Full Citation:   Sachs, Jeffrey.  Common Wealth:  Economics for a Crowded Planet.  New York.  Penguin Books, 2008.

Jeffrey Sachs is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.  He has served as an adviser on economic development for governments and organizations around the world, including the United Nations.  Common Wealth identifies global demographic and economic trends, the problems they will create, and corresponding solutions.

According to Sachs, a medium range projection estimates that worldwide population will grow from 6.6 billion people to 9.2 billion by mid-century.  All of this growth will occur in the developing or poor nations.  An economic convergence, or narrowing of the income gap, is occurring between most of the developing world and the wealthiest countries.  However, this is not true of the poorest billion people, concentrated largely in sub-Saharan Africa, who remain stuck in a poverty trap.  People living in poverty have more children.  Both population growth and increased rates of consumption in much of the developing world are placing unsustainable pressures on natural resources and the global environment.  We are on a collision course with limitations imposed by the natural environment.  Sachs argues that these problems should be addressed on three fronts: developing sustainable technologies, decreasing population growth, and eliminating poverty.  In order to achieve worldwide, sustainable economic development, we need to clearly understand how global problems are interconnected.  We also need far greater levels of global cooperation.

Sustainable Technologies

There is no doubt that we are changing global climate, primarily through fossil fuel use which increases concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.  Carbon concentrations in the atmosphere are currently rising by 2 ppm (parts per million) annually; many scientists maintain that a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels to 560 ppm would create a temperature rise of 2 degrees centigrade, causing widespread devastation.  When economic development and population increases are taken into account, if we stay our current course, this level of CO2 concentration will likely occur by mid-century.

Climate change is only one of many ecological problems that we face. Economic development and population growth are placing unsustainable pressures on multiple environmental fronts simultaneously. We are running out of land to clear.  Populations are pushing into arid regions where farming and grazing create erosion and desertification.  Cleared rain forest is not only a major cause of increased atmospheric CO2, but also a source of widespread loss of species.  Up to 60% of accessible river runoff is already taken for human use.  Glacial melting caused by climate change will bring increased flooding followed by loss of flow to major river basins, particularly in Asia.  Fresh water aquifers are being depleted more rapidly than they can be naturally replenished.  Lack of water is closely associated with poverty and a clear source of conflict as farmers and pastoralists, ethnic groups, or nationalities compete for an increasingly scarce and vital resource.  Natural nitrogen fixation processes are too slow to grow enough food crops to feed the expanding global population, and synthetic fertilizers are having an adverse impact on our waterways.  Increasing CO2 concentrations will create more acidic ocean water, stunting or killing corals and shellfish.

China is the most striking example of how much-needed economic growth in developing nations is having a profound impact on the environment.  Sometime during the second quarter of the 21st century, Asia will become the "center of gravity" for the worldwide economy, producing over half of global income.  China is currently adding the equivalent of two 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants per week.  Widespread degradation of land in China is causing rapid soil erosion, enormous dust storms, and desertification.  A growing taste for meat in the Chinese diet could create additional large-scale deforestation in the Amazon as land is cleared to meet the growing demand for soybeans to make animal feed.  Demand for wood for Chinese construction may create more rapid rates of deforestation in Southeast Asia and Africa, and massive importation of oil into China drives prices up, increasing demand for bio-fuels such as corn ethanol, which takes land out of food production.  If China reaches half of U.S. automobile density (cars per 1000 people) by 2050, even with a doubling of gas mileage, Chinese oil use from automobiles would equal that in the U.S. today.  The economy of this rapidly developing giant is doubling every 7-10 years.

Given the fact that population will continue to increase over the next forty years, and given the desirable goal of raising living standards in poor and developing nations, heading off an ecological crisis will require large-scale technological innovations and changes in behavior.  In order to continue expanding economic productivity, while managing carbon emissions and depletion of resources, Sachs recommends that we adopt the following objectives and measures for accomplishing them.

Population Control

Given that much of the expected growth in population will occur in the poorest nations, the medium range projection of 9.2 billion people by 2050 is too high.  In order to achieve global sustainable economic development, we must limit growth to 8 billion people by mid-century.  

In order to bring population growth down, we must lift the poorest billion people out of the poverty trap.  Population growth in poor and developing countries far outpaces growth in developed nations.  From 1950 to 2000, rich nations grew by 500 million people or 50%, whereas developing nations grew by 4.5 billion or 200%.  Although many find it counter-intuitive, bringing the child mortality rate down is necessary in order to reduce population growth.  When adults in poor nations learn that their children are likely to survive into adulthood, they have fewer children.  In order to reduce child mortality, the poverty rate must be reduced and health care services provided.  Other measures are also important, including empowerment and education of women, female participation in the labor force, availability of contraceptives, and family planning programs.  When women have legal protection against violence, property rights, and protection against discrimination in the workplace, they are more likely to enter the labor market and have more power to determine whether and when they will have children.  Moreover, husbands are more likely to agree to have fewer children when their wives are working outside the home and earning money.

Technological improvements in agriculture allow and encourage families to send children to school because that is where they will learn how to produce more for the family.

Ending Poverty

Although many previously impoverished nations are now developing economically, the poorest nations, concentrated largely in Africa, remain caught in a poverty trap.  In order to climb out of poverty, people and nations must have the resources to save enough to invest in technologies, such as fertilizers, high-yield seeds, or improved water management methods, which increase productivity.  Developing countries must be able to export goods in order to import technologies from abroad and then adapt these technologies to local conditions. Governments must have enough money to invest in infrastructure, such as roads needed to transport goods, a reliable power grid, communications, and a safe water supply.  Public investment in health care and education must be sufficient to bring the child mortality rate down in order to reduce the fertility rate and population growth.  These measures make it possible to increase productivity, which in turn, creates more capital for investment and initiates a cycle of development.  When there is not enough wealth in a nation to save and invest in the means to improve productivity, it remains stuck within a poverty trap.

Sachs makes a compelling case that, in light of the global future we face, it is in the interest of the rich nations to spend the resources necessary to lift other nations out of the poverty trap.  People in poverty have more children and place greater pressure on natural resources.  From one generation to the next, the amount of farmland per person declines as population rises.  People push into increasingly marginal lands, grazing or farming on arid soil, which then erodes and creates desertification; clearing more forest; pushing water resources beyond sustainable limits.  As populations become increasingly desperate, conflict over limited resources becomes inevitable.  Failed nations with growing populations of young men who have no prospects for economic success are fertile grounds for exploitation by political or religious leaders interested in exporting violence.  In a globalized world of increasingly scarce resources, poverty has worldwide ecological and security repercussions.

Intelligently targeted aid that is sustained over several years can successfully move communities from the poverty trap onto the trajectory of self-sustaining economic development.  Johan Rockstrom found that pilot agricultural interventions in Africa, using fertilizer and improved agronomic methods, boosted small farm yields by as much as ten-fold.  Relatively inexpensive interventions, such as dispensing mosquito nets and spraying, have had a dramatic impact in reducing malaria.

Under Sachs’ direction, the U.N. has launched a Millennium Village Project that provides quick-impact targeted investments designed to lift African villages out of poverty.  A pilot program including 400,000 people in 78 villages has shown a remarkable degree of success.  Funding to the tune of $120 per villager for five years has been provided by a combination of external donors, the host government, the community, and NGO’s.  Five goals are set for each village: improved crop yields through high-yield seeds and fertilizer, malaria control, improved clinical services, healthy water sources, and increased school attendance with a midday feeding program.  The result has been food production yields from 4 to 15 times as great as previously attained, quick progress in the fight against malaria, and dramatic increases in school attendance and test scores.  The program will be expanded to the extent that donor resources allow.   

Sachs believes that rich nations have made serious mistakes in their spending priorities.  This is particularly true of the U.S., which has cut funding for foreign aid while investing enormous sums in military solutions to national security threats.  To the extent that opposition to aid for the poor is motivated by an ideological faith in the superiority of free-market economies, it is misinformed.  The social welfare states of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden which spend more on social services such as care for children and the elderly, than either the U.S. or other European countries, enjoy a much lower poverty rate and unemployment rate.  They also enjoy the highest per capita GNP, invest more in research and development, and have a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Our current view of national security continues to be driven by obsolete post-WWII habits in which we believe that the greatest threats to our security come from national adversaries with large military capabilities.  Today, nuclear proliferation, conflict and instability within failed states, and environmental degradation are more likely to pose serious threats to our national security than military confrontation from adversarial nation-states.  Governments that are unable to pull their people out of desperation borne of lack of resources become unstable.  They are more prone to conflict and more likely to serve as safe havens for terrorist groups.  Young men from these countries are more likely to find terrorism an attractive option.  Regional conflicts, such as those in Rwanda and Darfur, have had as much to do with scarce resources as ethnic or tribal divisions.  Yet, in 2007, the U.S. spent an estimated $572 billion on the military and only $14 billion on development and humanitarian aid.  Governments need to understand the important national security role that foreign aid - as a tool to jump start economic development - has to play.

With global cooperation and a more reasonable assessment of the threats that we will face in the future, we can begin to rationally reallocate resources in a manner that will successfully address those threats.  Global efforts to solve environmental problems, population, and poverty can be successful if they combine clear objectives, effective and scalable technologies, a clear implementation strategy, and a source of financing.  The argument that foreign aid is a waste of money is simply not consistent with the evidence.  There have been many successes, such as the creation of a Green Revolution in India, which dramatically increased crop yields to feed a population that was outstripping its resources, or the eradication of polio, or the expansion of family planning and contraceptive use.  In these successful cases, the above four components have been in place.  Cases of failures have occurred when one of these four components is missing.

How to Pay for This

Private funding sources, such as the Gates Foundation, are well-suited for research and pilot programs that find and test innovative solutions.  But they are not sufficient to bring solutions to global scale on multiple fronts, which is necessary to enable countries to make the transition to self-sustaining development.  Privately funded solutions must be followed by government backed global financing because only such resources are large enough to bring effective solutions to scale.  Corporate responsibility, NGO’s, and research universities all have an important role to play in addressing our most urgent global problems.  However, funding from governments cooperating globally is essential to success.  Sachs argues that all of the measures he is calling for would cost 2 to 3 percent of annual global income, or about half of U.S. annual military spending.  For this price, he believes we can meet the following goals:  climate change mitigation and adaptation, conservation of biodiversity, combating desertification, stabilizing population, scientific research for sustainable development, and assistance to help the poorest countries escape the poverty trap.