Sandbrook says that it is primarily a political problem. We have hundreds of scientists coming to the same conclusion. We need a political system that will encourage bigger change.
Gore says how would we turn corporations into activists and advocates for change.
The Rethinking Sustainability workshop takes a pause as attendees take a dinner break. The next segment (at 5 p.m.) will include a key note speaker, Stephen Lewis.
We restart the conference and welcome Lewis to the podium.
Lewis refers to his work with the UN as a Canadian ambassador and a special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. While working with the UN, he has learned to look at its declarations with a bit of skepticism.
Lewis says the obsession with targets emerged from the UN conferences in the 1990s. This moved into millennium goals we are looking at today.
Lewis introduces the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) addressed global poverty. We have achieved this goal because of China and he says those numbers are skewed. To pretend we have moved beyond poverty, is hyperbole.
Lewis mentions the second MDG about child mortality. We are losing too many children under the age of five to things such as measles, pneumonia, diarrhea, malnutrition, etc. We are losing about 18,000 a day, he said.
Lewis then lists the third MDG about maternal mortality rate. Women who die in child birth is about 300,000 a year. We've never been able to bring down the numbers in a qualitative way, he said.
The fourth MDG is primary school education. Lewis says that we aren't looking at the quality of education that these children are receiving.
The fifth MDG is gender equality. Lewis says the goal is "absolute travesty." The UN measures this by the number of boys and girls that are in school. Lewis says this is not a reflection of that and the international community fails to understand that.
The sixth MDG deals with malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS across the world. Lewis says we have made significant improvements, but we still have 20 million people to treat. The struggle is still continuous, he says.
The seventh MDG is environment and sustainability. Lewis says it deals with many things, but it doesn't deal with climate.
The final MDG is about financial support for developing countries. Lewis says the support is dropping "dramatically and catastrophically."
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