Ten-years-old MDGs are set to be reached by 2015, and I was wondering about how much progress we have made already. Surely there has been some? With this in mind, I set out to hunt for statistics.
It wasn’t so difficult to detect them in the digital forests, as they weren’t really hiding. There are plenty of reports and charts and diagrams on UN sub-sites. MDG Monitor allows you to browse by goal or by location, and they have MDG country profiles in alphabetical order, from Afghanistan to Zambia. There’s also a quite useful interactive MDG Map. Another site packed with data on progress on MDGs is Millennium Development Goals Indicators. As informative as it is, it looks dull and over-complex. Not a very engaging use of time. Here it is, so painfully orthodox statistics:
And here goes the pearl of my hunt: the Gapminder! This super colourful interactive tool shows you where countries stand in terms of MDGs. You can move the bubbles along the timeline to see how the world has changed. This is the Gapminder for MDGs:
The Gapminder was a real prey in my hunt for statistics. There are many more flying bubbles on their website, so if you have a spare minute, please have a look. And this is the brain of the project, Hans Rosling, giving an excellent presentation called “Debunking myths about the ‘third world’”. It’s around 20 minutes, and provides some good insights.
Thanks Giedre. Hans Rosling’s talk is one of the most inspirational talks I have ever seen on TED. Highly recommended indeed! Thanks for sharing the Gapminder - very interesting.
Thank you Bart! I really hope you find the Gapminder useful, I think it’s a great initiative. And Mr Hans is just so exciting, isn’t he?
Wow, I would like to have him as one of my professors! Normally I fall asleep with statistics, but this is quite thrilling. I never heard of him so thanks for this post!
And of course there is the great search for something better than GDP as our main indicator.
I was first introduced to the debate in 2003: http://www.brazilmax.com/columnist.cfm/idcolumn/41
It came up again in Davos, where Joseph Stiglitz - http://www.josephstiglitz.com/ - and others talked about different initiatives around the world - including one that Stiglitz is helping develop for the French government.
(Wow, Hanna, you are lucky to have such lecturers!)
I am here Giedre to say thank you
The statistics helped me loaaaads when I was writing the last paragraphs of my last post:
http://development.thinkaboutit.eu/index.php/think3/post/hunting_for_statistics/