BT) and genetic engineering (GE), supported by the state machinery and backed by the agricultural research institutes, as they are funded by international agencies and multinational companies, contrary to the accumulating realities on the ground.

The following are the inevitable consequences of the green revolution agricultural technologies (to some extent BT/GE too): pollution resulting from excessive use of fertilizers/pesticides, and the consequent degradation of soil/water/aquifers; loss of biodiversity; and heavy reliance on fossil fuels. In addition, farmers are forced to buy costlier hybrid seeds and other chemical inputs, whereas they were self-reliant earlier. As a result, food production has become unstable and/or unsustainable, and food and nutrient quality has become degraded, such that the chances of achieving the MDGs by 2015 are at risk. In addition, there are serious unanswered questions about the biosafety of agricultural BT. All these problems do not arise if we embrace agroecology.

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