U.N. targets poverty, child mortality, climate

“Leaders of the world are coming together to end extreme poverty and do it in a way that is sustainable.”

WASHINGTON — After a decade of dramatic global health and economic advances, world leaders are set to adopt a sweeping new agenda to eradicate extreme poverty and child mortality and spur new efforts to slow climate change and preserve the environment.

The so-called Sustainable Development Goals — expected to be formally approved at the United Nations this week at the largest-ever gathering of heads of state, including President Barack Obama — have garnered little attention in the U.S

But they are being closely watched around the world as a blueprint that could build on a successful global campaign to improve health in the developing world over the past 15 years that has cut child deaths over the last decade and a half.

“This is a very important moment,” said Tony Pipa, leading the Obamaadministration’s work on the global initiative. “Leaders of the world are coming together to end extreme poverty and do it in a way that is sustainable. … It’s extraordinary.”

Pope Francis, who has made inequality and climate change central issues for his papacy, is scheduled to open the summit Friday. Obama is to address the gathering at the United Nations on Sunday.

Still unclear is whether the 17 new goals can galvanize action and investment.

Critics charge the goals — and a subset of 169 more specific targets — are unfocused and utopian, ignoring political realities.

Global leaders are committing to “end hunger,” “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” and “conserve and sustainably use the oceans,” all by 2030.

Also uncertain is whether the broader goals, those touching climate change and environmental policy, will engage wealthy nations, such as the U.S., as did earlier efforts to reduce child mortality and HIV/ AIDS infections in the developing world.

“The U.S is always the country where you feel that this is least likely,” said Andrew Norton, director of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

“There is this deep sense that multilateral institutions don’t bear on U.S. domestic policy.”

But unlike many prior U.N. efforts, the new initiative builds off what some consider the most successful global anti-poverty and public health campaign in history, an effort known as the Millennium Development Goals.

Since 1990, the number of people worldwide in extreme poverty — defined as living on less than $1.25 a day — has plummeted, falling from nearly 2 billion to about 1 billion today, according to World Bank estimates.

Major health advances also have dramatically cut child mortality and extended life expectancies worldwide.

In the past 25 years, the number of children dying annually before their fifth birthday has declined from nearly 13 million to less than 6 million, a recent U.N. report showed.

The new 2030 agenda is more ambitious than the Millennium Development Goals.

Rather than reducing extreme poverty and child mortality, countries are pledging to eliminate them altogether — although, as with the previous goals, there is no penalty for missing the mark.

The new goals include many more environmental targets that link economic development and health to preserving water resources and habitats, cutting waste and slowing global warming

Many of these targets will require difficult tradeoffs and more political will in many countries, including the U.S.

Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish economist who has criticized the new goals as overly broad, said a narrower approach would guarantee better results.

Lomborg and a group of leading economists are advocating 19 specific targets, such as phasing out government subsidies for fossil fuels and halving malaria infections by 2030, in place of the 169 in the Sustainable Development Goals.

He said a more focused approach would also be more affordable, especially at a time wheninternational aid budgets, including in the U.S., are tightening.

U.S. development spending on global health, which nearly doubled between 2006 and 2010 to $10 billion, has remained flat since, according to data gathered by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.