By
Jeffrey D. Sachs
The 21st century will
overturn many of our basic assumptions about economic life.
The 20th century saw the end of European dominance of global
politics and economics. The 21st century will see the end
of American dominance too, as new powers, including China,
India
and Brazil, continue to grow and make their voices heard
on the world stage. Yet the century's changes will be even
deeper
than a rebalancing of economics and geopolitics. The challenges
of sustainable development—protecting the environment,
stabilizing the world's population, narrowing the gaps of
rich and poor and ending extreme poverty—will render
passé the
very idea of competing nation-states that scramble for markets,
power and resources.
The defining challenge of the 21st century will be to face
the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded
planet. We have reached the beginning of the century with 6.6
billion people living in an interconnected global economy producing
an astounding $60 trillion of output each year. Human beings
fill every ecological niche on the planet, from the icy tundra
to the tropical rain forests to the deserts. In some locations,
societies have outstripped the carrying capacity of the land,
resulting in chronic hunger, environmental degradation and
a large-scale exodus of desperate populations. We are, in short,
in one another's faces as never before, crowded into an interconnected
society of global trade, migration, ideas and, yes, risk of
pandemic diseases, terrorism, refugee movements and conflict.
We also face a momentous choice. Continue on our current course,
and the world is likely to experience growing conflicts between
haves and have-nots, intensifying environmental catastrophes
and downturns in living standards caused by interlocking crises
of energy, water, food and violent conflict. Yet for a small
annual investment of world income, undertaken cooperatively
across the world, our generation can harness new technologies
for clean energy, reliable food supplies, disease control and
the end of extreme poverty.
That's
why the idea that has the greatest potential to change the
world is simply this: by overcoming cynicism, ending our
misguided view of the world as an enduring struggle of "us" vs. "them" and
instead seeking global solutions, we actually have the power
to save the world for all, today and in the future. Whether
we end up fighting one another or whether we work together
to confront common threats—our fate, our common wealth,
is in our hands.
To make the right choice, we must understand four earth-changing
trends unprecedented in human history:
First, the spread of modern economic growth means that the
world on average is rapidly getting richer in terms of incomes
per person. Moreover, the gap in average income per person
between the rich world, centered in the North Atlantic (that
is, Europe and the U.S.), and much of the developing world,
especially Asia, is narrowing fast. With well over half the
world's population, fast-growing Asia will also become the
center of gravity of the world economy.
Second, the world's population will continue to rise, thereby
amplifying the overall growth of the global economy. Not only
are we each producing more output on average, but there will
be many more of us by midcentury. The scale of the world's
economic production by midcentury is therefore likely to be
several times that of today.
Third, our bulging population and voracious use of the earth's
resources are leading to unprecedented multiple environmental
crises. Never before has the magnitude of human economic activity
been large enough to change fundamental natural processes at
the global scale, including the climate itself. Humanity has
also filled the world's ecological niches; there is no place
to run.
Fourth, while many of the poor are making progress, many of
the very poorest are stuck at the bottom. Nearly 10 million
children die each year because their families, communities
and nations are too poor to sustain them. The instability of
impoverished and water-stressed countries has ignited a swath
of violence across the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and
Central Asia. What we call violent fundamentalism should be
seen for what it really is: poverty, hunger, water scarcity
and despair.
These great challenges have not entirely escaped worldwide
notice. In the past 20 years, world leaders on occasion have
groped for ways to cope with them. In fact, they've achieved
some important successes, and with considerable public support,
which can provide a foothold for a sustainable future. We have
adopted a global treaty for climate change; we have pledged
to protect biodiversity; we are committed globally to fighting
the encroachment of deserts in today's conflict-ridden dry
lands of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. And the world has
adopted the Millennium Development Goals to cut extreme poverty,
hunger and disease by 2015. The challenge is to turn those
fragile and unfulfilled global commitments into real solutions.
Global Goals
When it comes to problem-solving on a global scale, we remain
weighed down by cynicism, defeatism and outdated institutions.
A world of untrammeled market forces and competing nation-states
offers no automatic solutions to these challenges. The key
will lie in developing new sustainable technologies and ensuring
that they rapidly reach all those who need them. If the trillions
of dollars that the U.S. is squandering in Iraq was instead
being invested in clean energy, disease control and new,
ecologically sound ways of growing food, we wouldn't be facing
the cusp of a rapidly weakening dollar, soaring food and
energy prices and the threats of much worse to come.
Here are
four bold but achievable goals for the U.S. and the rest
of the world:
— Sustainable systems of energy, land
and resource use that avert the most dangerous trends of climate
change, species extinction and destruction of ecosystems
— Stabilization of the world population at 8 billion or below
by 2050, through a voluntary reduction of fertility rates,
rather than the current trajectory of more than 9 billion by
midcentury
— The end of extreme poverty by 2025, and improved economic security
within the rich countries as well
— A new approach to global problem-solving based on cooperation
among nations and the dynamism and creativity of the nongovernmental
sector.
What will it take to attain these goals? The greatest successes
in global cooperation combine four elements: a clear objective,
an effective technology, a clear implementation strategy and
a source of financing.
Smallpox eradication, for example, started with a clear objective
(the eradication of the disease) and an effective vaccine.
It built on a clear implementation strategy, in which smallpox
vaccines were given for free on a mass basis, and local outbreaks
were quickly isolated through careful surveillance and response.
The effort was funded on a sustained basis by several donor
governments, including the U.S.'s. Similarly, the Green Revolution
in Asia, which lifted China and India out of chronic hunger,
built on a clear objective (raising food yields), an effective
technology (a combination of high-yield seeds, fertilizer and
irrigation), a clear implementation strategy (mass distribution
of the input package at below market cost) and large-scale
funding (from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and the
U.S. government, in addition to local financing).
Other examples
abound of measurable progress against once daunting challenges:
the rapid, if incomplete, expansion of
primary schooling and literacy around the world; the systematic
control of many killer diseases, including guinea worm disease,
leprosy and African river blindness; and the voluntary decline
of high fertility rates through access to family planning in
almost all parts of the world, with sub-Saharan Africa the
last remaining region awaiting a "demographic transition."
We live in a time of cynicism about achieving global public
goals, yet whenever we have made the effort to mobilize our
powerful technologies, we have succeeded. Measles deaths in
Africa are down more than 90% in the past seven years, at a
time when many people mistakenly believe that nothing can be
accomplished in large parts of Africa. Polio is nearly eradicated.
Food production is soaring in Ethiopia and Malawi because modern
farming techniques have been brought to peasant communities.
Children have filled the schools wherever school meal programs
are introduced and school fees are dropped. There is no shortage
of examples of how we can attain our goals, only a shortage
of will and stamina so far to carry these successes to scale,
and to other vital arenas.
Our generation's great environmental challenges can be met
with similar resolve and technological focus. Climate change
threatens our food supplies, coastlines, health and the survival
of countless species. Yet powerful technological solutions
are within reach. Coal-fired power plants can capture and store
the carbon dioxide that they produce, rather than releasing
the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Plug-in hybrid automobiles, nearly ready for the market, have
the potential to quadruple our miles per gallon. Solar energy,
concentrated by rapidly improving systems of parabolic mirrors,
could be deployed in Africa's great desert and dry-land regions
to provide electricity for Africa and Southern Europe at a
cost competitive with fossil fuels. New land-management strategies,
backed by modest financial incentives, could end most of today's
tropical deforestation, which now contributes around one-fifth
of all global carbon emissions as well as causing a massive
loss of biodiversity. And all these steps to sustainable energy,
according to today's best economic and engineering evidence,
can be implemented for less than 1% of annual world income.
Beyond Markets
If the solutions are so attainable, why haven't we reached
them already? Part of the reason is that we are facing our
problems in the wrong way. We are so convinced that the problems
are intractable—or deathly expensive to solve—that
paralysis reigns. Even when we are aware of what needs to
be done, we are often trapped by a free-market ideology,
the same kind of no-regulation policy that has led us into
our current financial crisis.
On the
three great challenges—environmental sustainability,
a stable world population and the end of extreme poverty—market
forces will not be enough. The world's producers and consumers
currently regard the air as a free dumping ground for carbon
dioxide and other climate-changing greenhouse gases. We need
to correct market forces—for example, by taxing carbon
emissions that are offset by tax reductions elsewhere—in
order to create the right incentives. We need to expand greatly
our public investments in early-stage clean technologies, such
as improved solar-thermal power and carbon capture and sequestration,
just as the National Institutes of Health uses public funding
to support medical breakthroughs.
Similarly,
population stabilization in poor countries requires a determined
public investment—in girls' education, health
services and child survival—to promote a rapid and voluntary
reduction in birth rates. And we should first help the poorest
of the poor to get above survival levels of income before we
can expect market forces to lift them further, to market-driven
prosperity.
None of this is expensive, but none of it can happen by itself.
Indeed, it is the low cost of success that is perhaps the most
remarkable feature of all. Consider malaria, the great African
killer disease. Three hundred million antimalaria bed nets
are needed to protect impoverished Africans from the disease.
Each net costs $5 and lasts five years, for a total cost of
$1.5 billion over five years. Yet that is less than one day's
Pentagon spending! Add in the costs of medicines and ongoing
delivery services, and we find that comprehensive malaria control
would cost less than two days' Pentagon spending each year.
Sustainable development will not break the bank. The key is,
rather, to make the right choices in our public investments
and to find ways to harness, and channel, market forces.
The Power of One
Great social transformations—the end of slavery, the
women's and civil rights movements, the end of colonial rule,
the birth of environmentalism—all began with public awareness
and engagement. Our political leaders followed rather than
led. It was scientists, engineers, church-goers and young people
who truly led the way. If as citizens we vote for war, then
war it will be. If instead we support a global commitment to
sustainable development, then our leaders will follow, and
we will find a way to peace.
Each of
us has a role to play and a chance for leadership. First,
study the problems—in school, in reading, on the
Web. Second, when possible, travel. There is no substitute
for seeing extreme poverty, or deforestation, or the destructive
forces of nature in New Orleans, to understand our generation's
real challenges. There is no substitute for meeting and engaging
with people across cultures, religions and regions to realize
that we are all in this together. Third, get your business,
community, church or student group active in some aspect of
sustainable development. Americans are promoting the control
of malaria, the spread of solar power, the end of polio and
the reversal of treatable blindness, to name just a few of
today's inspiring examples of private leadership. Finally,
demand that our politicians honor our nation's global promises
and commitments on climate change and the fight against hunger
and poverty. If the public leads, politicians will surely follow.
Our generation's
greatest challenges—in environment,
demography, poverty and global politics—are also our
most exciting opportunity. Ours is the generation that can
end extreme poverty, turn the tide against climate change and
head off a massive, thoughtless and irreversible extinction
of other species. Ours is the generation that can, and must,
solve the unresolved conundrum of combining economic well-being
with environmental sustainability. We will need science, technology
and professionalism, but most of all we will need to subdue
our fears and cynicism. John F.Kennedy reminded us that peace
will come by recognizing our common wealth. "If we can
not end now our differences, at least we can help make the
world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most
basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.
We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's
future. And we are all mortal."
Jeffrey
D. Sachs is author of The End of Poverty,
directs the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Petroleumworld
does not necessarily share these views.
