Jeffrey D. Sachs: The Age of Sustainable Development

Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist (..) known as one of the world’s leading experts on economic development and the fight against poverty. (..) he serves as special adviser to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 global goals adopted at a UN summit meeting in September 2015.

I had the pleasure of hearing a him give a talk today, which was very inspiring. I will try to cite here (please apologize for any mistakes, I was taking only very sketchy notes) his 6 key points for the Transformation to a Sustainable World Economy:

  1. Decarbonize completely by 2050. „ExxonMobil has to go out of bussiness.“
  2. We need a global land use strategy for biodiversity conservation, food security, fresh water sustainability. „Beef production is one of the biggest problem. No more beef consumption.“
  3. Increased investments in Health, Education, Training, Skills. „Universal Access to Health and Education. The EU should spend all its development aid on education for girls in African countries.“
  4. Redistribution of Income from Capital to Labour, from Skilled to Unskilled. „To avoid the backlash in our societies. To ensure social inclusion.“
  5. Directed technological change in public-private partnerships instead of pure bussiness innovation. „Focus on Research and Science.“
  6. Transnational cooperation in trade, financing, infrastructure, rivershed management, development financing, migration. „Europe cannot decarbonize with 28 agencies that do not agree. And Europe is already the best example of international cooperation we know. And still, Europe does not manage to get over German lignite.“

Get one of his books from your local shop (if you still have a local book shop), e.g.,

Age of Sustainable Development

ISBN: 0231173156
Columbia University Press

Check out some slides of his talks (unfortunately I only found some slightly older ones):

The Age of Sustainable Development: Talk as PDF-Slides

or try Youtube.