The fourth World Social Forum in Mumbai, India, comes not a moment too soon. As 2004 begins, conflict and terrorism continue to grab the headlines, while issues of inequality and injustice are not given the urgency they require. This is true even though we know that poverty and social exclusion are at the root of so many of the problems that we have today.
The dialogue in Mumbai can help restore a development-oriented global agenda. It can put on the front-burner issues such as the HIV/Aids pandemic, the coming to grips with climate change and our degraded oceans and freshwater supplies, and seeing to it that all children everywhere attend primary school, so we can tackle them with all our collective might.
These issues need to be on a par with pensions, health care and unemployment, and other domestic issues that government leaders tend to focus on. They are, in fact, domestic as well as international issues. Why? Because they will do much to shape the world our children live in.
World leaders recognised this truth in agreeing to the Millennium Development Goals. They committed to cutting poverty in half by 2015, achieving universal primary education, ensuring equality for girls and women, reducing child mortality and the number of mothers dying in childbirth, halting the spread of HIV/Aids, protecting the environment and the fostering of a global partnership for development.
Progress has been made on these fronts. Thanks in particular to poverty reduction efforts in China and India, the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day by 2015 is projected to decrease to about 12% from more than 28%, lifting a billion people out of poverty.
In sub-Saharan Africa, however, the number of people living in absolute poverty is expected to increase, not decrease. Only half of Africa’s children will complete primary school; one in six will die before reaching the age of five, many from Aids.
Citizens the world over are looking at new ways of holding governments accountable for their promises. These involve critical investments in health, education and infrastructure; service delivery centered on the needs of poor people; and streamlined and transparent administrative, financial and judicial systems that work for everyone, not just the privileged.
From “participatory budgeting” in the town of Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the empowerment of citizens to track education expenditures in Uganda to social audits in Rajastahn, India, and community score cards in Malawi, social accountability is growing, making the difference between success and failure. The World Bank is not only encouraging this development, it is supporting its expansion.
We can begin to solve the problems of imbalance only if we forge a new development path linking economic growth to social and environmental responsibility.
Without enlarging the real opportunities available to all citizens, markets serve only the elites. This means providing everyone the chance for a life that is secure — with the right to expression, the right to learn, the right to a clean environment, equal rights for women, rights for the disabled and the disadvantaged and the right to development.
I am encouraged by the ways in which Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva has interpreted the spirit of the Porto Alegre World Social Forum and is pursuing a development strategy based on the premise that economic and social progress are inseparable. To date his government has protected health, education and other vital programmes while maintaining fiscal discipline and attracting foreign investment.
Other countries and communities are piloting similar models. It isn’t easy but it is imperative that we find and apply more responsible approaches — anchored in a new social contract — in which social progress becomes a prerequisite to sustainable economic growth. At the same time, we must continually think bigger. Successes that aid a few thousand individuals today must be scaled up to benefit millions over time. That is why the bank is continuing to spearhead managing for results and convening a conference in Shanghai in May to consider more than 70 case studies on scaling-up poverty reduction.
The eyes, and conversations, of many participants in Mumbai will be focused on the promise of this new type of leadership. Let’s make 2004 a year of hope, of common engagement, a year in which we move ahead together to join forces and resources behind the shared vision of a more balanced world. — IPS
James Wolfensohn is president of the World Bank