This report shows how much progress has been made on concrete strategies and actions to meet the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It calls for investments in disaster risk reduction as a provider of long-term benefits from reduced future losses and avoided reconstruction to co-benefits such as more robust livelihoods, resilient communities, and protective and productive ecosystems. It also underscores the severe impact of climate change felt by vulnerable populations and emphasises on the needs of those most vulnerable as well as the important promise the Millennium Declaration represents to them. Goal by goal, it synthesises the experience of these last ten years and offers evidence of what works and has provided tools that can help achieve the MDGs by 2015; and looks forward to the MDGs summit in September as an opportunity for world leaders to translate this evidence into a concrete agenda for action.
The report is based on a master set of data that has been compiled by an Inter-Agency and Expert Group on MDG Indicators led by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, in response to the wishes of the General Assembly for periodic assessment of progress towards the MDGs. The Group comprises representatives of the international organizations whose activities include the preparation of one or more of the series of statistical indicators that were identified as appropriate for monitoring progress towards the MDGs. A number of national statisticians and outside expert advisers also contributed.
