Jeffrey D. Sachs's Blog, page 54

Q&A on recent trends in fight against poverty

By Tom Paulson It is probably not an exaggeration to say that Columbia University economist Jeff Sachs has done as much as anyone over the past few decades to draw public, and policy maker, attention to the plight of those who live in extreme poverty around the world. Sachs literally wrote the book on how [...]

Olivia Wilde and Jeffrey Sachs for 1M CHWs

Actress and Global Citizen Festival Host, Olivia Wilde, and Professor Jeffrey Sachs ask Global Citizens to call on Telecommunications and Pharmaceutical companies to bring one million Community Health Workers to Sub-Saharan Africa.

‘Presidential Rhetoric and Leadership: From Kennedy to the Present’

The Harriman Insitute, and The Earth Institute at Columbia University present “Presidential Rhetoric and Leadership: From Kennedy to the Present” Septmeber 12, 2013

Four cheers for the UN

It is worth taking a moment to cheer the United Nations for its outstanding successes this past week. The UN is the global home of diplomacy, the art of maintaining peace and co-operation in a world all too ready to head to war. Sometimes it succeeds; often it is brushed aside, by great and small powers alike. [...]

Honored at the Blouin Creative Leadership Summit

Jeffrey Sachs was honored at the 2013 Blouin Creative Leadership Summit in New York City. Sachs was one of three awardees, together with architect Daniel Libeskind and economist Eric Maskin. The film was presented by the Blouin Foundation at this year’s Creative Leadership Summit. For more info visit here.

The End of Poverty, Soon

Appealing for peace 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy told the Irish Parliament, “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics, whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were and ask, why not?” Today, more and more people [...]

High stakes at the UN on the Sustainable Development Goals

A special event at the UN General Assembly on Sept 25, 2013 marks a bridge between the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the end of 2015 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that presumably will run from 2016 to 2030.1 The special event will address urgent actions to accelerate progress to the MDGs over their remaining [...]

The next frontier

CLIMATE science tells us unequivocally that we need to “decarbonise” much of the energy system by the middle of this century. Yet advanced techniques for extracting fossil fuels—fracking, new deep-ocean drilling and the like—dominate today’s economic and political discussion. These measures may temporarily boost the economy but they would end up crowding out investments in [...]

New United Nations initiative on sustainable development comes to campus

On Thursday and Friday of this week, world leaders in sustainable development will convene at Columbia’s Earth Institute for a key meeting of the new United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. We at Columbia are privileged to host the SDSN, and know that students throughout the University can play a key role in supporting its [...]

Zero new HIV infections among children can be a reality

Since the U.N. Millennium Development Goals were launched in 2000, the world has made tremendous gains in reducing new HIV infections and helping people with HIV to live longer and healthier lives. For a long time, efforts to ensure that a pregnant woman living with HIV would not pass the virus to her child — [...]