by Bamidele F.Oni
This is 2015, a year that speaks so much in volume of global expectations and in a lot of ways deemed as a potential year of monumental turn of event that could open a new page in the history of mankind; his survival and the future.
While it seem we are stuck at making meaningful progress in proffering well – possible and available solutions to problems that obviously threatens even lives of many today with a possible shift into an extreme scenario in the nearest future, yet the year lies on the scale of optimism and pessimism and only time can tell where the balance will tilt towards.
It seems a normal human default to set and mark down dates in the future for reaching goals and targets. This is quite reasonable as it gives a deadline to making every possible effort work towards achieving a set objective and of course in the wise of yielding the most significant outcome quantifiable.
While we have achieved some feats in making progressive breakthrough in some aspect of interventions, taking the instance of the success with the phase out of the use of Ozone depleting substances, we have largely won the battle in this regards, yet, we haven’t made so much of progress with some other related issues that are obvious problems that stiffly competes with our survival as humanity on this planet.
In 1999, the world staged a working platform to eradicate poverty and make a meaningful move into at least closing the wide societal gap enabled by this menace which dominates most parts of the developing world. This very commitment gave rise to the consideration of other related factors that would facilitate the rapidity of reaching the desired goal, hence, the declaration of the millennium development goals (MDGs) with the supposedly deadline year of landslide achievement set at 2015.
That very day in 1999 must have been a widely acclaimed day of setting a sound record of landmark in the our quest for possible changes that would mark the new world era and 2015 must have been looked on as the year we could have the reason of congratulating ourselves on yet another feat achieved. Alas, this is 2015 and still, a larger part of the planet still wallows in the same subject of concern that brought the world’s attention to the table of deliberations.
While the goals are laudable and the means to achieving, at least as seen on paper are thorough enough to have brought some significant changes, the abounding global scenarios show the otherwise of achieving as much as was envisaged at the instance of the declaration.
Climate change is another of the reasons 2015 holds a lot of significance, all eyes are fixed on the next conference of parties coming up later in the year in Paris as a new treaty would be drawn out to replace the yet to be achieved goals of the Kyoto protocol.
Expectations at Lima were cut short with a lot of less ambitious stands from the giants that were looked upon as the probable facilitators of the new treaty at COP21 in Paris. To many fall-outs in the records of progress I’d say and which is already weighing down the level of optimism in the regards of an overly ambitious stand from the concerned nations.
Soon the world would be coming together to decide yet again on the future, a future which is already catching up on us. Often I wonder if it were possible to do away with idea of choosing leaders to represent our common interest and probably give all on earth the chance to give their bits to the making of our common future, how would it look like? Or rather would it even be possible?
It feels more like our leaders are more concerned about the respective impact an intervention would make on their respective countries without much consideration on the global perspectives on why the interventions are needed. Often they call it protecting the interest of their countries, but really, in a situation where the safety of the whole world is at stake, which sounds more like it, protecting a localized country’s interest or a global committed interest?
We stand at the brink of making another dimension of intervention for the sake of our common future, still we remain inconclusive on past and prior amends, and 2015 is here the MDGs will become SDGs while we wait what Paris protocol will look like. But Still, our future lies largely undecided.
