Point of View
Meeting the Millennium Development Goals By Thinking Out of the Box
By Joseph Roberts
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Not long ago, I was sitting on a beach in Jomtien, Thailand, watching the waves and trying to relax. As I was looking out at the beautiful ocean scene in front of me, a young Thai boy, about eight, walked down to the edge of the ocean near where I was sitting. In his hands he carried a long stick with a rope fastened to one end. Attached to the other end of the rope was a large brick. The boy had made himself a fishing pole, complete with a “brick fish”. Curious about what he was going to do next, I watched him as he threw the brick into the ocean. He stood there, pole in hand, patiently waiting for something to take his bait. Suddenly, the fishing line became taut. The boy became excited knowing that a “fish” was on the line, and pulling with all his might he somehow managed to bring his catch to shore. Then he turned around in my direction and looked at me with an excited expression on his face that seemed to say, “Can you see it? Can you see this huge and magnificent fish that I just caught?” Well, I could. I could see it, because I did the same thing when I was his age. And I used the same method to do it: imagination.
Imagination is one of the greatest gifts we possess; only the human species has the ability to imagine things that are not yet part of reality. This special gift allows us to dream of new possibilities, to envision the future and take corrective action to avoid future mistakes. It is what leads to new inventions, innovative art and progressive social development. It is what allows us to rise above mediocrity.
It is one of the primary reasons underpinning our advance as a species. When imagination and action meet, great things can happen. Perhaps, the most important example of this in the twenty-first century is the United Nations Millennium Declaration. What is this document if not the product of collective imagination? After all, the sustainable world it is designed to create is clearly more of a dream than reality, existing primarily in the imaginations of men and women of goodwill.
The shared values and principles contained within the Declaration gave rise to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development. These MDGs must be met by the target date of 2015, but it is becoming clear that the majority of developing countries will not be able to do so due to numerous reasons, such as insufficient official development assistance from donor countries, lack of transparency and good governance in recipient countries, the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS, massive economic inequality in the developing world, widespread environmental degradation, population growth accelerating faster than economic growth, and economic growth being underpinned by unsustainable patterns of production and consumption.
If one starts from the premise that every problem has a solution, then meeting the MDGs is clearly a problem in need of a new solution. The history of scientific discoveries has shown that the search for new solutions is frequently related to the ability of the researcher to use imagination—to “think out of the box”. There is no simple policy change or discovery that will lead to a perfect situation where all the MDGs will be met by 2015. But this does not mean that we do not have an obligation to present and future generations to rethink the problem, to see if something is missing from the MDG-based development plans that could potentially maximize the probability that these goals will be met at some point in the near future.
What is missing, I think, is the promotion by the United Nations of a research and development project to develop and deploy by 2010 a new energy system that can meet the demands and requirements of sustainable development on a global scale. This energy system must be small-scaled, environmentally sound, portable, powerful, reliable, inexpensive, consumer friendly, safe, virtually inexhaustible and decentralized. This would be an easily transportable off-the-grid system that could be scaled up (for commercial use) or down (for personal use) as necessary. Existing alternative forms of energy—i.e., commercial biomass, wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, fuel cell and nuclear fission—do not fit in the category of “new energy”. The energy system of the future, perhaps related in some way to nuclear fusion, would be sustainable. There is no question that we will develop and deploy new energy worldwide, but given the gravity of the present situation, we should do it now, not much later when conditions on the planet will be so grave as to make its development useless.
If new energy will enable us to create sustainable population, as well as economic and environmental conditions—and because of its special characteristics it will—then its development and deployment will go a long way towards consigning poverty to the pages of human history. Discovering and deploying new energy should therefore be one of the most important goals of the United Nations and of humanity in general. Accordingly, a plan of action leading to this end is in order.
As an initial step, I propose that an assessment team be commissioned by the United Nations to assess the energy requirements for attaining the MDGs. The team should address the feasibility of developing and deploying new energy and its probable impact on the MDGs, carry out a financing and cost evaluation, and identify potential problems associated with deployment. In moving forward, the United Nations, which has already encouraged the development of new forms of sustainable energy, should act as an advocate for a globally shared project designed to develop and deploy new energy by 2010.
The recommendation from Agenda 21—a comprehensive plan of action on the environment adopted in 1992—is clear on this point: “Promote the research, development, transfer and use of technologies and practices for environmentally sound energy systems, including new and renewable energy systems, with particular attention to developing countries.” This is an invitation to develop and deploy new energy, and therefore promoting a research and development project for this purpose is entirely consistent with existing UN policy.
For those who think it cannot be done, allow me to take you back in time. On 25 May 1961, then President John F. Kennedy told the United States Congress that by the end of the decade the United States would send a man to the moon and return him safely to earth. What most people did not know at that time, but President Kennedy already knew after his consultations with science advisors, is that we only had a vague idea about how to actually accomplish the mission. The technology was not there and many pessimists said it could not be done.
The Apollo Project was the product of the imagination of President Kennedy and his close advisors. It was a vision, a dream—an imagination colliding with massive action. And it was successful. Before the end of the decade, Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the moon and the three-man Apollo team returned safely to earth. President Kennedy’s dream had become a reality. It was perhaps the greatest moment in our history, and what do we owe that moment to? Imagination.
The poet Shelley once wrote: “The great instrument of moral good is imagination.” Of course, imagination does not always lead to that which is good in any moral sense, but it often does. New energy is clearly a “moral good” whose time has come. It is, in my view, the missing key to meeting the MDGs. Given our advanced knowledge of physics, it is within our reach to develop new energy. With its development and deployment, poverty in all its forms will be removed from the face of the earth. The human species will be forever changed for the better. But we must act now. The next major step on the ladder of human evolution that new energy represents will not take place until we develop and deploy it. Absent this, we will spiral downward into an abyss characterized by poverty, injustice, violence, environmental collapse and social disintegration. Surely, all peoples on the planet deserve to live out their lives in dignity. We owe it to both present and future generations to develop and deploy new energy. And we should “spare no effort” in this regard. |
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Joseph Roberts is Editor of Population Review, a peer review journal of demography and population studies in the developing world. He is currently a visiting scholar/researcher at the Centre for Population Studies, Annamalai University, in Tamil Nadu, India. |
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