I think about what makes aid effective a lot as our students work on projects in Africa. So this is very interesting: Their point wasnt that these are the worlds biggest problems, but that these are the problems for which each dollar spent on aid generates the most benefit. Enabling a sick child to regain her health and contribute to the world economy is in the childs interest—and the worlds. The numbers produced by this exercise are eye-catching. Every dollar spent to alleviate malnutrition can do $59 of good; on malaria, $35; on HIV, $11. As for fashionable goals such as programs intended to limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius in the foreseeable future: just 2 cents of benefit for each dollar spent. Nor is this just about the cold tabulation of dollars and cents. The calculus used by the Copenhagen Consensus also includes such benefits as avoided deaths and sickness and potential environmental benefits, including forestalling climate change. The Copenhagen experts use strips of paper on which are written different priorities along with cost-benefit ratios, and they are invited to move them up and down as they debate the academic evidence. In setting priorities, they also take into account the feasibility of scaling up interventions and the risk of corruption. rationaloptimist/blog/priorities-and-goals-for-aid.aspx
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 00:51:47 +0000
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