Jeffrey D. Sachs: Extreme poverty, in essence, means a daily struggle for survival. A billion or so people remain trapped in extreme poverty, lacking adequate household incomes, food security, education, basic infrastructure, and access to health care, and safety from natural hazards. Getting out of extreme poverty requires investments, in businesses, human capital (skills, health, nutrition), and [...]
Sustainable Development
The surest bet on the future of energy is the need for low-carbon energy supplies. Around 80% of the world’s primary energy today is carbon based: coal, oil, and gas. We will need to shift to no- or low-carbon energy by mid-century. The big questions are how and when. Low-carbon primary energy means three options: [...]
Let me be the first or among the first to wish you a very Happy Happiness Day! In case you didn’t know it, today is the first International Day of Happiness, launched by all 193 UN member states. Happiness Day doesn’t mean we’ve arrived at happiness, but it does mean that we’ve recognized that happiness [...]
May 15, 2009
NEW YORKER SUMMIT VIDEO: ESTHER DUFLO AND JEFFREY SACHS
Posted by The New Yorker
The US, France, UK and other European countries are engaged in a widening arc of military activities across Africa, the Middle East, western Asia and central Asia, some visible and some surreptitious. France’s incursion into Mali last week was a notable short-term success. Other actions have been costly failures. It is important to understand why. Article was [...]
ADDIS ABABA – What does the future hold for the global economy? Will living standards rise worldwide, as today’s poor countries leapfrog technologies to catch up with richer countries? Or will prosperity slip through our fingers as greed and corruption lead us to deplete vital resources and degrade the natural environment on which human well-being [...]
[Download PDF version] Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (AR) have replied to my review of Why Nations Fail that appeared in Foreign Affairs. I thank them for their response, even if their tone was a bit surprising. My initial review of their book was for a general readership, so I stayed away from the journal [...]
Read full interview here Work in Progress 13 September 12 Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, serves as Special Adviser to the U.N. Secretary General on the Millennium Development Goals. As well as writing three New York Times bestselling books, Sachs was described as a “visionary economist, savior of Bolivia, [...]
Today, Ghana’s President John Mahama, UK Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell and I travelled to northern Ghana to announce a new five-year development program for one of the poorest regions of West Africa. Our hope is that through public leadership, community participation, cutting-edge technologies, and private investments, the region will slash poverty, hunger and disease [...]
