Jeffery Sachs' bumpy road of 20 years to a world without poverty

Djisman S. Simanjuntak, Jakarta

In a relatively short period of evolution, Eve's descendants have accomplished opuses of lasting beauty. Some 10,000 years ago they invented cities in deep valleys, cold highlands, barren deserts and rocky shores, leaving footprints of great civilizations, even in places as remote as Easter Island.

The cities serve as focal points of immeasurable wealth that stem from human toil and creativity.

Museums and galleries preserve rare masterpieces of art and literature. Bored of a flattened world, humans are exploring extra-terrestrial travels. Human ingenuity seems to know no boundary.

Ironically, humans have a less impressive record when it comes to putting an end to suffering. Despite immense spending on defense and security, humans continue to live with violence, including terrorism.

Binding a partnership for poverty eradication between humans has proved very difficult so far. Humans are infinitely less parsimonious when it comes to spending for weapons rather than spending for least privileged of humans. Raw numbers are not as powerful as pictures and dirges in transmitting sorrow. Nonetheless, they serve as a basis for understanding.

Persistent, extreme poverty is humiliating for the world's leaders and great minds. Extreme poverty is an abomination. It is easily exploitable for evil purposes such as interethnic and inter-religious violence, which can escalate rapidly into violence of global proportions. More importantly, humans are related to one another through cultural ties. Even genetically, every human is related to one another. They share the same gene pool.

President Bush and Prime Minister Koizumi are genetically related to all poverty-stricken humans. New archeological discoveries and genome mapping tell us in an increasingly convincing manner that humans have strong reasons to care for one another in spite of political citizenship, religions and other differences.

Repeated commitments among governments of the world, members of the UN system, the World Bank family and countless philanthropic organizations to fight poverty are the logical consequences of common ancestry and heritage. One such commitment is the Millennium Development Goals 2015.

Attainment of the MDGs does not mean the end of poverty, which according to Jeffrey Sachs, is feasible only within a longer time period, namely 2025. A plethora of questions arises as regards the attainment of the MDGs by 2015 and the end of poverty by 2025. Knowing full well of what humans have proved capable of accomplishing, Jeffrey Sachs clearly considers the goals attainable, though they look Herculean against the background of past experiences.

Thanks to personal engagement as a policy consultant to many governments around the globe, Jeffrey Sachs shows the way to attaining the goals. Scholars and politicians are now able to produce a good portrait of the human condition thanks to repeated field studies and advances (in technology). The way economic prosperity spreads across cities, countries, regions and continents are now understood better than it was in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

What explains failures to participate in the growth process has also been investigated meticulously. Scholars are now able to tell politicians what not to do to avoid the entrapment of poverty. Lessons can also be learned from cases of promising early harvests that are too numerous to be belittled as exceptions.

Investments that are most promising in terms of placing extremely impoverished countries or parts thereof into the orbit of development have been identified, namely accumulation of human, business, infrastructure, natural, institutional and knowledge capital.

Needless to say, merely knowing these things cannot move mountains. Change implies motion. Lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty and 1.6 billion in 20 years at a time when most political and business leaders are preoccupied with narrowly defined goals is an enormous challenge. To get people out of the cycle of poverty requires external help, so a global compact is imperative. The necessary ingredients include increases in Official Development Assistance (ODA) on top of what has been committed of the magnitude, which is less massive than the magic 0.7 percent of GDP.

Jeffrey Sachs measures the additional ODA in a number of ways such as putting it as a fraction of the richest 1 percent of US citizens, or as a fraction of US spending in Iraq to show that the needed addition of ODA is anything but gigantic.

Homosapiens perhaps, have not yet uncovered the greatest part of evolutionary trajectory. The species can expect to live centuries longer, if we avoid fatal stupidities such as man-made disasters.

The probability of the current species of human surviving longer will increase, if the floor of living standard is uplifted. Such upward movement of the entire race implies a higher fitness in the landscape of the gene-memetic co-evolution. Past generations have missed the opportunity to take up the challenge. Some political and business leaders may prefer to postpone the strategic actions indefinitely. Some of the leaders may in fact find no merit in investing in the eradication of extreme poverty, citing fallacious arguments.

Jeffrey Sachs has stumbled on some of these leaders in his long career as a policy advisor to governments faced with the necessity of turning it around. Forming a coalition of a sufficient mass is undoubtedly arduous work. In a similar way that past generations have added layer after layer to the stock of civilization, the current generation will also have to accomplish something unique. Ending poverty is both unique and opportune.

Consolidating a political system based on the consent of the governed, creating an economic system that equitably distributes the benefits of science and technology and division of labor to all parts of the world, cultivating international cooperation as the source of perpetual peace and promotion of science and technology that are grounded on human rationality constitute the spectrum of contributions that are expected from this generation. Assuming consistent effort, the current generation has a unique opportunity to leaving a lasting footprint as champions of extreme poverty eradication.

Would-be champions among Indonesians will have a chance to exchange views with Jeffrey Sachs on the occasion of The 2005 Panglaykim Memorial Lecture.

The writer is the executive director of the Prasetya Mulia Business School.