Online Atlas of the Millennium Development Goals, Building a Better World

This interactive online atlas, from the World Bank and Mapping Worlds, is focused on making development more accessible to people. It organises information from the Bank’s World Development Indicators database around the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations (UN) through 16 colour-coded maps (two per MDG) designed to quickly show concentrations of economic poverty, disease, and other critical development issues. The objective of the World Bank is to point to where economically poor nations need to focus on "good governance and poverty reduction" and where economically wealthy countries are challenged to "make good on their promises to support economic and social development."

These maps show how the population of a particular country stands in terms of meeting each goal. For example, under the goal of Eradicating Poverty and Hunger, there is a map of poverty and one of malnutrition in children. The malnutrition map colour codes countries to show where there is more than 30 per cent malnutrition in children, 20-29 percent malnutrition, etc. A bar graph is available on each map. In the case of this map, the graph compares by region the numbers of malnourished children in 1990 with numbers in 2003 to show where progress is occurrring and where malnutrition is increasing. Each map is rescalable, meaning users can resize them to see which countries - and how many people - are most seriously affected by each development issue.

The goal of the MDG is also featured on each map. Another interactive feature is the ability to click on any country and see statistics on its progress towards each of the MDG. This interactive record of the progress and challenges also offers information and internet links to the UN site with details of the MDG challenge.

A book called the Atlas of Global Development: A Visual Guide to the World’s Greatest Challenges, also from the World Bank, is a print version of this resource.