John W. McArthur

The Millennium Project: a plan for meeting the Millennium Development Goals

This year marks a pivotal moment in international efforts to fight extreme poverty. During the United Nations (UN) Millennium Summit in 2000 147 heads of state gathered and adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs panel 1) to address extreme poverty in its many dimensions—income poverty hunger disease lack of adequate shelter and exclusion—while promoting education gender equality and environmental sustainability with quantitative targets set for the year 2015. The UN committed to reviewing progress towards the goals in 2005 recognising that by this time only a decade would be left to fulfil the MDGs. We are now at the 5-year juncture with a stark realisation: many of the poorest regions of the world most notably in sub-Saharan Africa are far off-track to achieve the goals. Yet the MDGs are still achievable. The lives of hundreds of millions of people could be dramatically improved and millions could be saved every year but only if the world takes bold steps in 2005. This essay is the first in a series summarising key conclusions of the UN Millennium Project a 3-year independent advisory effort initiated by UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan to identify practical steps to achieve the MDGs in every country especially in those currently far off-course in progress. The project was housed in and supported by the UN Development Programme. (excerpt)

The Challenges Facing Landlocked Developing Countries

In spite of technological improvements in transport, landlocked developing countries continue to face structural challenges to accessing world markets. As a result, landlocked countries often lag behind their maritime neighbours in overall development and external trade. While the relatively poor performance of many landlocked countries can be attributed to distance from coast, this paper argues that several aspects of dependence on transit neighbours are also important. Four such types of dependence are discussed: dependence on neighbours’ infrastructure; dependence on sound cross-border political relations; dependence on neighbours’ peace and stability; and dependence on neighbours’ administrative practices. These factors combine to yield different sets of challenges and priorities in each landlocked country. The paper concludes with a brief set of policy recommendations. A detailed appendix presents maps and regional overviews that outline key challenges facing the landlocked countries in each region.

Multisector intervention to accelerate reductions in child stunting: an observational study from 9 sub-Saharan African countries

BACKGROUND In sub-Saharan Africa, ~ 40% of children <5 y old are stunted, with levels that have remained largely unchanged over the past 2 decades. Although the complex determinants of undernutrition are well recognized, few studies have evaluated strategies that combine nutrition-specific, health-based approaches with food system- and livelihood-based interventions. OBJECTIVE We examined changes in childhood stunting and its determinants after 3 y of exposure to an integrated, multisector intervention and compared these changes with national trends. DESIGN A prospective observational trial was conducted across rural sites in 9 sub-Saharan African countries with baseline levels of childhood stunting >20%. A stratified random sample of households and resident children <2 y old from villages exposed to the program were enrolled in the study. Main outcome measures included principal determinants of undernutrition and childhood stunting, which was defined as a height-for-age z score less than -2. National trends in stunting were generated from demographic and health surveys. RESULTS Three years after the start of the program in 2005-2006, consistent improvements were observed in household food security and diet diversity, whereas coverage with child care and disease-control interventions improved for most outcomes. The prevalence of stunting in children <2 y old at year 3 of the program (2008-2009) was 43% lower (adjusted OR: 0.57; 95% CI: 0.38, 0.83) than at baseline. The average national stunting prevalence for the countries included in the study had remained largely unchanged over the past 2 decades. CONCLUSION These findings provide encouraging evidence that a package of multisector interventions has the potential to produce reductions in childhood stunting.

How many lives are at stake? Assessing 2030 sustainable development goal trajectories for maternal and child health

John W McArthur, Krista Rasmussen, and Gavin Yamey examine how far countries have to go to meet the targets for maternal and child mortality and what needs to be done to help them

Agriculture, aid and economic growth in Africa

How can foreign aid to agriculture support economic growth in Africa? This paper constructs a geographically-indexed applied general equilibrium model that considers pathways through which aid might affect growth and structural transformation of labor markets in the context of soil nutrient variation, minimum subsistence consumption requirements, domestic transport costs, labor mobility and constraints to self-financing of agricultural inputs. Using plausible parameters, the model is presented for Uganda as an illustrative case. Three stylized scenarios demonstrate the potential economy-wide impacts of both soil nutrient loss and replenishment, and how foreign aid can be targeted to support agricultural inputs that boost rural productivity and shift labor to boost real wages. One simulation shows how a temporary program of targeted official development assistance (ODA) for agriculture could generate, contrary to traditional Dutch disease concerns, an expansion in the primary tradable sector and positive permanent productivity and welfare effects, leading to a steady decline in the need for complementary ODA for budget support.

Measuring the Diffusion of the Millennium Development Goals across Major Print Media and Academic Outlets

To what extent did the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) succeed in becoming a reference point for public debates, academic inquiry, and policy‐focused research? We explore this by considering three empirical questions. First, were there discernible trends in the extent of media references to the MDGs – by year, publication, and geography over the relevant period? Second, were there discernible trends in MDG references across a sample of relevant academic journals and disciplines? Third, how does the pattern of MDG media references compare to the emerging early pattern of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) media references? In our sample, we find that newspapers in the UK, India and Nigeria had much more frequent MDG references than those published in Australia, Canada or the United States. We also find that The Lancet had a notably high frequency of MDG‐referencing articles, potentially helping to explain the distinctive patterns of acceleration on health MDGs. We further find that UN summits were a key driver of MDG coverage, with 2005 as the year of peak MDG attention. News coverage for the SDGs in 2016 was similar to latter year coverage of the MDGs, although considerably higher than related coverage in 2001 and 2002.