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Explore the vital role of universities in addressing the Millennium Development Goals, focusing on poverty eradication, education, gender equality, health, environmental sustainability, and global partnership. Discover challenges and strategies for universities to contribute effectively to sustainable global development.
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Universities and the Millennium Development Goals: Down from the Ivory TowerEducation for Sustainable FuturePrague, September 10, 2003 Bedrich Moldan Charles University Environment Center
Millennium Development Goals • Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger • Achieve universal primary education • Promote gender equality and empower women • Reduce child mortality • Improve maternal health • Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases • Ensure environmental sustainability • Develop a global partnership for development
Goal 1: Poverty and Hunger (1) Targets: • Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day • Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
Goal 1: Poverty and Hunger (2) Source: UNDP 2003
Goal 1: Poverty and Hunger (3) Source: UNDP 2003
Challenges for Universities I: Poverty and Hunger • Oriented research • Definitions and causes of poverty • Economic, social and environmental context • Ways of combating hunger
Goal 2: Education (1) Targets: • Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling
Goal 2: Education (2) Source: UNDP 2003
Goal 2: Education (3) Source: UNDP 2003
Challenges for Universities II: Education • Teacher education • Innovative methods (formal, non-formal, informal education) • New technologies (including ICTs)
Goal 3: Gender Equality (1) Targets: • Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and in all levels of education no later than 2015
Goal 3: Gender Equality (2) Source: UNDP 2003
Challenges for Universities III: Gender Equality • Analysing and addressing root causes • Gender studies • Promoting women (science, university positions)
Goal 4, 5, 6: Human Health (1) Targets: • Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality ratio • Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio • Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS • Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
Goal 4, 5, 6: Human Health (2) Source: UNDP 2003
Goal 4, 5, 6: Human Health (3) Source: UNDP 2003
Challenges for Universities IV: Human Health • Shifting research priorities • Addressing emerging issues
Goal 7: Environmental Sustainability (1) Targets: • Integrate the principle of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources • Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water • Have achieved, by 2020, a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers
Goal 7: Environmental Sustainability (2) Source: UNDP 2003
Goal 7: Environmental Sustainability (3) Source: UNDP 2003
Challenges for Universities V: Environmental Sustainability • More attention to urgent issues like WEHAB (water, energy, health, agriculture, biodiversity) • Urban issues
Goal 8: Global Partnership (1) Targets: • Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system • Address the special needs of the least developed countries (e.g. debts problems) • Address the special needs of landlocked countries and small island developing states
Goal 8: Global Partnership (2) Targets: • In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth • In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries • In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially ICTs
Goal 8: Global Partnership (3) Source: UNDP 2003
Challenges for Universities VI: Global Partnership • Partnership in education and science in addition to the stated targets like trade, finance and new technologies • Focus on the least developed countries
Challenges for Universities VII: General Issues • Policy-relevant knowledge (e.g. indicators) • Place-based science • Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity • New contents of traditional disciplines
Conclusion Millennium Development Goals represent a novel approach, a truly new “Global Deal“, in particular by setting quantitative targets for the development at the global level. The most important institutions, including intergovern-mental organizations and transnational corpo-rations, are taking challenges of the MDG very seriously. Universities should be in the fore-front of this world-wide effort.