The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation annually donates billions of dollars to fight poverty, inequality and climate change, sustainable development goals set in 2015 by the UN for 2030.
Seven years have passed since these goals were set and, when there are still so many more to achieve, the businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates has warned, in statements to the New York Times, that the world is not on the right path to achieve themafter analyzing some key data.
After studying reports on poverty, malnutrition, maternal mortality and 15 other issues, Gates, an exponent of those who believe in innovation and philanthropy as guides to general progress, has nevertheless expressed his pessimism.
“We are in a worse situation than I expected.. The effects of the pandemic and now the effects of the war in Ukraine are very drastic. There are huge delays in all these indicators,” he told the New York newspaper.
Poverty
“About Asia, I’m optimistic. I am optimistic that India, with its typical ups and downs, will reduce poverty over time. But then we are faced with the overwhelming problem in africa“, assures Gates, who affirms that the increase in hunger came with the beginning of the pandemic and that if the objective was to eradicate extreme poverty in 2030 in all these years “the percentage of the world that lives with less than 1.90 dollars a day has only dropped to about 8% from just over 10%. “Despite that, he credits the work done in China, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Vietnam.
In any event, you acknowledge that “we have not invested enough in agricultural innovation. The Green Revolution was one of the greatest things that ever happened. But then we lost track. And funding for public domain seed systems has been reduced.”
Climate change
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Directly related to poverty and hunger in the world is climate change. “Despite all the climate conferences, including the upcoming one, saying that adaptation is going to be one of their big topics, we haven’t really seen that shift in research and development priorities, and that increase that we expected to see.” And, with the war in Ukraine, it’s even more difficult than before,” Gates concludes.
ukrainian war
And with the worst of the pandemic’s impact on the world over, came the war in Ukraine, which, according to Gates, “is distracting us from helping poor countries and making progress on climate change adaptation and mitigation. It’s a huge impact, due to its costs in terms of defense, electricity, refugees, fertilizers… With a war added to a pandemic, and now with the rise in interest rates and a high level of debt everywhere, but also in Africa, it will be difficult to even hold the world’s attention in the next 5 years,” he warns.