By Jeffrey Sachs NEW YORK: Last month, I called for the World Bank to be led by a global development leader rather than a banker or political insider. “The Bank needs an accomplished professional who is ready to tackle the great challenges of sustainable development from day one,” I wrote. Now that US President Barack Obama …
By Jeffrey Sachs ADDIS ABABA: Sustainable development means achieving economic growth that is widely shared and that protects the earth’s vital resources. Our current global economy, however, is not sustainable, with more than one billion people left behind by economic progress and the earth’s environment suffering terrible damage from human activity. Sustainable development requires mobilizing new …
By Jeffrey Sachs NEW YORK: A famous claim in economics is that the cost of services (such as health care and education) tends to increase relative to the cost of goods (such as food, oil, and machinery). This seems right: people around the world can barely afford the rising health care and school-tuition costs they currently …
By Jeffrey Sachs NEW YORK: The past half-century has been the age of electronic mass media. Television has reshaped society in every corner of the world. Now an explosion of new media devices is joining the TV set: DVDs, computers, game boxes, smart phones, and more. A growing body of evidence suggests that this media proliferation …
By Jeffrey Sachs NEW YORK: We live in an era in which the most important forces affecting every economy are global, not local. What happens “abroad” — in China, India, and elsewhere — powerfully affects even an economy as large as the United States. Economic globalization has, of course, produced some large benefits for the world, …
By Jeffrey Sachs NAIROBI: Yet again, famine stalks the Horn of Africa. More than ten million people are fighting for survival, mainly pastoralist communities in the hyper-arid regions of Somalia, Ethiopia, and northern Kenya. Every day brings news of more deaths and massive inflows of starving people into refugee camps in Kenya, across the border from …
By Jeffrey Sachs NEW YORK: The world can breathe easier with the reelection this month of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to a second term in office. In a fractious world, global unity is especially vital. During the past five years, Ban Ki-moon has embodied that unity, both in his unique personal diplomacy and in his …
NEW YORK: In almost every part of the world, long-festering problems can be solved through closer cooperation among neighboring countries. The European Union provides the best model for how neighbors that have long fought each other can come together for mutual benefit. Ironically, today’s decline in American global power may lead to more effective …
By Jeffrey Sachs NEW YORK: The world is drowning in corporate fraud, and the problems are probably greatest in rich countries — those with supposedly “good governance.” Poor-country governments probably accept more bribes and commit more offenses, but it is rich countries that host the global companies that carry out the largest offenses. Money talks, and …
By Jeffrey Sachs NEW YORK: Many factors underlay the ongoing upheavals in the Middle East: decades of corrupt and authoritarian rule, increasingly literate and digitally-connected societies, and skyrocketing world food prices. To top it off, throughout the Middle East (as well as Sub-Saharan Africa and most of South Asia), rapid population growth is fueling enormous demographic …
By Jeffrey Sachs NEW YORK: India’s great moral leader Mohandas Gandhi famously said that there is enough on Earth for everybody’s need, but not enough for everybody’s greed. Today, Gandhi’s insight is being put to the test as never before. The world is hitting global limits in its use of resources. We are feeling the …
By Jeffrey Sachs NEW YORK: America is on a collision course with itself. This month’s deal between President Barack Obama and the Republicans in Congress to extend the tax cuts initiated a decade ago by President George W. Bush is being hailed as the start of a new bipartisan consensus. I believe, instead, that it is …
By Jeffrey Sachs NEW YORK: The Seoul G-20 summit was notable for the increasing political weight of the emerging economies. Not only was it located in one, but, in many ways, it was also dominated by them. In two crucial areas, macroeconomics and global economic development, the emerging economies’ view prevailed. And an excellent proposal to …
