The implications of rising global poverty in its linked dimensions of economic development and environmental sustainability was the subject of a powerful lecture delivered by Jeffrey Sachs, one of the leading developmental economists in the world, in the Vassar Chapel at the college on the evening of Thursday, April 24.
Sponsored by Operation Donation, a student group dedicated to fighting poverty on the local, national and global levels, the talk brilliantly delineated why, in Sachs’ view, “Never has the world seen such a combination of potential and threat as it does today.”
Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is the author of hundreds of articles and many books, including the 2005 New York Times bestseller “The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time”, and the just-published “Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet.” He is widely known for his work on the Millenium Development Goals, an ambitious plan formulated by the United Nations in 2002 to end extreme poverty by 2015, utilizing pledges of economic assistance from developed nations around the globe.
“John McCain says that ‘The transcendent issue of our time is Islamic fundamentalism.’ Where is he? What planet is that?” Sachs asked rhetorically, before sounding his great theme and linking it to Sen. McCain’s concerns. “Poverty is the transcendent issue of our time. We can send all the soldiers we have to troubled places; it will not affect the conditions of drought and poverty that feed fundamentalism. We can give guns to the tribal people of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan and tell them to fight the Taliban, there will still be instability. We have to get at the root causes of problems – you can’t subdue hungry people. Let’s send in the engineers and the hydrologists instead.”
Giving his audience an historical background to current problems of development, the economist affirmed that colonialism held back development in what later became Third World countries throughout the 19th and much of the 20th centuries. This situation began to change, he said, during the period of great global upheaval between 1914 and 1945, when over the course of two world wars, “Europe nearly destroyed itself, and much of the rest of the world as well.” When exhausted European powers could no longer maintain their grip on their colonies and a great wave of de-colonization began after 1945, “all this changed.”
“In my opinion, the birth of independence made possible the spread of development,” Sachs said. “What began in the mid-1950s was what I like to call ‘The Age of Convergence.’ The spread of science, education and technology meant that the rest of the world could begin to catch up to Europe. The basic idea of ‘convergence’ – the coming together of all of these transforming elements in newly independent countries – is that if you start out poor, you can catch up quickly.”
Sachs held up China and India as the two great examples of this phenomenon, stating that their rise is a matter of world-transforming dimensions, one that is setting the parameters of our time.
“China has grown at 10 percent a year for three straight decades, since the economic liberalizations of Deng Xiao Ping and his exhortation ‘To get rich is glorious,’” Sachs said. “India is growing at 7 percent a year. Together, these two countries make up 38 percent of the world’s population. By pure arithmetic, the center of the world’s economy will be Asia and the Indian Ocean.”
In “The Age of Convergence,” according to the economist, no one has to live in poverty – theoretically. Everyone can partake of the prosperity that is possible with improved productivity due to the convergence of science, education, and technology. Yet this is obviously not the current situation, and after dramatically asking “What’s wrong with this picture?”, Sachs proceeded to explain how closely linked ills of environmental destruction and persistent poverty are locked in a vicious cycle of reciprocal interaction that is degrading life on earth.
“First, as we have grown, we have lost touch with the consequences for the physical environment,” he said. “In fact the pressure on the environment is becoming untenable. Environmental damage is driving up food prices, further impoverishing the poor. And this is closely linked to global warming caused by carbon monoxide in the atmosphere. In the pre-industrial world, the proportion of CO2 was 280 parts per million. After two centuries of industrialization, we’ve raised the level by a full third, to 385 parts per million. At the rate we’re going, it could hit 560 parts per million by the end of the century – or even by 2050. At that point we will see massive dislocation of people. There is a red light flashing: ‘Danger.’
“Second, with all this growth, it’s still possible to die of poverty on this planet,” Sachs continued. “And the most direct solution to this problem is to increase aid to developing countries. People are always asking, ‘When did aid ever help anyone?” The answer is that it helped everyone to which it was given. Take India. The Green Revolution, which transformed agriculture and the economy there in the 1960s, was made possible by the U.S. government. Today, there are a billion people on the planet who are in desperate need of similar aid.”
Addressing the great importance of these issues in a presidential election year, he concluded with an exhortation to let these considerations guide his listeners’ choice of a candidate, followed by some recommendations for the new chief executive.
“Do not vote for president based on who you would like to have beer with, which was the basis of the outcome in the last two elections,” he implored. “Have beer with your friends. Vote for someone who will change the ‘us vs. them’ way we’ve been viewing the world since 9/11. Vote for someone who will end the war in Iraq – this disaster without any redeeming features at all. Scientific and technical solutions to the world’s problems are needed, not military ones.”
“We need to get out of Iraq immediately – we’re going around in circles without a plan, and spending $ 250 billion a year there,” was Sachs’ first recommendation. “We need to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, which deprive us of $ 250 billion a year. We need that $ 450 billion for problem-solving, such as investing in environmentally friendly technologies, helping poor countries and coming back into compliance with the law, whether those laws are climate conventions or the Geneva Conventions. Otherwise we’re going to hit a wall – on energy prices, food prices, national competitiveness, and our standing in the world.”