Columbia’s fifth State of the Planet conference kicked off Thursday with a keynote speech by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and debates sponsored by the Economist that covered topics such as poverty, climate change, and sustainable development.
The two-day conference, hosted by the Earth Insitute and the magazine, featured speakers from foreign carbon trusts, universities, and government entities. Since its inception in 1999, the conference’s attendance has climbed from 300 to 2000, a hike attributed by professor John Mutter to the leadership of Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs and the support of University President Lee Bollinger.
“Wars, diseases, drugs, animals, refugees—these all spread across boundaries in our crowded world. What this essentially means is that problems can’t be solved within a country,” Sachs said, highlighting the conference’s theme of global collaboration.
Upon reviewing the day’s events, Sachs offered an example from current events: “The fact that a single indexed patient can bring into a country a disease which spirals into an epidemic just goes to show there is no survival without global cooperation, and this puts borders in perspective.”
President Bollinger described Annan as a suitable choice for the conference’s keynote. “As we try to develop expertise to cope with global issues, we need a kind of outlook that is not simply national but more global in scope,” Bollinger said.
Annan’s speech kept with the topic of the first session of the conference, “Eradicating Poverty as the Poor Population Expands.” Exposing the way in which climate change aggravates the challenges of African poverty, Annan called for recognition of climate change in nations already economically and politically strained.
On the subject of green revolutions, the former U.N. official emphasized the importance of developing the agricultural sector to lift countries out of poverty. He said improved farming inputs could augment standards of African agricultural productivity and promote much-needed business in place of “charity” in the region. “The $50 billion dollar annual cost of ‘greening’ the world can be seen as a huge cost, or a huge opportunity,” he said.
It is “a matter of agency” that developed countries assist poorer ones in coping with the consequences of climate change, Annan said. “It is necessary for the information that technology makes available to those in possession of it to be used to support and protect—information must be put at the disposal of those in need.”
Another U.N. affiliate, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro also delivered a session keynote.
Sachs reiterated Annan’s points on the detriment of international divisions in his closing speech. “We may draw lines in sand and call them ‘national boundaries’, but these are ultimately essentially figments of our imagination,” he said.
The question of the United States’ ability to solve the climate change problem emerged in a debate Thursday evening. Polls were conducted before and after the participants presented and argued their cases, and in both cases, the majority of the audience refuted the proposition, although the relative proportion in favor of it increased over the course of the debate.
The conference, which concludes today, underlines the need for faith in international unity. ”While there are reasons for great concerns with regard to climate change, there are also equally many reasons for great hope,” Annan said.
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