Bill Gates is pessimistic about the current world. The billionaire and philanthropist released the balance of the Gates Foundation in conjunction with his ex-wife, Melinda French, analyzing the challenges posed and unfulfilled for our planet.
The tycoon reviews the situation of poverty, the environment, malnutrition and health problems.
For Gates, the goal was “eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere”. However, since 2015 the percentage of people living on less than $1.90 a day has dropped to only about 8%, from just over 10%.”
Other ills directly related to poverty, such as malnutrition and maternal mortality, have increased.
“The prevalence of stunting in children under 5 years of age remains greater than 20%,” Gates points out, while maternal mortality is more than double the standard established in the 2015 goals.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, according to Bill Gates
Everything is further exacerbated by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“As it stands now, we would need to speed up the pace of our progress five times faster to reach most of our goals. Even that might be an understatement, because some of the projections still do not take into account the impact of the pandemic, not to mention the war in Ukraine or the food crisis that has broken out in Africa.”
“We are in a worse place than I expected,” Gates stressed. “The effects of the pandemic and now the effects of the war in Ukraine are very dramatic. There are big setbacks in all these measures.”
The philanthropist also lamented that childhood vaccinations in general have returned to 2009 levels. However, he considers that with adequate funding, for the next two years, it should return to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.
Asia has improved a lot, but Africa remains at alarming levels of poverty
Gates acknowledged that Asia could lower poverty levels over time, praising the work of China, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Vietnam.
But he remains concerned about Africa, where “Population growth is still there, poor health is still there. And because so much of the continent is close to the equator, the effects of climate change are very dramatic.”
“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. We’re trying to get that back.”
“The world has a goal of getting that amount back up to a little over $2 billion. I don’t know if we’ll get there.”
To read Bill Gates’ full balance sheet on global goals, we leave you this link of the foundation.