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World Bank Sees Progress on Development Goals

September 9th, 2010 at 03:02am Under Development Report

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This is the VOA Special English Development Report.

The World Bank says most developing countries have made important progress toward the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

Last week the international lender released its yearly World Development Indicators. Hundreds of indicators are used to measure progress in areas such as education, health, poverty, the environment and trade.

One of the Millennium Development Goals is to reduce by half the number of people living in extreme poverty by twenty fifteen.

Out of eighty-seven countries with data available, forty-nine seem likely to reach that goal. “Extreme poverty” is defined as earning less than one dollar a day.

Another goal is to make education available to all young children. The report shows that in two thousand seven, seven out of ten children lived in developing countries that had met or were close to meeting that goal.

Also, thirty-nine countries have achieved or are likely to achieve the goal of reducing child death rates. The target is a two-thirds reduction by twenty fifteen.

And the report from the World Bank shows the first reduction in AIDS-related deaths.

But even with all the progress, there is still a long way to go to reach all eight goals approved by world leaders ten years ago. This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa, which falls behind on all of the goals.

Eric Swanson is a program manager for the World Development Indicators.

ERIC SWANSON: “You have had a decade or more in Africa of very slow economic progress in the nineties. You’ve had civil war and other disruptions, you’ve had poor governance in many countries that has not allowed the economy to grow and, in particular, has not allowed poor people to share in the benefits of growth.”

Still, he points to some hopeful signs — including a large reduction in the child death rate in Malawi.

ERIC SWANSON: “Malawi is a landlocked state, it is one of the ones that we tend to worry most about, and yet it has demonstrated that when you focus attention on a problem you can make progress.”

Last week the World Bank also launched a new “open data initiative.” The bank will make its data on living conditions around the world publicly available. Officials say this will make it easier to measure the effects of policies and develop new solutions to help the world’s poor.

And that’s the VOA Special English Development Report, written by June Simms. You can comment on our programs and learn about other development issues at voaspecialenglish.com. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and iTunes at VOA Learning English. I’m Steve Ember.

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Water Shortages Continue to Threaten the World’s Growing Population

April 20th, 2010 at 06:13am Under Development Report

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Scientists are working on a new way to turn sea water into drinking water.
This is the VOA Special English Development Report.

The lack of clean drinking water is a major problem worldwide. The World Health Organization says more than one billion people live in areas where renewable water resources are not available. The problem is especially serious in Asia and the Pacific. A United Nations report says water availability in that area is the second lowest in the world, after Africa.

Nearly seven hundred thousand people in Asia and the Pacific lack safe drinking water. The U.N. report notes that the world’s poorest countries are also the ones that use the most water for agriculture. Agriculture uses about eighty percent of the water in the Asia-Pacific area. There has also been an increase in water used for industry. China and India more than tripled their industrial water use between nineteen ninety-two and two thousand two.

The lack of clean drinking water around the world forces millions of people to drink unsafe water. This leads to an increase in diseases like diarrhea, the second leading cause of death in children under five. Floods, droughts, pollution and climate change have created even more problems.

The Millennium Development Goals for two thousand fifteen call for a fifty percent decrease in the number of people without safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

Scientists, governments and aid organizations around the world are increasing their efforts to meet these goals. Still the U.N. says there is much work to be done. During its yearly World Water Day observance last month it called on the international community to work together to solve the water crisis. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are doing just that.

The American and South Korean researchers are investigating a new technology for turning sea water into drinking water. The new technology is called ion concentration polarization. The process uses electricity to help separate electrically charged salt particles from water to make it drinkable.

The researchers tested their desalination process on a computer chip the size of a postage stamp. The chip removed ninety-nine percent of the salt and other harmful substances from water samples. So far the method purifies only small amounts of water. But the researchers say it may someday be available as a personal water purification product.

And that’s the VOA Special English Development Report, written by June Simms. I’m Steve Ember.

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