September 08, 2005 4:42 PM

Telephone Press Briefing for Journalists with Economist Jeffrey Sachs Discussing Administration Efforts to Retreat from the Millennium Development Goals

August 31, 2005

http://www.results.org/website/article.asp?id=1758

With Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the UN Millennium Project and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is internationally renowned for his work with governments and international agencies to promote poverty reduction, disease control, and debt reduction of poor countries. He is author of The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. Moderated by Joanne Carter, Legislative Director, RESULTS.

Joanne Carter: My name is Joanne Carter. I am the legislative director of RESULTS and RESULTS Educational Fund, and we convened this call with economist Jeffrey Sachs today in advance of the World Summit taking place. As you know, in a few weeks in New York City at the UN, world leaders will gather to review progress on the Millennium Development Goals and address other key development and UN reform issues.

To be honest, we had already planned this call to help provide background information on progress to date on the Millennium Development Goals and where we needed to go next, but this call has taken on real urgency given the action by U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who is seeking to massively rewrite the Summit outcome document [deleting references] to a whole range of the Millennium goals, including cutting deaths due to AIDS, TB, and malaria, to eliminating school fees, to universal access to AIDS treatment, and also to financing targets for development.

In just a second I’ll turn it over to Jeff, but just to say last, just last Friday, we convened another conference call for journalists with Archbishop Desmond Tutu from Cape Town announcing that the World Health Organization and African ministers of health had just declared a tuberculosis emergency in Africa. This emergency was declared even as Ambassador Bolton was looking to delete references to having deaths due to AIDS, malaria, and TB from the upcoming Summit. So I’ll just ask Jeff to make some opening comments, Jeff Sachs, and then we will take your questions.

Jeff Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia and, as you all know, has worked extensively as an advisor to countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and as well within national institutions. He is also the author of The End of Poverty and has been very engaged in the whole process of accessing progress and developing plans of action toward achieving the Millennium goals. So Jeff, please go ahead. Thanks.

Jeffrey Sachs: Joanne, thank you very much. Let me just make some brief observations and then turn it over for questions.

The UN Summit, which will take place in a couple of weeks, is not really on the American radar screen yet, but it will be the largest gathering of world leaders in history. There are more than 180 world leaders signed on to come here. They’re taking this very seriously. There has been a tremendous amount of work, for many years in fact, leading up to this meeting and that’s why virtually every leader in the world will be coming for the UN session. It is a make-or-break session in a lot of ways for global poverty. Five years ago the world agreed to the Millennium Development Goals and five years later we know that we are suffering from pandemic diseases, a hunger crisis all over Africa, continuing massive loss of life, eight million people a year dying of their poverty. And the world, and particularly the United States and some other donor countries, have not lived up to the commitments that they made to the world’s poorest people five years ago. And five years ago at the Millennium assembly when these goals were set, they decided to reconvene in five years to look at the progress or lack thereof and make important, mid-course corrections with a view to the ten years that remain until the Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved, since virtually all of the targets are set for the year 2015.

We’re running out of time. Time for us may mean inconvenience, but time for the poor actually means death rather than life, with massive, unchecked suffering. I spent a lot of the last few weeks visiting villages where people have no food now and where children are dying in very large numbers.

Now the world had worked on a document — up until a few days ago — that was winning virtually global consensus and I have met with probably 50 or 60 heads of state in the last few months to discuss this global consensus, which is very widespread. The United States came in a few days ago, essentially to try to gut this document, and with arguments — that change by the day — that are completely without a basis and that are targeting the destruction of the global consensus on the Millennium Development Goals, and on the commitments for development assistance that is required to save the lives of the poorest people on the planet and help them get a foothold on the ladder of development. It is a very surprising set of letters, corrections and explanations in recent days, because they’re all wrong. They’re not grounded in the actual documents and declarations and commitments and processes that all of us know that have been working in this. But the purpose is clear, and that is to try to eliminate the momentum behind the Millennium Development Goals, which is now nearly worldwide, and also to try to break free of U.S. responsibility vis-  -vis these goals, and especially vis-  -vis the financing of these goals.

The two arguments that the United States government has made is first, the United States signed on to the Millennium Declaration but not to the Millennium Development Goals. But if you look at the Millennium Development Goals one by one and the goal eight, which is of global partnership, the seven targets under that goal are indeed straight from the Millennium Declaration, so this is without grounding at all. Second, the United States says that it has not committed to the international target of 0.7% of GNP as official development assistance. What happened in fact, is that in the Millennium Declaration, the world leaders looked forward to the conference on international financing for development, which took place in — and they supposedly mentioned the upcoming meeting — this meeting took place in Monterrey, Mexico in March 2002. President Bush attended that meeting. The United States has endorsed repeatedly, almost in a, in such a peculiar way, given what the meeting said, endorsed that and claimed simultaneously that it does not subscribe to 0.7. But if any of you would take a look at the Monterrey Consensus, so called, and especially at paragraph 42 of the Monterrey Consensus, it says explicitly “we,” meaning the signatories, “urge developed countries that have not done so, to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7% of gross national product as official development assistance to developing countries.” It’s very explicit. That paragraph was negotiated in detail, including with very active U.S. participation. It was part of the deal with the poorest countries, that commitment. The United States signed. It actually references the Monterrey Consensus, and yet paragraph 42 is absolutely explicit and opposite to what the U.S. government is now saying.

I believe that the U.S. government sees the worldwide political momentum behind these goals and it’s doing its best to try to stop it. I think that’s tragic for the world and for the United States and for U.S. security, because when the U.S. says, “We don’t buy into partnership with you” somehow it still expects the world to buy into partnership with the United States. This is a very peculiar view of global life in my opinion, and a serious misunderstanding of that. If we want partnership with the United States for our safety and security, we need to confirm, not deny, global partnership for development, which is the Millennium Development Goal eight that Mr. Bolton has written, to the world that the United States has a particular problem with MDG eight, global partnership for development. Yet every target there has been explicitly adopted in the Millennium Declaration.

Finally, the United States is trying to say that it is living up to its commitments. This is false, and I would also like to say, as I visited more than a dozen impoverished countries in Africa and many in Asia, U.S. diplomats all over the world are wringing their hands in private at the lack of attention that the United States is paying to development, because they know that with that lack of attention there are multiple dangers of instability, havens of terror, disease, conflict, violence, drug trafficking, that are running rampant without a U.S. response. And our diplomats, ambassadors and officials in our embassies know these things, but of course U.S. policy is to say we’re doing everything we can do. Even in the document that was circulated today by the United States government, it says, and let me make sure that I have — this was, yes, put out by the State Department. It takes pride in the fact that the U.S. provided nearly $3.2 billion in official development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa in 2004. I would like to parse that number for just a moment.

$3.2 billion in official development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa is $4 per African. It is about two days of the Pentagon budget. About $1 billion is emergency food aid, U.S. food shipments. Half of that is simply the shipping costs. Another billion and more is technical cooperation, meaning U.S. consultant salaries. The amount that is really being made available to Africa is well under $1 billion per year, much less than a day’s Pentagon spending, and indeed less than $1 per African per year. The continent is hungry; it is suffering of mass deaths from disease, from under-nutrition. It is trapped in extreme poverty, and the United States is trying to tell the American people that we’re doing all that we can, and indeed what we are doing is not only neglecting the commitments but putting America at risk by saying to the rest of the world “indeed, we don’t accept global partnership.” I think this is very serious and I do not believe that it is fruitful, nor do I believe that it can be successful from the point of view of American diplomacy, given how deep and widespread the global commitment is to the Millennium Development Goals, and the fact that there is no confusion in the rest of the world. They know they signed on to them. The confusion just seems to be within the State Department. I’ll stop there and take questions.

Our first question comes from Sebastian Mallaby from the Washington Post. Your line is open.

Sebastian Mallaby: Hi, can you hear me?

Jeffrey Sachs: I can.

Sebastian Mallaby: Great. I’d be curious to hear a bit more about your political reading on what’s behind this Bolton intervention. I mean, after all, he reports to Condi Rice, and Condi Rice is the person who sort of took over development policy away from the Treasury right before the Monterrey meeting and produced the better outcome, better policy of that time than what had been predicted before she waded it in. So she seems to have been relatively un-bad in the past, and she’s now the boss. So is Bolton freelancing or what’s going on?

Jeffrey Sachs: Well, I think there are two grounds for — or two explanations of the opposition, neither of them sound, but two explanations. The first is the United States does not want to be held accountable at all for spending money to help impoverished people. And Bolton was very clear on that in his letter of August 25th, where he said the United States has a particular problem with MDG goal eight, global partnership for development and its various targets and indicators. Specifically, the United States rejects the indicator that calls upon donors to increase their ODA to reach the 0.7% target.

First of all, it’s interesting; there is no MDG indicator that calls on donors to increase their ODA to reach the 0.7% target. What there is is an agreement in Monterrey that calls for that. So there’s a confusion which shows that they actually are just not at all clear about the documents and the process and all. But I think the first thing is the United States, this government, does not want to spend money on impoverished people at the levels that it has committed to and that are needed in order to face the extraordinary crises that are leading to millions of deaths per year and the lack of progress in the poorest parts of the world. So that’s one.

Second, this administration understands that the Millennium Development Goals as a concept; as a point of campaign in countries all over the world; as a mechanism of social mobilization by the poor; have gained tremendous traction and momentum, and want to stop it. And it wants to take away the phrase, it wants to take away the momentum, and it will not succeed in doing that. But I think that these are both explanations. It comes down to money. Of course it comes down to preposterously little money from the point of view of the U.S. economy, but they seem ready to twist American diplomacy out of the shape and the words and the international processes out of shape to try to get out of a commitment that they made three years ago.

Operator: And our next question comes from Richard Roth from CNN. Your line is open.

Richard Roth: Thank you. Just for the record, when the operator asked who’s the next question, the line cuts out, so Jeff, hello.

Jeffrey Sachs: Hi, Richard.

Richard Roth: Hi, can you just repeat the last 15 seconds on who is responsible, is Bolton freelancing. And perhaps ask, do you think at a point should things go this way that it is beholden on the Secretary-General of the UN, who you work closely with and for, to come out of and speak out more and start naming names and saying what’s happening to this program? Or do you feel he is damaged goods because of the Oil for Food report?

Jeffrey Sachs: Well, first, I think that Mr. Bolton is very poorly advised because every day a very confused and incorrect statement or letter or clarification comes from the U.S. mission or from the State Department, so I actually don’t think they know what they’re doing, and I don’t think they understand this process. I don’t think he’s freelancing. I think this is U.S. policy, and I think the U.S. policy is not based on the record. It’s based on the two aims that I suggested, which was to try to get out of commitments that the United States has made and to try to break the momentum that is building on the political and social mobilization to help the poorest people on the planet. And it’s not freelancing, but it is confused because this torrent of letters, explanations, clarifications and so forth are inaccurate one to the next.

In terms of Secretary General, he stated very clearly yesterday that the Millennium Development Goals are crucial to the success of the fight against poverty and to the success of this Summit. And I’m sure that he will continue to speak out. His voice is extraordinarily important in this, and I have no doubt that he is leading and will continue to lead on this.

Operator: And our next question comes from Joe Lauria from the Boston Globe.

Joe Lauria: Hello, Jeffrey, how are you?

Jeffrey Sachs: How are you?

Joe Lauria: OK. I just wanted to press you a bit more about the modus here. You say that the U.S. does not want to spend money on impoverished people and they want to stop this momentum towards eliminating poverty. Why don’t they want to spend money? And why do they want to stop this momentum? Can you tell me that? Is there — it can’t just be to save $1 billion. There’s got to be some other more ideological reason here.

Jeffrey Sachs: Well, I don’t really understand it, why we spend $500 billion on the military this year. We, the United States I mean, spend $500 billion on the military and less than $20 billion on all development assistance. We spend about 5% of GNP on military approaches to foreign policy and 0.16% on peaceful development approaches. I don’t think we get our money’s worth, and I don’t think we get safety and security out of this. So I regard this as a huge mistake. But I think there are ideologues that believe that you shouldn’t give help to, even to poor and dying people, and I say that because I see in the [deletions] that the U.S. is recommending. For example, taking [out] the urgency of the fight against malaria, which will claim up to three million lives this year. I see the profound under-funding of the U.S. role in initiatives to help farmers grow more food, help children to stay alive, help fight malaria, help fight tuberculosis, help fund the Global Fund, and so there’s a repeated pattern here of saying, “What, me? This doesn’t have to do with me. We reject global partnership.” I do not believe this has a sound basis at all, because I think it puts America in danger on many different levels.

Joe Lauria: Could there be an economic reason given that the U.S. has an advanced economy, based in many ways on cheap resources and cheap labor in these countries, and they want to keep those countries down?

Jeffrey Sachs: No, I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s more an irresponsible neglect and a very deep misunderstanding of the realities in these countries, rather than a deliberate policy of promoting poverty. I’m not saying that they’re trying to promote poverty. They are trying to stop, though, the political momentum that is building to do something about it because it comes down to the fact they don’t want to spend money on it. Even though the military spending is 30 times the peaceful development spending, they don’t want to spend money on this. And so they’re trying to wriggle out of commitments that they made, and I don’t think they’ll succeed, but they’re trying as hard as they can.

Operator: And our next question comes from Penelope Purdy from the Denver Post. Your line is open.

Penelope Purdy: Dr. Sachs?

Jeffrey Sachs: Yes.

Penelope Purdy: Given that the American people just witnessed a horrific disaster in their own country and we’re being asked to dig deep and help the people in Louisiana and Mississippi, what message would you give Americans about the simultaneous need to help people outside of our own borders? What would you tell them at this time?

Jeffrey Sachs: I would say to the American people that we need to rally support for the tragedy in New Orleans. This is obviously a national cause. We also need to learn to think ahead. New Orleans was in an environmental risk zone well understood by experts who said that this is a city that could be absolutely flooded by the bursting of the levees in the case of a major hurricane. The Scientific American article in 2001 pointed this out precisely, almost eerily, to what has happened. We need to take seriously environmental risks, public health risks, and the risks of instability that are caused by extreme poverty. We need to learn better to think ahead and to make the linkages of what is going to provide true security for us. And that means helping to fight pandemic diseases. It means helping farmers to grow food abroad before we have starvation abroad. It means helping to address extreme poverty before we have havens of terror that come in failed states. And it means taking seriously the environmental risks of our actions, because we want to stay alive and we want to bequeath to our children a healthy planet. In that regard, I would have preferred not to see the U.S. gut also the environmental section of this declaration — or propose, I mean. And I think that the message of the American people is that we live in a complicated and risky world, and we need to understand these risks better and to think them through and to invest properly in them. And investing $500 billion in the military and one-thirtieth of that in peaceful development, and turning our back on environmental agreements, is not doing the job of providing us with security.

Penelope Purdy: OK.

Operator: Our next question comes from Paul Blustein from the Washington Post. Your line is open.

Paul Blustein: Hi, Jeff. I have two questions for you. First of all, you haven’t made any mention in the introduction, or no one made mention of the — of your position as a UN official or advisor to the Secretary General. I just want to make clear that I understand. Do you still have that position?

Jeffrey Sachs: Yes, I do.

Paul Blustein: You do, OK. And could you just comment briefly on your — any concerns that — about your speaking out against the most powerful member of the body. And, but I also have a question about the Monterrey Consensus, because I was — I covered the Monterrey Consensus. And I want you to explain more clearly what you mean about breaking a commitment. Because if indeed the U.S. did sign up to the 0.7% goal at Monterrey, I’m afraid I missed the lead of the story, because I —

Jeffrey Sachs: Please read paragraph 42, Paul.

Paul Blustein: Well, we all missed it.

Jeffrey Sachs: I know, that’s why I’m asking you to. It says, “We urge developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7% of gross national product as official development assistance to developing countries.”

Paul Blustein: OK. But concrete effort is no —

Jeffrey Sachs: It didn’t say negotiate Paul, this was a negotiated process and we signed up.

Paul Blustein: I understand it was a negotiated process and we certainly, and the U.S. did sign the Monterrey Consensus. That I’m aware of, but making concrete — I just wanted to, I wanted to hear those words again, because I couldn’t remember quite what —

Jeffrey Sachs: Let me repeat them. Paragraph 42: “We urge developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7% of gross national product as official development assistance to developing countries.”

Paul Blustein: But isn’t that — I mean, but isn’t that different from — I mean, the U.S. can say they’re making concrete efforts towards the target without saying that the target is in any sense binding, right? I mean, concrete efforts toward the target is not the same as saying we promise to spend 0.7%. That’s what I’m trying to figure out here. What — why you’re talking about this — a broken — using language quite as strong as you are. I’m not sure I understand why.

Jeffrey Sachs: Because to me the language is absolutely clear. “We urge developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7% of gross national product,” towards the target. And concrete, and what this has been taken to mean in Europe, for example, this year, is to set a timetable to reach 0.7. All of the European Union countries have set an explicit timetable to reach 0.7 by the year 2015.

Paul Blustein: Well, please understand me, I’m not arguing against it.

Jeffrey Sachs: I’m not arguing with you either. I’m explaining that “concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7% of gross national product” means concrete efforts towards the target. And in other countries, they are setting timetables. The United States is even denying the existence of the Millennium Development Goals and its commitment to make concrete efforts towards the target. If Mr. Bolton were saying, “We accept that we commit to making concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7% of gross national product” then we could discuss are those efforts concrete? Are they towards the target of 0.7? But he’s not saying that. He’s not explaining that, nor is the president of the United States.

Paul Blustein: And sorry, and could you come back to my other question about, about any possible sensitivity concerning your position with the UN?

Jeffrey Sachs: My position as special advisor, which is head of the UN Millennium Project, is to try to help identify practical ways to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. We issued about 15 volumes of reports on topics from malaria, to tuberculosis, to AIDS, to hunger, to children in school, to access to safe drinking water, showing that these goals are achievable within the commitments that have been made, and we suggested a number of areas where millions of lives could be saved quickly. For example, in a massively scaled-up effort against malaria, in enabling countries to grow more food, something that is so patently, urgently needed right now, yet we’re not doing it. And what I have found all over the world in the past few years, and including the past few months, where, as I said, I’ve met with dozens of heads of state, there is a strong consensus to move.

The United States is not, the U.S. government is not moving in ways that are needed, are commensurate with the $12 trillion U.S. economy, are commensurate with U.S. security needs, and with U.S. commitments. And that now is compounded by claims in recent days the United States did not sign on to the Millennium Development Goals. Of course, the grounds for those statements change every day, but it has all been compounded by this and by a last-minute attempt to blast apart global consensus. And I think that this is ill-advised and not likely to succeed, because of the fact that the Millennium Development Goals have a strong and growing standing all over the world, and that may be one of the reasons, I would surmise, for this action indeed.

Operator: Our next question comes from Corine Lesnes form Le Monde. Your line is open.

Corine Lesnes: Hi, good afternoon. Actually my question has been addressed, but I may ask another one if you don’t mind. I was wondering about the James Wolfensohn initiative concerning the pull-out of Gaza, you know, putting up some $14 million to preserve the greenhouses. I was wondering if this type of business involvement has any future in your opinion, and could it be more efficient, do you think?

Jeffrey Sachs: Well, I can’t comment on the specifics of the Gaza pull-out. I can say that in general there is a need for private action, together with public action. The original 0.7% of GNP target, indeed which was adopted 35 years ago, though unfulfilled by most countries, came to being because there was a view that 0.3 of 1% of GNP should be private giving and 0.7 of 1% should be official development assistance, thereby making a 1% of GNP transfer from the richest to the poorest countries. Well, neither the public nor the private sector comes close to those targets, so both have big responsibilities. I’m happy to see that a lot of private philanthropists are stepping forward. Bill Gates most remarkably, but many, many others as well, and this is all to be enormously welcomed.

But in the Monterrey Consensus, if you go back to read it, and I really do recommend that you read it, and not just paragraph 42, but that would be a good place to have a close look. It makes clear that there is a particular need for official development assistance, because only official development assistance can provide the kinds of help that are vital for the poorest countries in particular areas. And the Monterrey Consensus is absolutely clear on the need, not just for assistance, but on the need for official development assistance. I have to keep underscoring this, because this is a life-or-death issue for the poorest countries in the world. They know it. That’s why these commitments are made in documents like the Monterrey Consensus, because they are negotiated documents, and why they’re so vital. And private aid is crucial, but does not substitute for the official aid that is absolutely needed.

Corine Lesnes: Thank you.

And our next question comes from Celia Dugger from the New York Times. Your line is open.

Celia Dugger: Hi.

Jeffrey Sachs: Hi, Celia.

Celia Dugger: I guess from reading Bolton’s edits, my sense is that it’s not — what underlies them isn’t just that the U.S. doesn’t want to spend the money, but a kind of deeper skepticism about aid itself and whether it will work, and a desire to reshape the debate so it focuses more on other elements from trade to private investment, to not so much on aid, and particularly on governance in, say, in Africa, and fighting corruption. That seems to me to be the underlying ideological or philosophical argument. I mean, do you — what do you think of that idea?

Jeffrey Sachs: I think that that’s correct. I put that under the category of not wanting to spend more money on these issues. There are, no doubt, many motivations, but I do want to stress that these issues have been debated time and again, and the United States has signed on to the commitments of greatly increased official development assistance. So yes, I believe that the United States is trying to get out of its commitments.

In the Monterrey Consensus, if you read it from beginning to end, it talks about the recognized need of the parties for increased official development assistance. This was debated. It was debated repeatedly. The official development assistance was put into context of other kinds of flows. The whole idea that some countries can live off of market help and market financing and others cannot is a core idea of the Monterrey Consensus. Paragraph 39 says: “Official Development Assistance (ODA) plays an essential role as a complement to other sources of financing for development, especially in those countries with the least capacity to attract private direct investment. . . . ODA is [also a] crucial [instrument] for supporting education, health, public infrastructure development, agriculture and rural development and to enhanced food security. For many countries in Africa, least developed countries, small island developing States and land-locked developing countries, ODA is still the largest source of external financing and is critical to the achievement of the Development Goals.”

“We recognize,” says paragraph 41, “that a substantial increase in ODA and other resources will be required if developing countries are to achieve internationally agreed development goals [and objectives]. To build support [for ODA], we will cooperate further.”

“In this context,” says paragraph 42, “In that context, we urge developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7.[percent].” I have no doubt, Celia —

Celia Dugger: It does seem to me that does leave them some wriggle room, that phrase “make concrete steps.”

Jeffrey Sachs: Yes, OK. There are millions of people dying. You can argue about the wriggle room. I’m telling you, millions of people are dying this year because the United States is not acting, and it is not making the concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7%. And let them explain what their concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7% are before giving them a pass, and before the American people even know that we committed to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7%. Before we try to jettison all of this, let the American people hear once that we committed to make concrete efforts, and that the consequences of not doing so are horrific, because I don’t believe Americans want to be any party to that. I think Americans want to help save lives and help get the most unstable, impoverished societies out of this rut. And they don’t want to, in their name, have these goals dismissed before they can be brought to life, and that’s what’s being attempted right now.

Operator: And our next question comes from Pete Engardio from BusinessWeek Magazine. Your line is open.

Pete Engardio: Hi, Jeff. How are you?

Jeffrey Sachs: Hi, Pete. How are you?

Pete Engardio: Great. First, just one thing I was wondering if there was any way you can put online some links to some of this correspondence with Bolton? I don’t know where to find it.

Jeffrey Sachs: I’m not sure . . .

Pete Engardio: I’m on the State Department website right now and I don’t see that.

Jeffrey Sachs: Yes, I can’t put it online.

Pete Engardio: I don’t know what they’re saying to what you’re — how you’ — whether you’re paraphrasing what they’re saying. Anyway, that’s one thing.

Jeffrey Sachs: And by the way, I’m quoting from — and these documents are circulating. You just have find the site now.

Pete Engardio: Second. I was at Monterrey too, and like Paul, the — they might have signed on to that, but I know in the briefings that I got from State Department and U.S. officials there, actually Larson. I mean, he said that — wait a minute. I’m not sure if that was Larson. Anyway, but the tone of what they were saying was we want to get the attention off of the aid levels in terms of relationship to GDP and more toward — and it’s also that we want to see progress in how aid is actually managed before we commit much larger sums than what we committed in Monterrey, which was supposed to be a big increase. And the — you said, we’ve been challenged. We have to prove to the president and the U.S. that yes, aid works, and you owe us the bucks. The opportunity to make a difference has never been higher. We have a chance to deliver. We have to start running like never before to show that aide really works, and that was the challenge. What have you, what has the development community done to prove that the aid does work so that more money can be justified?

Jeffrey Sachs: First, let me repeat. I think you’re giving a line that is not right.

Pete Engardio: I’m quoting you. I’m quoting (inaudible).

Jeffrey Sachs: No, I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about what happened at Monterrey.

Pete Engardio: Yes, well I don’t — I’m reading, I’m going to have to read you quotes from —

Jeffrey Sachs: Yes, go and read the document we signed.

Pete Engardio: Yes, I’m reading what they told me.

Jeffrey Sachs: Fine. OK, maybe from the beginning there’s an interesting story there between what we committed to and what they’re telling you on the side.

Pete Engardio: Yes.

Jeffrey Sachs: That’s an interesting story. But what they told the world is there for you to read, and for your readers to read, and it’s quite important that they read it. And frankly, I think it’s extraordinarily important that they understand the difference of what they committed to and maybe what they told you, and third, what they’re doing. Because if Mr. Bolton would explain how they’re making concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7%, maybe it would be all be fine. I’d be interested to hear that.

Pete Engardio: OK. So —

Jeffrey Sachs: But then, I think the second thing is to remember that at Monterrey, they pledged $10 billion of increased aid between 2002 and 2005, and they did not achieve more than $100 million or $200 million of that. That was $10 billion in the new Millennium Challenge Corporation. They have not implemented that. That was a U.S. commitment. They were going to do aid the way they said it should be done. They did not make the money available and move.

Pete Engardio: You said you have to prove to the president of the U.S. that aide works. What have you done?

Jeffrey Sachs: Third, what we have shown repeatedly, both in practice and in showing them the direction, are the practical things that can make a life-and-death difference and can make a long-term difference in getting people started climbing the ladder of development when they’re currently trapped in extreme poverty and dying as a result of that. And we have shown repeatedly that anti-malaria bed-nets work, that artemisinin-based combination therapies for malaria work, that —

Pete Engardio: What was that again?

Jeffrey Sachs: Just that first-line anti-malaria drugs work.

Pete Engardio: OK.

Jeffrey Sachs: That replenishing soil nutrients in Africa at low cost could stop the kind of horrific famines that we’re seeing throughout the continent. But instead we’re sending food aid rather than helping farmers grow more food. And there are trials all over Africa at small scale showing how these interventions work. They are scientifically vetted, they’re demonstrated, they’re known to those who look, not in any secret —in other words, widely known. The professional communities of agronomists, of public health specialists, of infrastructure specialists, are saying every day, Pete, how these things work and how low-cost they are. The money has not become available, with the United States being more than half of the financing gap. European countries committed this summer. They took this argument. This is what Gleneagles committed to, in fact, at the G-8 Summit. So all we’re doing is rehashing arguments that are settled. The reason we’re rehashing them is that the United States has reopened them. Read the Gleneagles Summit about commitments to increase development assistance for targeted purposes. Read the Africa Commission report. Look at the specific successes of fighting polio, African river blindness, trachoma, leprosy, malaria, depleted soil nutrients, small-scale water management, safe drinking water. These are proven techniques. They were endorsed at the G-8 Summit and then a week ago, this assault has begun again. So everything I’m quoting are commitments that the United States has long made.

By the way, George Bush at the Evian Summit signed up to the communiqu ©, in 2003 said “We reaffirmed our commitment to address the challenge of global poverty and our support for the Millennium Development Goals.” So this is a last-minute ploy to try to break the momentum and to try to wriggle free of commitments made. Let your readers be the judge of what those commitments mean. Ask the U.S. officials how they are making concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7. Why are you arguing with me? Because these are clear commitments and they’ve been repeated at the G-8 Summits. They were repeated at Gleneagles, and now we’re a couple of weeks to go before the world’s largest gathering of leaders and we have letters saying that the United States is particularly, particularly — has a particular problem with the Millennium Development Goal eight, global partnership for development. That’s an extraordinary thing. If you put the Millennium Development Goals on your screen and go through the seven targets, target 12 through target 18, and compare the Millennium Development Goal targets of partnership with the Millennium Declaration, you will see that they are the same. The United States doesn’t deny that it signed the Millennium Declaration. It doesn’t deny that it signed the Monterrey Consensus, but it denies the words in those documents, apparently.

Operator: And our next question comes from Noelia Sastre from El Universal. Your line is open.

Noelia Sastre: Hello?

Jeffrey Sachs: Hello.

Noelia Sastre: Hi, I wanted to cover the Millennium Goals, and I have two questions, and then a third one. The first one is Do you think the world is ready to achieve these goals? And then, Which of these goals are the most realistic ones? And the last one is Did you expect these changes from Mr. Bolton in this particular moment?

Jeffrey Sachs: Yes. So on the first, is the world ready to achieve them? The world is not on track to achieve them, but it could achieve them. This is a matter of choice, not a matter of fate. The trajectory, in other words the path that we’re on, will not achieve these goals. The result will be untold suffering if we continue on this trajectory compared to what is readily achievable. So, this is the first question. I’m sorry, the second, you said?

Noelia Sastre: Which of these goals are the most realistic?

Jeffrey Sachs: Which of the goals. All of these goals are achievable. It is possible to save the lives of millions of children who will die this year because of malaria. After all, that’s a completely treatable disease, and largely preventable. Children that will die of diarrhea; Children that will die of a respiratory infection that can be treated with an antibiotic. These are utterly achievable goals. Or the hundreds of thousands of mothers dying in childbirth because they are not receiving emergency obstetrical care, very standard emergency obstetrical care. These are achievable goals. I don’t want the rich countries to get a free pass on this when the United States says it’s providing $3.2 billion to Africa. I want the world to understand that that is compared to a $12 trillion economy. So it’s 0.03 of 1%. It’s two days of Pentagon spending. It is far below the commitments that we have made repeatedly, whether specific commitments to fight diseases, save lives, to help impoverished places grow more food, or the commitments we’ve been discussing that were made in Monterrey, Mexico.

Did I expect this last-minute effort? I certainly did not. I find it very surprising how confused it is, how every day there’s a new attempt to explain it, and how contrary it is to the commitments that the president of the United States has repeatedly made at the G-8 Summits, that the United States made at the Millennium Assembly, and the United States made at the Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development.

Noelia Sastre: Thank you.

Jeffrey Sachs: Maybe I could say one more word?

Joanne Carter: Yes, why don’t you please, Jeff. Go ahead.

Jeffrey Sachs: I want to end by saying that I believe that the global consensus for the Millennium Development Goals will hold. I actually believe that the United States will live up to its commitments. I believe that because I think that these commitments are enormously in the U.S. interest and enormously in the spirit of Americans. I do not believe what’s happened in the last few days reflect either the interests of our country or the beliefs of Americans, and I think Americans want to stand up, to not only be counted, but to help lead the fight against extreme poverty, both because they know it’s right and also because they know that it is in their enormous interest as well. And so I am optimistic that what is in the interests of America and in the interests of the world will be reflected in a global consensus and with America’s part in it. I think this is just a confused misstep that will be corrected.

Joanne Carter: Thanks to everyone who’s been on the call. Thanks very much, Jeff. Thanks for this really important, extremely important discussion today, and please let us know if we can provide any additional information. In our office you can reach Kolleen Bouchane at (202) 783-7100 x107 or myself at (202) 320-8269, that’s Joanne Carter. And if we can provide any additional information, we’d be glad to do that, otherwise we will have a transcript of the call posted on our website tomorrow at http://www.results.org. Thanks, everyone, very much. Thanks. Good afternoon.

wb18913

L:\Aid and Conditionality\Sachs MDGs.doc

09/07/2005 2:23:00 PM