Global co-operation is the only way to solve the world's problems, economist Jeffrey Sachs tells Vivek Menezes.
Jeffrey Sachs is as close to a rock star as you can get while still being a development economist. This is a man whose latest book thanks Angelina Jolie, Bono, Madonna and John Legend as well as heads of state including Manmohan Singh (who awarded him the Padma Bhushan last year). Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and best-selling author (The End of Poverty, 2005), he was advisor to Bolivia, Poland and Russia, and mastermind of controversial “shock therapy” solutions to runaway inflation.
Sach’s latest book, Common Wealth – Economics for a Crowded Planet, is perfectly timed. It arrives in a season of grave international anxiety, with prices of essential commodities spiralling past all previous records, with no prospect of respite from the gloom.
“To find our way peacefully through these difficulties, we will have to learn, on a global scale, the same core lessons that successful societies have gradually and grudgingly learned within their own national borders,” Sachs concludes. He discussed potential solutions for the planet’s woes in an email interview with Time Out.
In 1972, The Club of Rome famously predicted that “the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime in the next 100 years”. What’s your timeline?
I think that growth can continue, if we define growth properly as a true improvement in the material conditions of life. This is possible because there can be – and will be – technological breakthroughs that improve life while conserving – scarce natural resources such as air, land, water, fossil fuels and biodiversity.
US President George Bush says that India and China are creating greater demand, and pushing up global prices. Do you agree?
Yes, the pressures on global commodities result from the overall growth of the world economy. There are 6.7 billion people, with an average income of around $10,000. A large part of global growth in recent years has come from the emerging markets, like China, India, and Brazil. Still, it is wrong to “blame” these countries. The rich world still uses much more resources per person, and emits much more greenhouse gases per person, than in the emerging markets.
From Common Wealth, most of your prescriptions for global problems seem to require a global consensus. Can this be achieved in the starkly divided global landscape of 2008?
With the right public understanding and the right global leadership, the needed consensus can be found. After all, our common interests are much stronger than our divisions. President John F Kennedy famously put it this way: “So, let us not be blind to our differences – but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot 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.”
Climate change might yield winners (ie Russia) as well as many losers. Is it realistic to expect the winners to relinquish advantages in favour of the survival of the losers?
There will be few if any winners in the business-as-usual scenario. Food shortages, political instability, disease transmission, storms, coastal flooding, and more, would affect all of us. Some will get hurt more than others, however, and special international help will be needed for those groups. All countries will need to participate in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, climate-change adaptation, and help for the hardest hit and the poorest.
India needs decades of sustained economic growth to raise hundreds of millions of Indian citizens from extreme poverty. What is your prognosis?
India can make it. By educating and empowering its people and by using science and technology, India can solve its problems. Since India faces major environmental stresses, among the greatest in the world, India needs to be a global leader in climate-change mitigation and adaptation, and India needs to promote not just “development,” but “sustainable development,” with all due attention to water, land, biodiversity, climate, and other fragile components of the natural environment.
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, Allen Lane, Rs 695.
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