NEW YORK (AP) – The $42 billion Gates Foundation says the lives of poor people around the world will improve more over the next 15 years “than at any time in history.”
Bill and Melinda Gates in an interview laid out the vision for the world’s largest charitable foundation as they prepared to travel to the World Economic Forum and its annual networking meeting of heads of state and business leaders.
The international community, led by the United Nations, is deciding this year on the most crucial development goals for the next 15 years in defeating poverty, disease and hunger.
The Gates Foundation’s own ambitious 15-year agenda, spelled out in its latest annual letter, foresees the elimination of polio and three other diseases and says Africa will be able to feed itself.
But climate change, an increasingly alarming global issue, is only briefly addressed, though the U.N. secretary-general has warned that this is the last generation that can do anything to avoid its worst effects. The foundation’s letter calls “right now” for the development of cheaper, zero-carbon-emissions energy sources.