Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Despite all this, the economist Jeffrey Sachs (2005) sees no real reason why the
MDGs cannot be realized in full for they are eminently achievable, requiring relatively
modest amounts of aid from developed countries and alterations to trading regulations.
He gives five major reasons for this thinking:
1
The numbers of the world's extreme poor have declined to become a relatively
small proportion of the global population - less than 20 per cent.
2
The MDGs aim to end extreme poverty, not all poverty or to equalize incomes.
3
Low-cost interventions to improve energy generation, water, sanitation, disease
control, etc. can significantly improve living standards and enhance economic
development.
4
The rich parts of the world are now extremely rich and the aim of increasing
overseas aid from developed countries to 0.7 per cent of GNP is fairly small.
'The point is that the Millennium Development Goals can be financed within
the bounds of the official development assistance that the donor countries have
already promised' (Sachs, 2005: 299).
5
Tools and information technologies can be extremely powerful and effective -
potentially good communication and information dissemination, advanced
agronomic practices, 'science based management of soil nutrients', new medicines
biotechnology, etc.
Sachs calls for, and has faith in the idea of, an enlightened globalization of
democracies, of science and technology, market economies and multilateralism with
progressive public policies at national and international levels leading the way. He
believes big transnational corporations have not caused the global crisis, although
their past behaviour is not unblemished. The anti-globalization movement's hostility
to capitalism is consequently not especially well founded. He writes:
Too many protestors do not know that it is possible to combine faith in the
power of trade and markets with understanding of their limitations as well. The
movement is too pessimistic about the possibilities of capitalism with a human
face, in which the remarkable power of trade and investment can be harnessed
while acknowledging and addressing limitations through compensatory collective
actions.
(Sachs, 2005: 357)
Sachs's (2009, 2013) commitment to a mixed economy approach is reinforced in
later work where he consistently argues that private sector innovation, particularly
with regard to breakthrough technologies, such as cell phones, has been an essential
of addressing poverty, healthcare, education, finance and agricultural value chains.
Extreme global poverty, understood today as living on $1.25 per day or less, has
declined markedly from 52 per cent in 1980 to 21 per cent (or 1.3 billion people)
in 2010. Consequently, the public functions of disease control, public education, the
promotion of science and technology, and environmental conservation must align
with the dynamic of private market forces. However, 3 billion people still live on
$2.50 a day or less and 40 per cent of the world's population live in countries where
income and wealth differentials are worsening.
