The final push to end extreme poverty

Fri, May 1st 2015, 12:56 AM

This year is the most important year for global development in recent memory. In July, world leaders will gather in Addis Ababa to discuss how to finance development.

In September, heads of state meet at the United Nations to establish the Sustainable Development Goals. And in December, countries again will gather in Paris to work out an agreement on climate change.

This year has also seen the emergence of a major new player in development - the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank led by China. With the right environment, labor and procurement standards, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank - and the New Development Bank, established by the BRICS countries - can become great new forces in economic.

We hope these new institutions will join the world's multilateral development banks and our private sector partners on a shared mission to promote economic growth that helps the poorest. The decisions we make this year will help determine whether we have a chance to end extreme poverty by 2030, the central goal of the World Bank Group.

The good news is that the world has made substantial progress already. Over the past 25 years, we've gone from nearly 2 billion people living in extreme poverty to fewer than 1 billion. But that means we still have nearly 1 billion people living on less than US$1.25 a day.

We know it's possible to end extreme poverty in the next 15 years, in part because of this past success, and because we have learned from years of experience about what has worked and what has not.

Our strategy to end extreme poverty can be summed up in just three words - grow, invest and insure. First, the world economy needs to grow faster and grow more sustainably. It needs to grow in a way that ensures that the poor receive a greater share of the benefits of that growth.

In most of the developing world, efforts to end extreme poverty will require us to focus on boosting agricultural productivity. Helping farmers improve yields requires increasing access to better seeds, water, electricity and markets.

The second part of the strategy is to invest - and by that, I mean investing in people, especially through education and health. The opportunity to get children off to the right start happens just once. Investments made in children early in life bring far greater returns than those made later on.

The final part of the strategy is to insure. This means that governments must provide social safety nets as well as build systems to protect against disasters and the rapid spread of disease. Ebola taught us that the poor are likely to suffer the most from pandemics.

The World Bank Group has been working with partners on a new concept that would provide much needed rapid response financing in the face of an outbreak. We know that ending extreme poverty will be extraordinarily difficult - in fact, the closer we get to our goal, the more difficult it will be.

Governments of the world, the private sector, the World Bank Group, our multilateral development bank partners, and our new partners on the horizon, must all seize this moment. We are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty. This is our great challenge and our great opportunity. The final push must begin right now.

o Jim Yong Kim is the president of the World Bank Group.

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian

 Sponsored Ads