World Bank Presents Views on Post-2015 Framework for MDGs

March 13, 2014 – As the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) gets closer, the World Bank Group (WBG) is setting ambitious targets and reforming the way it does business to support a sustainable post-2015 development framework.

The WBG is working with the United Nations (UN) and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) to make MDGs meet their objectives. While member states are the ones driving the Post-2015 agenda, the World Bank’s contribution from its ability to push the "data revolution," or to help build a consensus on a new financing framework is being recognized by the international community.

The WBG  is also committed to better leverage resources and knowledge to support strong economic growth and to tackle rising income equality, gender imbalance, climate change and fragility, according to World Bank Vice President of External and Corporate Relations Cyril Muller, who spoke at a high-level seminar “The Post-2015 Development Agenda: Towards a New Partnership for Development,” in Moscow. 

The eight MDGs – eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and a global partnership for development – were adopted in 2000 by UN member states.

Since then, several MDG targets have been met or are close to being achieved. For example, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has been halved globally, and over 2 billion people got access to improved sources of drinking water. But some other goals, including preventing maternal deaths and environmental sustainability, require more work going forward. A sustainable development agenda post 2015 is critical to accelerate work in these areas and to expand the results that have been achieved already.

The ability to finance such a framework depends on many factors.

Global development cooperation that attracts aid from diverse sources, emphasizes domestic resource mobilization, and capitalizes on the potential of the private sector is critical. So are good policies, the capacity to implement them, and credible institutions which increase the impact of scarce resources and leverage additional resources from domestic and foreign, public and private sources.

The WBG is working with the UN and regional counterparts to add value to this process with a strong emphasis on means of implementation, financing for development and data. In setting the twin goals of ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity, the WBG is also putting the focus on sustainable and inclusive growth at the center of country level operations and aiming to better leverage resources and knowledge to support the MDGs.