At the recent United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Review, Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Clegg, confirmed that the UK is one of the few EU countries showing leadership in meeting initial commitments made to the MDGs in 2000.
Defending the government's commitment to international aid, he has spoken of his hope to secure commitments from the private sector to help meet these goals. It is to the Coalition Government’s credit that they pledged in the last Budget to spare Britain’s overseas development expenditure from the cuts.
With only five years to go before the deadline to meet the MDGs, progress is so mixed that support from all of us, particularly the private sector, will be needed for the final push.
Representing one of only a few corporate businesses in the UK working on the issue of improving sanitation (MDG7), I urge other business leaders to take up this challenge by considering their priorities at home and thinking about how these can be extended and translated into actions to help people in the developing world.
MDG7 includes targets for halving the number of people living without access to safe water and improved sanitation by 2015. The sanitation target – which is essentially about toilets and defecation, subjects that are often keenly avoided – urgently needs attention. The world stands to miss this target by more than 700 million people – more than the combined population of the EU, Russia, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand.
Sanitation also has a major impact on other MDGs such as education and gender equality. What point is there in having good schools when thousands of students die every day from diarrhoea and half of all girls in Africa are deterred from attending primary school due to a lack of safe and private toilets?
The Co-operative Pharmacy has committed to a three-year partnership with UNICEF to provide life-saving sanitation in Togo, West Africa. The community development project that we are about to begin will provide 6,000 toilets, reaching 110,000 people. It won’t solve the problem completely, but is a start in contributing to the solution.
The cost of doing nothing in terms of both human suffering and economic loss is compelling. In pure economic terms, the World Health Organisation estimates that achieving the MDG water and sanitation target alone could bring economic benefits of between £2 and £22 for every 65p invested, depending on the region. There would also be savings in healthcare costs, improved school attendance, and increased productivity.
With all this in mind, we must, as UK businesses and responsible citizens alike do what we can to help, continue to raise awareness and deliver actual projects to ensure that the world meets the MDG targets. Toilets really can save lives.
The Author
John Nuttall is managing director of The Co-operative Pharmacy. Read more about the Co-operative Pharmacy Ethical Strategy.