Bjørn Lomborg on the best ways to fight extreme poverty

Mackenzie Coke
editor at Chartwell Speakers

Adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, Bjørn Lomborg, writes for Project Syndicate about how we can help fight extreme poverty.

Lomborg cites South Korea’s significant per capita income growth since 1950 as an example of what we should try and emulate in order to help the world’s poorest countries. Many of the United Nations’ proposed 169 development targets for the next 15 years, which are concerned with poverty reduction. However, not all targets are equally good.

Lomborg explains in detail a few of the proposals within the UN development, such as, full employment for all, cash transfers, broadband rollout, freer migration, and lower trade barriers. He believes the single development target that would have the greatest impact on extreme poverty would be the completion of the Doha trade round, which would lower trade barriers between countries.

In order to help the extremely impoverished population of this world, Lomborg states that we must “focus on the targets that promise the biggest impact on the world’s poorest. In fact, our research shows that there are 19 phenomenal targets that – like freer trade – should be prioritized above all others.”

“The final decision about which targets will become global policy will affect the flow of trillion of dollars over the next 15 years.”

Click here to read the full article.

 

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