Summary:
Martin Wolf on Jeffrey's Sachs new book. Sach's sets three goals for humanity: elimination of mass poverty, population control and environmental sustainability. First goal, according to Sachs, can only be achieved through a massive aid effort. Wolf is sceptical of effectiveness but believes there is no moral/credible alternative. Biggest question of all, however, is whether global prosperity and economic growth can be maintained. Sachs: requires latter two goals to be achieved. Sach's calls current era the "Anthracene:" world dominated by human activity. Environmental sustainability. Achievable, provided incentives are put in place (less than 2% of global GDP). (Published: 10/06/08)
Notes:
- Jeffrey Sach's new book
- Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Allen Lane, 2008)
- arguably, the biggest question confronting humanity in the 21st century:
- Is it possible for the vast mass of humanity to enjoy the living standards of today's high-income countries?
- challenge is stark:
- world real incomes per head could rise 4.5 times by 2050 and world population by 40 per cent
- would mean a sixfold increase in global output, concentrated in the developing world
- Is such an increase feasible?
- Jeffrey Sachs: yes and no
- yes and no
- yes, because changes in incentives, technology and social and political institutions would make a benign outcome feasible;
- no, because the path we are now on is unsustainable.
- Sachs's 3 goals:
- "the end of extreme poverty by 2025 and improved economic security within the rich countries as well"
- i.e. prosperity for everybody or elimination of mass poverty
- "stabilisation of the world's population at 8bn or below by 2050 through a voluntary reduction of fertility rates";
- i.e. population control
- related to prosperity because the world's poorest people are burdened by the costs of rearing its largest families
- "sustainable systems of energy, land and resources use that avert the most dangerous trends of climate change, species extinction, and destruction of ecosystems".
- i.e. environmental sustainability
- only by managing the global commons will it be possible to sustain rising living standards
- to achieve these ends, he recommends
- "a new approach to global problem-solving based on co-operation among nations and the dynamism and creativity of the non-governmental sector".
- Sach's "anthropocene"
- the era in which human activities dominate the world
- ways in which humanity has appropriated the bounty of the earth for its own use (Peter Vitousek, Stanford University):
- human beings now exploit 50 per cent of the terrestrial photosynthetic potential;
- they have put up a quarter of the carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere;
- they use 60 per cent of the accessible river run-off;
- they are responsible for 60 per cent of the earth's nitrogen fixation;
- they are responsible for a fifth of all plant invasions;
- over the past two millennia they have made extinct a quarter of all bird species;
- they have exploited or over-exploited more than half of the world's fisheries.
- how can growth in developing countries catch-up?
- Sachs:
- recommendation of an aid-supported, big-push investment strategy, aimed at lifting the world's poorest people, predominantly Africans, out of the poverty traps into which, in his judgment, they have fallen
- Martin Wolf: more sceptical than Prof Sachs of the returns to the big-push strategy
- In many cases, it will fail.
- But: it has to be tried, because there is no morally tolerable or credible alternative.
- Agrees, too, that huge efforts must be made to accelerate the fertility decline in the world's poorest countries, albeit on a voluntary basis.
- can economic growth once spread across the planet be sustainable?
- Jeffrey Sachs:
- optimistic on direct resource inputs into growth
- his view is that fossil fuel resources, renewable energy and availability of fresh water should be sufficient to support continued growth over the next half century
- would almost certainly require a transition from oil-based energy technologies to ones based on coal and renewables
- energy would, almost certainly, be much more expensive than in the 1985-2000 period, but not prohibitively so
- challenge: to make growth compatible with sustaining the global commons:
- species survival and, above all, climate change
- believes climate change can be dealt with at modest cost
- provided suitable incentives are put in place
- less than 1 per cent of global income
- believes we can achieve all the goals he has set for less than 2 per cent of global incomes
- Martin Wolf:
- One might not be quite as optimistic about the cost of the solutions. But one must recognise the salience of the challenges.
- If economic growth halted, conflict among the world's people would risk becoming unmanageable.
- If the environmental consequences proved overwhelming, the costs of growth would become unbearable.
- We are the masters of our planet now. The great question for the 21st century is whether we can also become masters of ourselves.
