Closing Remarks on Day One
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute at Columbia University; Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, Columbia University; Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

Jeffrey Sachs: Again wow, what a great talk, Peter Singer, thank you so much.

I found many of those slides quite remarkable. First, just a word for those who were confused who didn't think we were giving 800 million dollars to the Congo. We weren't. That was a write-off of debt that had not been paid in twenty years, so it actually was zero cash for the Congo, which shows that those numbers are already inflated relative to the meager sums that they are. Second, Peter, your friend in Australia who gave the money to the village in Tigray Province, Ethiopia was the first person who taught me economic geography twenty years ago, so I was happy to see David Morowitz there. And then third, I was really impressed at your picture of all those chickens attending a conference and being so dutiful in their participation. And I feel that all of you have also sat in here with remarkable attention and dutiful regard for all of these wonderful presentations.

We're halfway through this deliberation, and I think we learned a lot today. I know that I learned a tremendous amount from every one of the speakers, and frankly I hear a lot of talk about these issues but for me every speaker brought something new to the table today, and I think that that's quite a wonderful good fortune for me, but also for all of us.

We heard a big paradox, and I think Peter Singer made it very clear at the end of his talk. The paradox is that there's plenty of evidence that the children are drowning in the water, and there's plenty of evidence that there's a lot that could be done about it, and there's also plenty of evidence that we're not doing what could be done. There’s even evidence that we’d like to do what amounts to ten times more than what we’re doing, even though we think we’re already doing too much. So there really is a conundrum here that I think requires some deeper reflection.

It probably isn't simply the vicissitudes of politics and the immediacy of the current administration's preoccupations. This lack of regard for the poor, or even for the sustainability issue, has been a bipartisan or even a nonpartisan neglect for quite a long time. The United States has been at the bottom of the league in share of gross national product directed towards official development assistance for thirty years, and that number has declined pretty significantly over decades in both Democratic and Republican administrations, including a long slide during the 1990s. I wouldn't add too much to the aid the President increased because it is overwhelmingly war-related and hard to see as a major change of direction right now.

That's what we heard on the panel before Peter [Singer's speech], and I wrote down “failure of leadership,” “lack of political will,” “double standards.” Peter repeated “failure of leadership, not fair, not equitable,” and the question is, is there a way to somehow bring this combination of insights together in a constructive manner? That means can we somehow find a way forward when we see the problems more and more clearly, when we see lots of examples of solutions, when we can do a lot of the arithmetic, whether it's the moral arithmetic that we just heard, or whether it's a budgetary calculation of what it would take to achieve a particular objective. I'd like us to ponder as we go into tomorrow's discussion whether there can be different models of politics, I would say of collective action, that don't necessarily have to go through our capitals anymore. I can't tell because I fluctuate hour by hour over the weeks and months about whether that's just a dodge and throwing my hand up, or whether it's onto something real, whether there may be ways to accomplish big goals without having to fix a political process that really isn't easy to fix.

What I have in mind of course is it may be possible that in our networked and connected world-- a world of more social engagement, literacy, capacity distributed all around the planet more than ever before-- there may be ways to have huge, consequential, and desirable social change that doesn't rely on the traditional formulas. I've been persuaded in my own mind that the end of poverty, for example, probably is best analogized to the end of slavery or the end of colonial rule or to the civil rights movement, more than to a technical change. All of those broad movements ultimately involved some political legislative change, but they all were deeply grounded in a mass social movement, grounded in values, ethics and some economics as well. Probably the figure that hovers over us most on all of this is Gandhi, and he didn't have too much sway through capitals, but he was able to change the world through mass action, even without the internet. His legacy was absolutely direct to the civil rights movement, to the anti-apartheid movement, and direct to the anti-colonial movement in all parts of the world.

And so I do ask myself whether it's possible to think about the issues of sustainable development in a different kind of politics. We have huge advantages now in lowered transactions costs, in a world of literate and mobilized populations. This is what the United States has not learned at the political level: there is no unmobilized population in the world, there is no place that will accept a US occupation, for example. And so we're in a different kind of political world than what this administration believed because the leaders of this country are living off of illusions that are decades old and didn't even work decades ago.

So my question is for engaged businesses, like British Petroleum, for non-governmental organizations in all parts of the world, for universities engaged with scientists who are better networked than ever before. How far can we get in a new kind of politics around sustainable development? What strikes me in working on the Millennium Development Goals for the last four years as the Secretary-General's advisor, the political part that has been of fundamental importance, is that governments did agree on some global standards. Of course they agreed hoping against hope that what they agreed on would be forgotten the next day. And I've regarded it as my job not to let them forget day to day, and they find it extremely annoying to have their words quoted back to them. But I think it is of great value, to quote words President Bush signed onto, for instance a statement “that we urge all developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts towards the international target of 0.7% of gross national product as official development assistance.” If he hadn't signed onto it it wouldn't have so much value to quote it back to him. God, they hate when I quote it back to them. The journalists say no, we never signed onto that. And you show them and they say, oh my God, yeah, I guess we did. But there haven't been any speeches about it from the White House for - actually forever.

So getting the global goals is relatively easy, because even the most cynical of our politicians, and that's pushing far, will sign onto bright sounding goals. And we did also sign onto the goal that we would as a country take actions to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate. That is the standard on climate change that the US agreed to. Remember, while we didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol we did sign the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. In fact, President Bush 41 is the signatory to that. So we're already on the line and on the record.

The one thing that I found with the Millennium Development Goals-- in addition to the wonderful knowledge of the scientists that you met today and many of their colleagues around the world who have such bright and clear answers about the kinds of things that can be done-- is that global goals are tremendously important. Holding ourselves to account for them is the question, and whether it has to be through Washington or whether we can find other ways to do it is important.

Forbes magazine came out with its billionaires issue last week-- it's great reading. You can discover whether you have a billionaire living next door who can maybe contribute. There are now 790 billionaires plus or minus a few in the world, with two and half trillion dollars among them. So I guess they would also fall into Peter Singer's category of being able to do something, or Thomas Aquinas' category, that they might have a super abundance and be able to help, to make a contribution.

The thought that I want to leave us with this evening is a thought that's on my mind day after day, and that's whether we, not through Washington but through our own actions, through our own networks and our agreements with each other and our improvisatory approaches to these issues, can stick with the goals that we have. Because I think the shared goals are crucial, they help to align us in a powerful way, but the question is whether we can actually all agree to find effective means to take real action. Manhattan is about the most amazing network I've ever seen, so just this island's capacity to do things in that regard is phenomenal. But the power in this room to effect change is huge, and I'm not letting you get away easy. Peter Singer told you you have ethical responsibilities. I think we have practical possibilities. That's what I want to say at the close of the first half of the meeting. I'd like us to come back tomorrow with ideas of practical approaches that we can take to help the world get back on a course that we want.

Tomorrow we again have a really remarkable group of people, so I do hope that you can come back. We'll be talking about market forces and using markets with the corrective instruments to achieve approaches to sustainability. We'll be talking about changing public understanding and behavior patterns. We'll be talking about the role of the non-governmental sector, and we'll be responding to all the questions that have been raised and submitted to us in a quite remarkable panel tomorrow evening. So I think we have a great day ahead. I hope you agree with me that we had a great day today, because I think it was a remarkable session. We'll see you tomorrow.