Sachs on Sustainable Development

Project Syndicate features an article written by Jeffrey D. Sachs on the increasing risk of resource scarcity across the world. Sachs points out that energy and food prices have seen a sharp rise in recent years, driven primarily by strong economic and demographic growth in various countries - in particular China and India. The phenomena of price increases in the domain of energy and food are inter-related; for example, rising costs in food production have led many producers to switch to fuel-production instead, lured by the possibility of greater profit margins. Sachs points out that the problem of resource scarcity arises not from a simple increase in demand (which could signal healthy trends pertaining to purchasing power in developing economies), but also from the exacerbating problem of climate change. Many food supplies, such as wheat crops, have taken a hard hit from meteorological anomalies, seeing dramatic decreases in production from year to year. The way to cope with these problems, concludes Sachs, is through measures to increase productivity and balance the burden of climate change so that it does not disproportionately affect the world’s poorest.