[lit-ideas] World problems??
- From: "Steven G. Cameron" <stevecam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 05 May 2004 12:34:14 -0400
Thoughtful perspective...
TC,
/Steve Cameron, NJ
COMMENTARY
WSJ, 5 Apr 2004
Problems, Problems
By BJORN LOMBORG
Spend half an hour shopping, and you quickly realize that all of us make
priorities -- every day. Few of us are lucky enough to be able to afford
everything, so we must weigh choices: new shoes, or a night out? A
holiday, or tires for the car? On a larger scale, politicians make
public policy priorities. Is raising literacy rates the highest
priority, or should fixing the health system be paramount? No dollar can
be spent twice.
Strangely, this basic concept has been almost absent in debate about one
of the most important choices the world makes: how we spend money
designed to improve living standards around the globe. This money is
most obvious in overseas development and aid spending, but is also
achieved through trade policies, the funding of research into diseases,
investment in environmental protection, peacekeeping missions and
maintaining the U.N. apparatus.
The cash has often tended to follow the public's attention from disaster
to catastrophe -- indeed, the "cause of the hour" changes as fast as the
media can set up cameras in another hotspot. Today's fears about climate
change are yesterday's concerns about overpopulation, and tomorrow's
outcry for a response to famine.
TEN GREAT CHALLENGES FACING HUMANITY
Climate Change
Communicable Diseases
Conflicts
Financial Instability
Malnutrition and Hunger
Education
Governance and Corruption
Population: Migration
Sanitation and Water
Subsidies and Trade Barriers
Source: www.copenhagenconsensus.com
The U.N. has adopted Millennium Development Goals -- a collection of
worthy initiatives. But unfortunately, they are unprioritized. Of
course, we'd like to do all of them; it is vital to eliminate gender
disparity in primary and secondary education, and we know we must reduce
child mortality and improve maternal health. But if you or I were the
elected leader of a small nation with just $5 million to spare for such
projects, where should we spend our money first? Should we spread it
around all of the goals, or would we achieve more if we spent most of it
on just one initiative? Even if the world had much more than that to
spend -- say, $50 billion -- how do we know where to direct the bulk of it?
Some say it is impossible to prioritize such worthy endeavors -- that
every dollar used to "do some good" is a dollar well spent. But how wise
is it to take this laissez-faire approach when we don't have money for
everything? Consider cash-strapped shoppers at the grocery store. They
scour the aisles, comparing different items. If they could get four
family meals out of a single product, why would they spend the same
money on an item that will only feed the family once?
Opponents believe that it is distasteful to prioritize this major
spending, and that the result of any effort would be that some areas
miss out entirely. Roger Riddell of Christian Aid has pointed out that
there is little chance of effective use of money in southern Sudan, for
example. Yet, he argues, help to Sudan "should not be abandoned." I
don't know whether his pessimistic view of southern Sudan is justified
-- and I certainly don't argue that relief efforts there should be
abandoned. But on the broader point, we must ask ourselves: If there are
some places where we can do relatively little, should we not consider
achieving more elsewhere?
In an ideal world, we would have the money and the political capital to
do everything. We would be able to end malnutrition, illiteracy and
refugee problems, halt climate change, stop global conflicts, and wipe
out corruption. But we live in the real world, where we must focus our
efforts to achieve even some of these things. We have a stark choice. We
can continue to prioritize without acknowledging that we are doing it.
Or, we can work out a rational framework for our spending that makes
some more sense.
This is exactly the aim of Copenhagen Consensus, a project that will
bring nine of the world's top economists to Denmark later this month.
The expert panel -- including four Nobel Laureates -- will create a
prioritized list of opportunities to solve the 10 greatest challenges
facing humanity, as we see them. The economists will examine the costs
and benefits of solutions to each challenge. An example of a solution
(to the challenge of communicable diseases) could be to provide free
mosquito nets to areas affected by malaria. The result will be perhaps
the grandest "To Do" list the world has seen, showing us how to spend
our money the most efficiently. The list will be concrete, outlining
tangible opportunities that can be done today.
The Copenhagen Consensus may not make every decision-maker snap to
attention and change spending habits immediately. But it will give us
the information we need to make our choices more rationally. Most
importantly, it will place debate over the prioritization of our
resources firmly on the agenda, making it possible not just to do some
good in the world, but to do the best that we possibly can.
Mr. Lomborg, director of the Environmental Assessment Institute (which
has organized the Copenhagen Consensus), is the author of "The Skeptical
Environmentalist" (Cambridge, 2001).
Every week The Economist publishes two articles, each dealing with one
of the 10 challenges. Read the articles at
www.economist.com/copenhagenconsensus
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