Thad Miller, Columbia grad student

Thad Miller is studying for an MPA in environmental science and policy at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Last night I attended a lecture by Jeffrey Sachs at Columbia's Low Library. Professor Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute here at Columbia, and among his other duties he is a special advisor to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. His talk focused on the eradication of extreme poverty in our world -- a goal that he views as achievable and managed to convince the audience of as well.

Right now readers probably have the following reaction: ending poverty, that's great, but there's no way we can. That's exactly what I thought, too. So I'll go through some of the main points of Sachs's argument.

First, why have we all of a sudden decided to spend $87 billion on Iraq? Well, I guess we know why. However, why our sudden change of heart regarding foreign aid? In the past, we have thrown some money to Africa and then told them not to come back but to go talk to the International Monetary Fund. Sachs argues that we would need much less then $87 billion to help eradicate poverty in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, where much of the world's population is living in abject poverty. Millions of people are on the edge of a cliff about to fall off, as he puts it. This is occurring while in the rich part of the world there are 400 people (400 individuals!) who together have more than $60 billion. Think about those numbers for a second.

How did the world's poor get into this situation? If we can understand this, then maybe we can come up with a solution. Well, it's not because they're being exploited by multinational corporations and globalization (I know some of my friends will be happy to hear that). Instead, the main reasons are very systematic and amount to a "downward spiral." Let me explain.

Most of these people rely on subsistence farming for their food. So, they farm and cut down trees for firewood. Then they farm on some other lot of land and cut down more trees. There's also some slash-and-burn agriculture in there too. Eventually, they run out of firewood. (In Ethiopia, 97 percent of the forests are gone and desertification has set in.) Now they need something to cook their food with. Without wood, they have to burn the dung of animals (which, as it turns out, produces harmful smoke). Now the soil is degraded and they have nothing to fertilize the fields with. All the while, population is rising. And as it becomes harder to farm and scratch out an existence, they have even more children. Here children are economic assets -- parents need their help to farm, etc.

These poor parts of the world are desperate for economic development. However, Sachs argues, certain basic conditions need to be addressed first: AIDS, malaria, TB, disease in drinking water, respiratory infection, measles, micronutrient deficiencies, and death during childbirth. But in many parts of the world, there are as few as three doctors for every 100,000 people.

These are very concrete, identifiable problems, and Sachs says we could address them and save 8 million people per year if we spend $25 billion per year. That's 1/1000 of the income of the rich world. That's 20,000 lives a day that could be saved by "weapons of mass salvation." Sachs estimates that this would require $8 billion per year from the U.S. -- and these numbers are backed up by analysis. That's two months of Iraq.

At first, the eradication of poverty may seem like a great but wholly unachievable goal. However, I am starting to believe that this may not be the case. This entry is by no means the whole story. I think the important thing to realize is that while we are living in a time of unbounded wealth and prosperity, there are other parts of the world where thousands of people die each day from things that never even enter our minds. These are basic problems with identifiable solutions, and these solutions can put people on a path to sustainable development. Our task is to deliver these solutions.