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The pain caused by the global food crisis has led
man people to belatedly realize that we have
prioritized growing crops to feed cars instead of
people. That is only a small part of the real
problem.
This crisis demonstrates what happens when we focus
doggedly on one specific, and inefficient, solution
to one particular global challenge. A reduction in
carbon emissions has become an end in itself. The
fortune spent on this exercise could achieve an
astounding amount of good in areas that we hear a
lot less about.
Research for the Copenhagen Consensus, in which
Nobel laureate economists analyze new research about
the costs and benefits of different solutions to
world problems, shows that just 60 million dollars
spent on providing Vitamin A capsules and
therapeutic Zinc supplements for under-two-year-olds
would reach 80pc of the infants in Sub-Saharan
Africa and South Asia, with annual economic benefits
(from lower mortality and improved health) of more
than one billion dollars. That means doing 17
dollars worth of good for each dollar spent.
Spending one billion dollars on tuberculosis would
avert an astonishing one million deaths, with annual
benefits adding up to 30 billion dollars. This gives
30 dollars back on the dollar.
Heart disease represents more than a quarter of the
death toll in poor countries. Developed nations
treat acute heart attacks with inexpensive drugs.
Spending 200 million dollars getting these cheap
drugs to poor countries would avert 300,000 deaths
in a year. A dollar spent on heart disease in a
developing nation will achieve 25 dollars worth of
good.
Contrast that to Operation Enduring Freedom, which
Copenhagen Consensus research found in the two years
after 2001 returned nine cents for each dollar
spent. Or with the 90 cents Copenhagen Consensus
research shows is returned for every one dollar
spent on carbon mitigation policies.
Focusing first on costs and benefits means that we
can reconsider the merits of policies that have gone
out of fashion.
The unpopular war in Iraq has undermined rich
nations’ belief in the success of military
intervention as a way of reducing conflict. But
Copenhagen Consensus research reveals that a
peacekeeping force is even more effective than aid
in reducing the likelihood that a conflict-prone
nation will relapse into violence.
Four new civil wars are expected to break out in the
next decade in low-income nations. Compared with no
deployment, spending 850 million dollars on a
peacekeeping initiative reduces the 10-year risk of
conflict re-emerging to seven per cent from around
38pc, according to Copenhagen Consensus research by
Oxford University’s Paul Collier.
Because of war’s horrendous and lasting costs, each
percentage point of risk reduction is worth around
2.5 billion dollars to the world. Thus, spending 850
million dollars each year to reduce the risk of
conflict by a massive 30 percentage points means a
10-year gain of 75 billion dollars compared to the
overall cost of 8.5 billion dollars, or nine dollars
back on the dollar.
In other areas, too, sound economic analysis
suggests solutions that we may at first find
unpalatable.
Poor water or sanitation affects more than two
billion people and will claim millions of lives this
year. One targeted solution would be to build large,
multipurpose dams in Africa.
Building new dams may not be politically correct,
but there are massive differences between the U.S.
and Europe - where there are sound environmental
arguments to halt the construction of large dams and
even to decommission some - and countries like
Ethiopia, which have no water storage facilities,
great variability in rainfall, and where dams could
be built with relatively few environmental side
effects.
A
single reservoir located in the scarcely inhabited
Blue Nile gorge in Ethiopia would cost a
breathtaking 3.3 billion dollars. But it would
produce large amounts of desperately needed power
for Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt, combat the regional
water shortage in times of drought, and expand
irrigation. All these benefits would be at least
two-and-a-half times as high as the costs.
In each of these areas - and in the areas of air
pollution, education and trade barriers - the
world’s scarce resources could be used to achieve
massive amounts of benefits.
This week, some of the world’s top economists,
including five Nobel laureates, will consider new
research outlining the costs and benefits of nearly
50 solutions to world problems - from building dams
in Africa to providing micronutrient supplements to
combating climate change. On May 30, the Copenhagen
Consensus panel will produce a prioritized list
showing the best and worst investments the world
could make to tackle major challenges.
The research and the list will encourage greater
transparency and a more informed debate.
Acknowledging that some investments should not be
our top priority is not the same as saying that the
challenges do not exist. It simply means working out
how to do the most good with our limited resources.
It will send a signal, too, to research communities
about areas that need more study.
The global food crisis has sadly underlined the
danger of continuing on our current path of fixating
on poor solutions to high-profile problems instead
of focusing on the best investments we could make to
help the planet. |
