The world’s best known economist, once named by Time magazine as among the
world’s most influential people, is small, neat and rushing to get his
schedule back on track after a delayed flight from New York. Jeffrey Sachs
has been a key influence on Bono, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Without
Sachs, Blair’s Commission for Africa and the G8’s Gleneagles commitment to
alleviating poverty in the continent would not have happened.
Bono, in an introduction to Sachs’s bestselling book of two years ago, The End
of Poverty, described him as “the people’s economist”. Even one of his
intellectual opponents, William Easterly of New York University, describes
him as “simply the world’s greatest economic reformer” over the past two
decades.
Sachs is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the United
Nations Millennium Project, which pushes the internationally agreed goals of
reducing extreme poverty, disease and hunger by 2015.
When we meet, ahead of the BBC’s Reith lectures that began last week, Sachs is
lively and engaging. His series of five lectures will take him from London
to China, America and back to Britain. And what has moved him is the chance
to tap into a global audience.
“This is an opportunity to have a worldwide conversation,” he says. “It’s
really a discussion about globalisation. While we can make globalisation
work, we’re off on a seriously wrong course.
“The overarching theme is that the world has become extremely crowded. We are
in each other’s faces as never before and we are pressing on the Earth’s
environment as never before, 6.5 billion people putting out 7 billion tons
of carbon into the atmosphere — and finding ourselves in these disastrous
wars as well. All should tell us that we’re in a different time from what we
think and haven’t adjusted to the global crowding.
“It’s about population, environment, the deep interconnection across the world
right now which is capable of producing conflict or cooperation. So far it
is producing more conflict than cooperation. It’s also about the shifts in
global power that are occurring. We have to do different things to make it
work out.”
The title of his opening lecture, Bursting at the Seams, which he delivered at
the Royal Society, has echoes of early doom-mongering. As long ago as 1972
the Club of Rome, an informal think tank, produced a bestselling book, The
Limits to Growth, warning that the world was about to run up against serious
resource constraints. Since then, the global economy has carried on growing
and its population has risen from fewer than 4 billion to more than 6.5
billion.
But Sachs insists that the planet collectively has to act. “The world’s going
to get a lot more crowded and it’s going to get a lot more crowded in its
effect on the environment,” he says. “I’ve never viewed economics as a
spectator sport where you just watch events pass by. I’ve viewed it as a set
of tools we can use to help do things better.
“In terms of population, we really do have choices as to whether by
mid-century this is going to be a world of 7.5 to 8 billion, or a world of 9
or 10 billion, or even a world more populated than that. When the United
States slashes the aid budget for family planning that is a decision that
takes you more towards a world of 10 billion. I think it is a tremendous
mistake.”
Sachs does not pull his punches, particularly when it comes to his own
government. He regards the Bush administration as a disaster and does not
mind saying so. An embryonic “Sachs for president” campaign, started by
students, is unlikely to get far. But he has a politician’s instinct for
going for the jugular.
Money that could have been spent, not just on population control but on
alleviating climate change, has been squandered to an “unbelievable” extent
on “completely unnecessary and misguided wars like Iraq”, he says. “The
choices we’re making right now are unrealistic and a complete waste of
effort and opportunity.”
Do such criticisms mean that, at least as far as the White House is concerned
— which he describes as “groping blindly in places it doesn’t understand” —
he is operating from outside the tent, limiting his influence?
“We each have our parts to play — mine is to be as accurate as possible. I
have the satisfaction that many things I have argued for were met with a no,
but eventually became, not just a yes but an inevitable yes.
“My country’s an outlier in just about everything right now. It should be a
major contributor to problem solving in the world. It’s absence from
providing realistic solutions is obviously very disconcerting.”
He admires Blair’s initiatives on Africa and expects Brown to continue the
good work. But he cannot allow the prime minister to escape the criticism he
levels at Bush. “The biggest surprise is how this government allowed itself
to be dragged in,” he says. “It’s a shock. You don’t need a Reith lecturer
to tell you that.
“There’s no question Iraq is a significant negative. This has been a huge
blunder for this country and history will judge it as such. I praised the
leadership on Africa and on climate change, but it’s notable that — as much
effort as has gone in — the results so far are mainly words and commitments.
With all of the push they’ve made on Africa and on climate change there
haven’t been real results on the ground.”
Sachs has been criticised, notably by Easterly, for putting such an emphasis
on international aid and raising aid budgets in the rich countries to 0.7%
of gross domestic product. Critics say pouring money into poor countries is
a recipe for corruption and waste.
“The critics say, ‘Oh, he’s just after the money’,” Sachs says. “They don’t
understand, it isn’t the money — it is the tools to empower the poor: 0.7%
on a $35 trillion world GDP is absolutely enough to address Aids, TB,
malaria and many other conditions.
“I’m hardly interested in the money per se, but what it can bring —
fertiliser, high-yield seeds, antibiotics, antimalarials, antimalaria bed
nets, bore holes for safe drinking water, piping for bringing water from
safe places; things that are real, practical, cost a little bit but not a
lot, and are lacking to such an extent that 10m people or more are dying
each year because of their poverty.”
The second Reith lecture, Survival in the Anthropocene, to be broadcast this
week, is about the challenges the world faces from climate change, hunger,
and water and energy shortages. It will be followed by three others: The
Great Convergence, Poverty in the Midst of Plenty and A New Politics for a
New Age.
Through them all, Sachs will insist that his approach is practical, not
theoretical. The millennium villages pilot projects he is running with the
UN show that aid, properly administered, can indeed lift poor people out of
poverty. The success rates, he says, have been “extraordinary”.
“I believe in the global market economy and I believe in global capitalism.
There’s a lot of life in this system and, indeed, the economic growth of
China and India is the greatest single triumph of the global economy right
now,” he says. “I’m a huge fan of globalisation, that’s why I work to make
it work better.”
Mr Sachs may be the most ballyhood economist, but if your references are Bono and Gordon Brown, 'nuff said. Mr Sachs mentions the Club of Rome. Here are some quotes from that organisation. See if you can find any similartiy. Stopping population growth by 1975; capital growth by 1985' a world forum where statesmen, policymakers and scientists, concerted int'l measures, long term planning, on a scope and scale without precedent, rational and enduring state of equilibrium by planned measures, to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse. See what I mean.? Super Socialsim. Has any one heard words like this recently.? Global Warming.!! The liberals have to a crisis, and speak in Apocalyptical rhetoric. Been ther , done that. Excuse me, but I do not see any ECONOMIC arguements proposed by this latest " visionary '. Just son of Club of Rome..
Judy, it is NOT the job of the UK government to stop woman having babies. Lots of devices, and self control.
Desmond Taylor, Houston, USA Texas
Make your mind up. The world is busting at the seams with people who are creating overpopulation. Britain can't give enough money to single women to keep popping kids out, so who is telling the trutth and who is being responsible?
judy, Liverpool, england
Mr Sachs may be the most written about economist in the World, as you say. However, if I had Bono and Gordon Brown as references, I would drop the term" Economist " from my cv. Social engineer, maybe. Socialist Keynesian-probably. I am afraid Mr Sachs would need to read some Adam Smith before he came knocking on my door. It would appear he read too much Malthus as a boy, and did not learn his mistakes. But then look where he works, as if one did not know.
Desmond Taylor, Houston, TX
Just for the record, the human race is so overloading the planet that the entire human race alive today could be put into a one mile cube, (perhaps, not comfortably), which, in the scale of the Earth, is pretty small. Don't believe me? Do the math, it is very simple.
Tony Edwards, Road Town, BVI
Sexual self control is vital to the growth of love and fidelity. It's also, of course, the safest and healthiest way to control population.
Father Bryan Storey , Tintagel, UK
Although money would help in treating the symptoms of a rapidly expanding Aids crisis in LDCs, it is hard to conjecture how it would affect the sexual mores of those whose behaviour is causing it in the first place. Sex 'education' does not seem to be working in these places, where high birthrates are also partly attributed to a total lack of pension provision.
Moreover, in terms of population growth, how will it persuade millions of Muslims to reject the exhortations of their imams and clerics to maximise their birthrate? I doubt strongly if reason alone will prevail.
How does Jeffrey Sachs' thesis mesh with European governments' deploring the shrinking European birthrate which they seek to resolve by large-scale immigration in order to pay our future pension deficits? And once our European populations have been boosted to the "requisite" (?) numbers, what policy will they propose to finance the resultant even higher pension requirement of these additional millions?
alex, seattle, usa