A crowd of students and faculty members shuffled into Miller Theater Tuesday evening for the third annual Sachs student lecture, led by Columbia’s celebrity economist, on the challenges confronting the poverty relief plan known as the Millennium Villages Project.
Jeffrey Sachs, professor and current director of the Earth Institute, drew on his experience in the United Nations Millennium Project and as special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He helped to develop the plan after a commission from Annan concluded that there had been “no clear road map” established in working to alleviate extreme poverty. But at Tuesday’s lecture, Sachs lamented the lack of interest from big governments, saying that he has been “shouting into a wind of indifference.”
“An open-ended search for solutions,” the project focuses on creating cost-effective solutions to assist rural African communities in achieving outlined “Millennium Development Goals,” including improvements in agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure.
Sachs stressed the need for more outside intervention. A major difficulty, he said, is the “poverty trap,” a phenomenon brought on by extended periods of extremely low productivity. Villagers often cannot escape the “trap” without aid.
But with five years of “investment, investment, investment, and community involvement with a holistic approach,” a base of economic productivity can form, he said. The following five years will be devoted to institutionalizing the project, and involving villages in business on a larger commercial scale.
Sach’s concerns come at a time when the project is entering what he calls a “critical, big-money phase.”
“Highly cost-effective solutions are abound,” Sachs said, “but the poorest of the poor can’t afford them, and the richest of the rich are often blind to them.”
Even so, the effects of the initial investments are already evident.
In the 12 existing Millennium Villages, locals have seen a rapid increase in agricultural productivity. Relatively low-cost bed nets have effectively stalled the spread of malaria. And with the advent of these successes, Sachs said they are arriving at the second phase of the project.
Sachs predicted that with more extensive “official aid” from economically successful nations, such as current sponsors Japan, Korea, and Norway, the project will be able to reach a level of self-sustainability.
Despite his optimism, he seemed to find the Bush administration guilty for not taking an active role.
“It’s unbelievable how nasty our government has been to the poorest of the poor,” Sachs said.
When appealing for support from larger organizations, the message was not lost on an audience largely made up of students of sustainable development, environmental sciences, public health, and economics.
Members of Engineers Without Borders—a group directly involved in the Earth Institute project—attended the lecture, along with students from Amnesty International, the sustainable development journal Consilience, and various environmental and social justice associations.
In preaching to a supportive audience, Sachs expressed appreciation for a number of donors.
“I don’t know if it’s going to work,” he said, quoting donor George Soros, in reference to the plan. “But it deserves to be tried,”