An idea worth spreading – “what the world wants”, what do you think?
Last month I was invited to speak at TED Global in Edinburgh. TED is an organisation devoted to ideas worth spreading. So I wanted to share with you my talk and an idea we’re working on with partners at ONE that I think needs spreading…
In a few years’ time the Millennium Development Goals, which were agreed in 2000 to tackle extreme poverty and preventable disease, meet their goal-line: 2015. So we need to assess how we did on these goals and decide whether global goals like this are a good idea going forward, based on whether they’ve helped galvanise life-saving and transformative action. If we think such global goals are helpful catalysts for action then we need to decide “what the world wants” these new global goals to be – and we need to decide how we will decide!
So are such goals a good idea? Personally I think the Millennium Development Goals are very worthwhile, they have achieved a lot – like helped 6m more Africans with HIV get access to life preserving antiretrovirals and helped get 46 million children in school in Africa.
But there is more to do. Still 7.6m kids die of preventable treatable diseases every year. 178 million are “stunted”, a horrible term that means malnourished to the point of physical and cognitive lifelong impairment. And many people think new goals should be packed in with the old goals – such as on fighting corruption or environmental sustainability. These are all vital issues. But there will have to be trade offs, tough choices, we can’t work on everything.
But the real question here is what do YOU think the new global goals should be? And what do the poorest on the planet think, who otherwise could get squeezed out of the process. How can their views be put at the heart of the process to decide the world’s new goals? At the end of the day if the new goals are to be truly global goals everyone, everywhere should get a chance to contribute, vote and have their say in a structured legitimate way.
What’s exciting is that, unlike in 2000 when the first goals were agreed, internet and mobile phones have spread all around the world. People are more connected than ever. So, I’d like to explore how we could use this technology to involve people from around the world in co-designing an historic first: the world’s first ever truly global poll and consultation on “What the World Wants”. Let’s crowd-source the new Millennium Development Goals. I believe that through this crowd-sourcing we won’t just improve the quality of the goals, we will also increase the quality of support for getting the goals done.
You can watch my TED talk in full here:
The stakes are high. Hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of millions of lives and deaths, and perhaps the peacefulness and prosperity of the twenty-first century we live in together. So please consider what you think and what you want the new global goals to be.
There are already some smart people and organisations doing serious thinking on what comes after 2015 including: Institute of Development Studies, Overseas Development Institute, The Brookings Institute, UN Millennium Development Goals adviser Jeff Sachs and Beyond2015.org.
There are many ways to take forward this conversation and the real effort to democratise and radically break open this expert discussion has not yet begun. I think this could be a fascinating exercise and experiment in twenty first century global governance. So please join in.
What do you think, how should we go about agreeing what replaces the Millennium Development Goals? Do you agree that they’ve been good so far, that there’s living proof of progress worth celebrating and building upon? What goals would you like to see included in the new package?
Tell me what you think in the comments below. And if you think this is an idea worth sharing, then do please share this talk.
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The International ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with guest contributions from ONE volunteers, members and allies.
The content of each post and each comment represents the views of that author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ONE. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any post expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
17/07/2012 at 11:07 pm
I want one of the new aims to be to prevent human trafficking through education and improved living standards. For there to be better support for thoes affected by humman trafficking and help for them to rebuild their lives.
I think the most important aim should be to bring safe clean water to every house, that is one of the big foundation blocks on which all esle can be built.
18/07/2012 at 7:10 am
Another organization looking at the future is Singularity University. I attended the 2010 Graduate Studies Program. The focus was on using exponentially advancing technology to address the world’s grand challenges. One such technology is the smart mobile phone with built in text-to-speech capability. Leveraging these devices (which are reportedly being activated at a rate of over 900,000 per day globally) for mobile learning could make a significant contribution toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Please visit http://slidespeech.com for information on just such a mobile learning system.
18/07/2012 at 5:01 pm
Yes we need to think anew and help politicians recognize that they are not visionary type people and leave this up to the visionaries. Simple. We need moreover to engage people at grassroots in the dialogue towards the formation of new goals. There is as yet no real forum for the grassroots and real development must come from the bottom up. So far it’s always governments and NGOs/UN interpreting for others. That needs to change. I know from working at grassroots for many years in Africa how much of a say the people at the bottom do not have in their lives. I also know what it takes for them to empower themselves and to ask for what they want- it’s a certain and careful process and takes time and heart. Let’s adopt non-western communication models towards this question sincerely and with real commitment.
From my own perspective, let’s go for solar power in all communities to link up with communication technologies and food production technologies including water towards genuine sustainability and shifting the power nexus. It’s time.
19/07/2012 at 2:10 am
Jamie,
YES, your idea is worth spreading!! ¿Is there a good Spanish translation of your talk? It would be very useful for spreading it!!
Rubén
19/07/2012 at 5:22 am
Hi Jamie,
I’m currently working on a Global Coherence Disaster Resilience Trade Show and Virtual Community for October this year and I would like to investigate collaboration. Poverty, Disaster Resilience and Environmental Awareness are inextricably linked.
We have some bigger goals than the Millennium Goals, and to sum it up we are working to build a number of frameworks based on global user generated content models that will facilitate a transition from our current world systems towards a Balanced, Positive and Infinite Future within 5 years.
I agree with you 100% that it has to be a movement from the ground up. We have a number of methods to reach the billions of people around the world but to reach our highest capabilities we would like to team up with passionate individuals like yourself and create shared initiatives.
Hope to hear from you soon. Keep up the great work.
Luke
19/07/2012 at 9:07 pm
I agree with your TED talk points. One of the un-sexy realities though of collecting all this data and trying to make sense of it in context; is that there hasn’t been a common architecture. Though my work over the past decade has been concentrated on healthcare because of the complexities of the semantics. The framework that my research team and I have developed embraces any type of data collection while maintaining semantic integrity. This provides a much better dataset for analysis across domains using computers without humans having to intervene to re-inject semantics that were lost in translation.
Regards,
Tim http://www.mlhim.org
24/07/2012 at 9:40 am
My life experience on the township’s life-style taught me many things. One of them is this; money in pockets of the drinking community members can be channelled to at least one more highly rewarding use, before it is spent in alcohol. There are rich and affording members within the townships community. The community members that drink alcohol need to consider redirecting their regular alcohol budget to use it in children’s supporting enterprises. This business enterprise is designed such that customers (users) are not harshly changed from their “normal” drinking habit. Alcohol consumption in the TOWNSHIPS has happened to reduce the power/value for money due the common drinking outcomes. This reduction in the value of money is so severe at some point to the extent that people loses lives through physical fights and driving under toxic influence. It is an undeniable truth that as soon as the money is spent on alcohol, it instantly loses its positive power (value). Alcohol consumption in the townships has been witnessed to give rise to poor family and parenting, crime, negligence, health related hazards/accidents and
inactive workforce (unemployable citizens). In township, a timber (due to preference and suitability) constructed community dining place where healthy meals are promoted,
encourage and served in order to eliminate the current tendency of drinking large amount of alcohol in the empty stomachs. Wine is the ideal drink since it is complimenting healthy meals well. Customers (community members) will have the safe, informal and relaxed environment to discuss constructively on their matters and come up with solutions that propels them to move forward. A large amount of profit that is generated through the dining activities will ensure a continual and
sustainable well-being of children at the local assembles point, namely the crèche. A transport (1: van), furniture, utensils and raw material (grocery and wine stock) will show case the practical use of this strategy and prove the agent requirement for other similar units to be established at the exponential rate to other townships at provincial and later internationally spread. Immediate benefits are jobs creation, healthy and active employable workforce. The future benefits will be realised as the well pre-nourished children are becoming adults, reduction of crime and corruption will be among the outcomes.
25/07/2012 at 6:25 pm
How about requiring all US-based companies to pay a certain minimum amount–say, half what they pay US workers, or US minimum wage–to their workers overseas? That would still enable impoverished countries to get some US money, to start working their way out of extreme poverty, as India did. At the same time, it would eliminate the very abusive practices companies like Wal-Mart carry out in, e.g., China.
25/07/2012 at 11:51 pm
Until the basic human needs of water, food and shelter are met, I don’t want to see other goals put on the top of the list.
The key to not losing this most vital goal under an avalanche of important issues, is to foster discussion and even fiery debate, it is great that at this point in history we do have a continually increasing spread of communication technology!
I want to see a Global Forum on Facebook, which people can join under a nick name or a real name, where the discussion can take place centrally, and which is supported by giving access to the poorest of the poor, by providing them with the technology through donations specifically for this purpose.
09/08/2012 at 12:38 pm
Jamie Drummond said that “there is more to do. Still 7.6m kids die of preventable treatable diseases every year. 178 million are “stunted”, a horrible term that means malnourished to the point of physical and cognitive lifelong impairment. And many people think new goals should be packed in with the old goals – such as on fighting corruption or environmental sustainability. These are all vital issues. But there will have to be trade offs, tough choices, we can’t work on everything.”
I would ask, “Why can’t we work on everything?” There are more than 7 billion of us on this planet. Certainly there are more than enough of us to focus on and achieve what is needed to ensure the well-being and achieve the basic human rights and needs for all.
This idea that we can’t focus on and do it all is like the crazy thinking that we only need to cut poverty by half. The new development goals cannot continue with this kind of thinking. What happens to the other half of humanity? Who is going to tell a mother, “umm we only have enough resources to feed one of your children, the other will have to die. Which one do you want us to feed?”
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was quite clear, everyone is entitled to all of the rights; and it is equally clear in the preamble that it is every individual and every organ of society’s responsibility to ensure that progressive measures are taken, national and international, sufficient to ensure all of our basic human rights and needs are met.
Indeed it is imperative that we do work on everything and all at the same time and in a fully integrated manner. Anything less is robbing someone of their inherent basic human rights and needs. Any less is just saying I and my needs are more important than yours. And we all know that this is completely unacceptable.
So please Jamie, change what you have written and said or at least correct it. We, as a part and parcel of the human family cannot afford to let anyone suffer needlessly while there is such great wealth on the planet. We must create a framework and action plan within which we can and will take action on all basic human rights and needs all at the same time.
Thank you,
Rob Wheeler
UN Representative
Global Ecovillage Network
Commons Action for the UN
robwheeler22 @ gmail.com
skype: robineagle333