Ajay Chhibber, New York – On Sept. 25, 2008, at the midpoint towards achieving the Millen-nium Development Goals (MDGs), world leaders gathered in New York to see where more can be done to reach them by their deadline of 2015.

This is a critical moment as the prospects of a slowing global economy, high food and fuel prices and climate change threaten to derail and even reverse the progress already made.

Advances made towards the MDGs across the world have been varied. As the Secretary General's annual MDG report indicated this year, while significant gains were made on some fronts, overall performance has been mixed.

In particular, the benefits of growth have been unequally shared both across and within countries. This is particularly true for the Asia-Pacific region.

Asia's record of progress on the MDGs remains impressive although uneven. The remarkable growth figures from Asia, driven primarily by China and India, no doubt have helped lift millions out of poverty.

Vietnam has surpassed the MDG poverty reduction goals of halving the number of people living below the poverty line and is planning to go even further beyond them by another 40 percent by 2010. Bangladesh is well on track on poverty reduction with poverty down to 40 percent in 2005.

But in the recent months rising food and fuel prices have reversed some of these gains. East Asia is generally on track and South Asia is behind but is making progress on many goals. But looking at individual countries progress across the MDGs are disparate, with health and environmental sustainability being the slowest areas for progress.

One of the striking features of the growth story in the Asia-Pacific region is the increasing gap between countries while the larger, rapidly growing economies like China and India have advanced by leaps and bounds, there is a widening gap between the faster growing economies and those being left behind particularly the least-developed countries.

In Indonesia, on the whole, there has been significant progress toward achieving the MDGs, as demonstrated by data tracked by the government. There are concerns however over insufficient progress on access to safe drinking water, maternal health, child nutrition and several environmental targets.

And many districts and provinces in the outer islands have been left behind as the rest of the country moved forward. Still, in terms of national aggregate figures, Indonesia is on track to meet many of the MDG targets, ranging from reduction in the infant mortality rate to improvements in educational indicators, and the importance of these achievements cannot be overstated.

The problem in Indonesia of stark disparities in progress among different regions is mirrored in other Asia-Pacific countries as well: Within some of the best-performing countries, particular regions and groups are falling behind.

The rapid economic growth in these prospering countries has not automatically translated into tangible improvements for the majority of people, or directly improved the lot of those at the lowest rungs of society. Inequalities are increasing dramatically especially in the fast growing economies.

This is painfully evident when we note that the indicators for maternal mortality have barely improved across the region, despite remarkable progress on economic indicators. This is primarily because the benefits of Asia's growth have remained largely concentrated to its urban centers.

Rural populations, who still comprise the majority of the region's populace, have typically been bypassed. Moreover, these dramatic growth rates have not been accompanied by commensurate increases in employment opportunities or in investments for human development- crucial opportunities that the region can no longer afford to miss.

Conditional cash transfers, which have been pioneered and tried with some success in Latin America, can provide much needed focus on specific MDGs especially those related to education and health. Such schemes in which mothers are provided cash incentives to ensure that their children – especially girlsgo to school or to ensure that children are inoculated can make a major difference in reaching the MDGs. Asian countries, with some exceptions, have not used such schemes as widely as in other regions where they have been shown to work especially well in rural areas.

At the UN Development Programme, we have seen and helped drive some progress in this region, even in countries that are landlocked and emerging from conflict.

With the current volatility in global markets, the growing crisis of rising food and fuel prices, and the risks posed by climate change, it is the more vulnerable across all countries in the region that are going to be at risk of sudden downturns.

This is going to be one of the largest challenges in the years that remain from now until 2015. In a region where natural disasters and conflict have often inflicted substantial reversals to previous achievement, no gains can be taken for granted.

So while Asia has much to celebrate, there is also much to do. With increasing global pressure that threaten to slow things down, now more than ever the important dialogue must be converted to our most precious international currencyaction. The message is simple: The Goals are achievable, but it will take concerted, creative and decisive action from the global community.

[The writer is Assistant Secretary-General, Assistant Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and Director of UNDP's Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific.]