A $50 billion question

05 September 2006

In his latest book, controversial Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg asks how we can best spend aid money.  Lomborg previously came to prominence when he argued in his book The Skeptical Environmentalist that money spent on combatting global warming could be better spent on economic development to lift poor parts of the world out of poverty.  Michael Standaert assesses his new publication, How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place. While reading Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg’s latest book, How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, one phrase kept running through my head: better left pdf. This short edition — just over 170 pages — is simply an abridged version of a previous book edited by Lomborg called Global Crises, Global Solutions, which chronicled the ideas that came out of the Copenhagen Consensus of 2004. And it comes off that way – as a rehash. Not that its content isn’t important, but most of the data is a few years old now. What is new in this version is that Lomborg asks the $50 billion question: How do we prioritize where we spend aid money in fighting global challenges? The problems he lists are extensive: climate change, disease, civil war and arms proliferation, access to education, financial instability, governance and corruption, malnutrition and hunger, migration, sanitation and clean water access, subsidies and trade barriers. What should we do first? Lomborg and a pantheon of economists discuss 10 of the most pressing problems and then rank them according to “solvability.” They counsel: Fight HIV/AIDS, control malaria, liberalize global trade, and provide micronutrients to the undernourished — in that order. Read the article in full at In The Fray.

 

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