Will the Millennium Development Goals launched in 2000 be met by the agreed deadline of 2015? This question is at the top of discussions in government and development agencies around the world. There have been several initiatives to help focus minds and boost international progress towards meeting the goals, not least by the G8.

Imagine a type of nut that could save hundreds of thousands of people in poor countries from starvation. In fact, imagine one that costs about $20 per child for a month, roughly the same as therapeutic milk, but which, unlike most other therapeutic foods, does not require preparation, is packaged, keeps fresh after opening, and can be easily transported and distributed directly to parents and children.

Three years ago, before the 3rd World Water Forum in Kyoto, we wrote that while the Millennium Development Goal of halving the population without access to safe drinking water by 2015 was feasible, it would be a tall order, particularly against a background in which bilateral development aid from OECD countries had stabilised or fallen. Have matters improved as we move closer to the deadline? There are some encouraging signs, but probably not where it matters most.

The 2005 UN World Summit achieved some notable breakthroughs for development. All countries committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and Australia announced new aid targets to add to those of the EU and the G8 in the run up to the summit.

In September world leaders made the journey to the UN headquarters in New York. Statements were made; a much-contested declaration was painfully agreed. People get cynical about international summits. What should those concerned with ending global poverty make of this one?

Private investment is a dominant force driving globalisation. Cross-border investment flows have tripled over the last decade alone and foreign capital stocks are now twice the size of global GDP. Private investment is acting as a powerful catalyst for growth and, as emerging economies from Asia to South America have shown, is one of the surest ways to sustained poverty reduction. But this requires having the right policies in place.

The recent history of the world’s second largest continent has been plagued by internal conflict, famine and disease. But recent economic prospects for Africa are looking more favourable than they have for a number of years.

Another resource which Africa is perhaps less noted for is oil. And it could become a serious source of finance for development in certain countries.

Investing in African agriculture would help poor people to help themselves. The World Bank forecasts that in Africa and the Middle East, the number of “absolute poor” will increase between now and 2015. Nearly 80% of these people live in rural areas. Their options to improve livelihoods are largely restricted to agriculture.

In September the United Nations convenes the first major summit to review implementation of the UN Millennium Development Goals, and to rally support for more progress to cut poverty and boost development in an effort to meet the 2015 deadline. Determined action, as well as some new ideas, may well be needed. One such idea is the Commission for Africa, launched by the UK prime minister Tony Blair in February 2004.

Cancelling debt for poor countries is all very well, but the role of soft loans in spurring development and eradicating poverty should not be overlooked.

Taxes, philanthropy and financial markets could all become new sources of funding to help finance development and meet the Millennium Development Goals. But donors should be aware of their pitfalls too.

Major aid donors have increased their aid efforts, but still have a long way to go if they are to reach the levels they pledged at the UN Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002, a new OECD report says. International aid rose significantly in 2002 for the first time in several years, to US$58 billion from US$52 billion in 2001 at current prices and exchange rates, according to the latest edition of the OECD’s annual Development Co-operation Report.

Donor countries in the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) increased their official development assistance (ODA) by almost 5% in real terms in 2002 to US$57 billion, raising ODA to 0.23% of gross national income (GNI). This marked the beginning of a recovery from the all-time low of 0.22% of GNI seen in each of the past three years.

Development aid prospects are brighter since the International Conference on Financing for Development at Monterrey in March 2002. Several member countries of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) at the OECD, which delivers some 95% of global bilateral aid, have pledged to increase their aid as part of a drive to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and cut global poverty in half.

WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi and OECD Secretary-General Donald Johnston met at OECD headquarters on 29 November to sign a progress report on trade-related technical assistance and capacity building in the follow up to Doha. The report draws on information provided by a joint WTO/OECD database and provides a snapshot of capacity building efforts in this area between 2001-2002.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) embody the key dimensions of human development – poverty, hunger, education, health – expressed as a set of time-bound targets. They include halving income-poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education and gender equality; reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters; reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS; and halving the proportion of people without access to safe water. These targets are to be achieved by 2015, the comparison point being 1990.

The developing world is far more diverse than those responsible for development strategies seem to believe. Unless projects are cut to suit circumstances more, they may be doomed to fail.

This is the year of development! The Monterrey Summit on Financing for Development, the OECD Ministerial starting 15 May, the African Initiative of the G8 Summit and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg: all are largely focused on poverty reduction and effective development assistance. This 10-point strategy could help:

Official development assistance (ODA) from Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries rose 5.6% in real terms to 56.4 billion US dollars, but was unchanged as a percentage of GNP at 0.24%, well below the United Nations target of 0.7% of GNP, the latest issue of the DAC Journal reports.

Since the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) published the international development goals in 1996 – in a report called Shaping the 21st Century: the Contribution of Development Co-operation – the commitment to halve world poverty has become the focus of the development policies of the majority of donor organisations.

Traditionally, we have always considered poverty to be a lack of means. It is certainly that in part. Without resources, people cannot satisfy even their most basic physiological needs. But a more meaningful definition of poverty is based on deprivation of capability, a concept associated with Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen, and elaborated in UNDP’s Human Development Report of 1997, which called it ‘human poverty’.

The launch of A Better World for All at Geneva 2000 marked a new stage in the development of closer bonds between the UN, the OECD and the international financial institutions: the World Bank and the IMF. Predictably, it received both praise and criticism. World Vision was encouraged that the International Development Goals were receiving some much-needed renewed impetus, but to be honest, it all had a faintly hollow ring.

More than a billion people world-wide live in extreme poverty and preventable diseases are a major cause of mortality in developing countries, so why should we care about the environment? The answer becomes obvious once we recall that in developing countries activities based on natural resources, such as agriculture, forestry and fisheries, still contribute more to the economy than industry or services. And since many of the world’s poor depend directly on these activities for a living, environmental degradation hurts the poor disproportionately.

The importance of promoting gender equality cannot be underestimated. While all seven development goals laid out in this Spotlight are intertwined to a very large extent, a few of them, like reducing poverty, improving education and lowering maternal mortality, would have little hope of being achieved without a more even rapport de force between the sexes. Inequality keeps women poor, illiterate and unhealthy; it undermines the lives of children; in short, it places a dead hand on economic potential. The question is how to reduce inequality, if not remove it altogether.

Malaysia, Morocco and the Republic of Korea form a select group of countries that halved the proportion of their people living in poverty in less than a generation. The Indian states of Haryana, Kerala and Punjab have achieved the same type of progress. Another dozen countries – including Botswana and Mauritius – reduced poverty by a quarter or more. Their experiences are well-documented and other countries can learn much from them. After all, if they have done it, others can do it too. The question is how?

Reproductive health services are an area where gains have been made in recent years, but with rising numbers of people in poor countries passing through their reproductive ages, the pressure is on to sustain and build upon this progress in the decade ahead.

More than 500,000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth in 1995 – and many more millions suffered without treatment. Large as the problem is, resolving it might not be as difficult as many believe.

Joe was a normal looking child. He looked about the right weight, had a cheery smile and laughed loudly when he played with his many friends. Sadly, Joe fell ill and died a week before his fifth birthday.

Despite the economic boom in the western world, notably the United States, global poverty remains a serious problem. Across the globe 1 person in 5 lives on less than $1 a day – and 1 in 7 suffers from chronic hunger.

Picture a country where girls are not allowed to go to school just because they are girls and must work instead. Or where sick babies die because their mothers cannot read the prescription on the medicine bottle. Imagine a society where parents remove their daughters from school at puberty for fear of unwanted pregnancy, and marry them off early to husbands their daughters do not necessarily want.

Providing universal primary education in developing countries remains a great challenge – and a great opportunity. Educational success would give millions more the skills to rise out of poverty. But failure would fuel an educational – and social – crisis in the decade ahead.

The goals for international development address that most compelling of human desires - a world free of poverty and free of the misery that poverty breeds. The goals have been set in quantitative terms, so part of the story is told in words and pictures, but the core of it is in numbers and charts.

Over the past decade, the concept of “sustainable development” – combining rapid growth with macroeconomic stability, poverty reduction and environmental regeneration – has replaced “market reform” as the main goal of the major multilateral organisations.