[enviro-vlc] The MDGs Summit and The Forgotten Billion

[vern weitzel]

From: "UNCCD" <newsbox at unccd.int>
Date: 17 September 2010 9:39:22 AM PDT
To: "Land Degradation Announcement List" <land-l at lists.iisd.ca>
Subject: The MDGs Summit and The Forgotten Billion
Reply-To: "UNCCD" <newsbox at unccd.int>

The Forgotten Billion, a new study on the progress made towards the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit, claims that it will be impossible to halve the world’s poverty and hunger by 2015 unless life is improved for the poor people of the drylands.

Jointly prepared by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and the UN Development Programme, the study maps poverty from a natural endowments perspective, and reveals that the attainment of MDGs lags most among the one billion inhabitants located in the drylands. “In certain regions, human well-being, particularly female adult literacy and child mortality, decline in parallel with the aridity gradient,” meaning water scarcity, according to the study, and it is a pattern that holds true at both the global and national levels.

The Forgotten Billion will be discussed at a highlevel Round-Table to be held from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm on Wednesday, 22 September 2010, at the UN headquarters in New York, United States. The session will be Webcast live via: http://www.un.org/webcast

The Executive Summary of The Forgotten Billion can be downloaded from: http://www.unccd.int/media/docs/Forgotten%20Billion.pdf

For information on the Round-Table, contact: Mr Charles Dickson, UNDP New York, Charles.Dickson at undp.org or Mr. Melchiade Bukuru, UNCCD New York Liaison Office, Tel: +1-917 367 4081, Email: teixeira2 at un.org

All media inquiries, should be directed to: Ms. Wagaki Mwangi, UNCCD Secretariat, wmwangi at unccd.int, Tel: +49-(0)228-815 2820, Cell: +49-(0)173-268 7593.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/enviro-vlc/attachments/20100920/efec8cde/attachment.html