Statements of support for Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals

Statements by Civil Society and Academia

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Reverend David Beckmann, President, Bread for the World

"Your report demonstrates the feasibility of meeting the Millennium Goals. As a member of your Hunger Task Force, I especially appreciate your report’s emphasis on building political commitment and on African agriculture as priority areas for action. Thank you, too, for listing clear opportunities for increased investment – poor countries with good governance and Quick Win development initiatives, such as African soil replenishment and community nutrition programs."

Click here to read the full statement
Click here to access the Bread for the World website

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Bono, U2

"This incredible body of work is much more than a report or a plan, it's the critical path to a 21st century world that people want to be a part of... the Professor has shown the way, it's time to get to work.... Let's make sure 2005 is remembered for what we did do, not for what we didn't."

Click here to access the One Campaign's website

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Jacqueline Coté, Senior Advisor Advocacy & Partnerships, World Business Council for Sustainable Development

"Investing in Development is a welcome addition to the calls for governments and policy-makers to focus their efforts on creating a favourable environment for pro-poor growth. Its request for "a big push of basic investments between now and 2015 in public administration, human capital and key infrastructure" echo the recommendations made by the business community in the WBCSD's "Investing for Sustainable Development" and the upcoming "Business Contribution to Development" report. We hope this alignment of vision will translate into a greater coordination of efforts amongst all stakeholders."

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Sir Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics, University of Cambridge

"The UN Millennium Project Report is an extraordinary achievement. Passionate concern for the world's poorest motivates it, but dispassionate analysis never fails to guide it. The Report's recommendation for a step-by-step move to fulfill commitments that were made by the world's rich nations cannot but allay well meaning concerns that the increased aid the world's poorest need now more than ever before will not reach them."

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Jamie Drummond, Executive Director, DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa)

"DATA welcomes the U.N. Millennium Project’s new report Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Your team has provided a plan for all of us — rich and poor countries alike — who have agreed to the Millennium Goals. We knew these goals were ambitious when they were written, and rightly so. It should be no surprise that we must now be ambitious in setting our course to achieve these goals."

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Peter Eigen, Chairman, Transparency International

"This report is an important contribution to assessing the achievability of the Millennium Development Goals."

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Engineers Without Borders Canada

"EWB welcomes the publication of this important report. Five years ago, the Millennium Goals were set out as lofty aim. This report constitutes a major step in the process of concretising what it means to meet these goals - what developing country governments, multilateral institutions and most importantly, western nations need to do. It calls for an increased, a co-ordinated and a comprehensive response from all actors. We at Engineers Without Borders Canada will continue to do our part - building technical capacity among rural communities and seeking to create a political will in the West for more pro-development policies. We hope that this report galvanises a broad constituency to work together to address the critical issue of making poverty history."

Click here to access the Engineers Without Borders Canada website

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Joan Holmes, President, The Hunger Project

"This is a moment when every global citizen can be proud. For the first time in human history, thanks to the Millennium Project, there is a unified global strategy to enable all people to meet their basic human needs. The Hunger Project congratulates the Millennium Project on its recommendations, and unequivocally supports the MDGs. We will do everything in our power to ensure that the MDGs are achieved."

Click here to access The Hunger Project website

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Johann Koss, 4-Time Olympic Champion and President and CEO of the NGO Right to Play

"Jeff Sachs and his team have made it clear - let's start the race now to eliminate poverty, improve health, ensure gender equality and primary education for all children. We want to win and celebrate an uprecedented victory in 2015".

Click here to access the Right to Play website

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Mary McClymont, CEO of InterAction

"I'd like to pay special tribute to Jeff and his outstanding team of experts who prepared these recommendations. Jeff has called it a "Practical Action Plan" to achieve the MDGs. I call it a " user's guide" for all of us to use. It shows us we can reach the MDGs. I know we will certainly find it helpful at InterAction over the coming years in pursuing our own MDG efforts."

(from comments delivered at a luncheon launching the Millennium Project's recommendations)

Click here to access the InterAction website

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Ravi Narayanan, Director, WaterAid

"WaterAid is dedicated exclusively to ensuring that the worlds poorest people have access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education.  The charity therefore welcomes both the UN Millennium Project report from Professor Jeffrey Sachs which identifies waters vital role in underpinning core development issues such as health and education.  We endorse both Prof. Sachs conclusion that more resources are needed for water and also the implication - of his assessment of per capita investment needs - that donors should target up to $7bn of this each year on water in the poorest countries, starting with $4 billion in 2005."

Click here to access the WaterAid website

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Partners in Health

"Partners In Health commends Jeffrey Sachs, his project team, and the coordinators and members of the Millennium Project Task Forces for their impressive work. The world has the resources needed to end the profound poverty that afflicts so many. The knowledge is available to break the entrenched cycle of poverty and disease that impedes meaningful development. The Project reports give donors a clear and comprehensive set of plans to implement real change. Further, the reports demonstrate that desperate poverty, poor health and inequality are mutually reinforcing afflictions. Relieving the most serious and persistent consequences of poverty requires understanding, and then addressing, their common root causes"

Click here to access the Partners in Health website

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Mary Robinson, Executive Director, Ethical Globalization Initiative

"The Millennium Project Report has put the international spotlight back where it belongs - on ensuring that we live up to the commitments which government leaders made at the start of the 21st century to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. I welcome the Report's practical plan of action and its emphasis on human rights - not only as essential prerequisites for achieving all the Millennium Development Goals but as practical tools which can assist every country in developing MDG-based poverty reduction strategies."

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George Soros, Founder and Chairman, Open Society Institute

"Investing in Development is a call to action based on sound analysis. The governments of the world, especially the United States, should take heed. Global poverty can be overcome, but only with greater assistance from the rich countries. 2005 is a pivotal year to mobilize that help."

Click here to access the Open Society Institute website

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The Stanley Foundation

"As the Millennium Project points out, if the development goals were achieved, 30 million more children would survive past their fifth birthday than do today—just as two million of their mothers would survive their birth. More important, the development experts remind us that the means for achieving the goals are readily at hand. Experience has shown that aid workers and local officials offer the best ways to keep girls in school, prevent mothers from dying in childbirth, improve agricultural yields, and reverse deforestation."

Click here to access The Stanley Foundation website