Common Wealth: Economics for a crowded planet

When Columbia Professor Jeffrey Sachs publishes a book, it usually has a pronounced effect on the world's agenda. Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, his latest offering, appeared in bookstores this week. Initial critical response indicates it will be driving many agendas in 2008.

"Grim but surprisingly optimistic" seems to be the consensus view of the book. Conceptually, it draws from the same well as Sachs's earlier works: the application of large sums (3% of global GDP in this current case) could eliminate many of the world's problems; this is actually inexpensive compared to the alternative; humanity has no alternative if it is to have a future.

In Common Wealth, Sachs updates the case, and offers specific solutions, consistent with the school of "clinical economics" he has been seeking to develop.

In brief, the world suffers from four challenges:

1. "Sustainable systems of energy, land and resources use that avert the most dangerous trends of climate change, species extinction, and destruction of ecosystems";
2. "Stabilization of the world's population at eight billion or below by 2050 through a voluntary reduction of fertility rates";
3. "The end of extreme poverty by 2025 and improved economic security within the rich countries as well";
4. "A new approach to global problem solving based on co-operation among nations and the dynamism and creativity of the nongovernmental sector."

He calls for a new global paradigm of cooperation: "inclusive, cooperative, environmentally aware, and science basedbecause we are running up against the realities of a crowded planet. The alternative is a worldwide economic collapse of unprecedented severity. Prosperity will have to be sustained through more cooperative processes, relying as much on public policy as on market forces to spread technology, address the needs of the poor, and to husband threatened resources of water, air, energy, land, and biodiversity.

"The