In his annual foreign policy speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown set out the five great challenges the world faces today. One of these challenges is meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

In the speech he said:

For now more than ever it is both our duty and in our interest to help meet the Millennium Development Goals. For we cannot solve climate change without Africa; nor can we solve the food crisis without Africa. We need a fully financed ‘energy for the poor’ initiative; where commercial sources of capital dry up support from the international institutions; and we need to support agricultural development in Africa, in the past feed the world meant that we helped to feed Africa. In future, if we do things right, we will do best by enabling Africa to feed the world.

He goes on to make some interesting statements in relation to sustainability and bringing the environment and development together:

This is why as we prepare for an ambitious post 2012 climate change agreement at Copenhagen, for which I pledge our Government’s unbending commitment, the European Union must, and I believe will, agree in December its ‘2020′ programme for energy and climate and show European leadership at its best. And I want the World Bank to become a bank for environment as well as on development, helping developing countries move towards sustainable energy paths of their own.

It’s great news that the British Prime Minister has explicitly made the Millennium Development Goals one of his top foreign policy priorities. Let’s keep him to his word.

Full speech can be read here.

-Jessica Gomez-Duran