WASHINGTON — The world is on course to halve extreme poverty
by 2015, but Africa will fall far short of the UN’s Millennium Development
Goals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.
A new report by the global institutions also warned that
urgent action was needed to tackle climate change, which threatens to exact a
hefty toll on particularly poor countries and reverse pro-gress in fighting
poverty.
The 2008 Global Monitoring Report, released ahead of the IMF
and World Bank meetings in Washington this weekend, said strong economic growth
in much of the developing world had contributed to the decline in global
poverty.
It said the number of extreme poor – those living under $1 a
day – declined by 278 million between 1990 and 2004, and by 150 million in the
last five years of that period.
Globally about 1 billion people still live in extreme
poverty, the report added.
The largest reduction in poverty rates was in regions with
the strongest growth, in particular in East Asia, including emerging powerhouses
China and India, the report said.
Still, in Africa progress to cut poverty rates has been
uneven, it said, with 18 countries showing strong economic growth of about 5.5
percent over the past decade. Twenty others in Africa, however, many hit by
conflict, were trapped in low growth, averaging around 2 percent annually.
The report also said that while some progress had been made
in meeting eight globally agreed development goals by 2015, prospects were
gravest for reducing child and maternal mortality, with serious shortfalls also
likely in primary school education, nutrition and sanitation.
Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president, said he was
personally worried about shortfalls in fighting hunger and malnutrition, which
he termed "the forgotten" millennium development goal.
He said high global food and energy prices had focused
increased attention on the issue, but more was needed, especially since higher
prices were likely to last for several years.
Zoellick and IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn,
also pointed to dangers for growth in the developing world from recent financial
market turbulence, which began with subprime mortgage market problems in the
United States.
Turning to the environment, the report said poverty reduction
may not be sustainable if forests are lost, fisheries depleted, water or air is
polluted and soil degraded.
It said water scarcity and deforestation were already a
factor in the developing world and are valuable assets and sources of income to
poor countries.
"The depletion of natural resources and environmental
degradation undermines the long-term growth prospects of many developing
countries," the report said.
It called for coordinated global action to avert further climate change,
adding that extreme climatic events such as droughts and floods in the world’s
poorest countries may also exacerbate conflicts and cross-country migration.
