“The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time” (Jeffrey Sachs).
Broadly speaking, I think Sachs makes a convincing case about the feasibility of ending extreme poverty, given sufficient political will. Things like last nights Live 8 concert may help to motivate this.
Sachs is very good on the specific issue of malaria. We’ve just had a rather ill-tempered debate (I was a bit ill-tempered myself) over who said what about DDT and malaria five years ago. Regardless of views about specific technology choices, the big problem is inadequate funding. It would be nice to think that we could all get behind calls for a big increase in funding, including this one from George Bush (only a promise at this stage, but still a good sign).
I plan a full scale review of Sachs, as soon as I get a round tuit.
John Quiggin 
Clive Hamilton reviewed the book in the weekend Fairfax press. He didn’t like it.
>Regardless of views about specific technology choices, the big problem is inadequate funding. It would be nice to think that we could all get behind calls for a big increase in funding, including this one from George Bush (only a promise at this stage, but still a good sign).
I nearly made a post to that effect a day or two back.
A couple of points:
1. Up until the 1930’s, malaria was common in large parts of Europe and the United states. The US was successful in eliminating malaria from the Tennessee Valley in the 1930’s BEFORE DDT came into widespread use.
As I noted in the DDT thread, countries such as India and Indonesia have also radically reduced the effects of malaria.
Public health (which in this context means measures to prevent mosquitoes breeding near homes as much as anything) is at least as important as chemical control measures.
2. While it would be nice to be able to put the argument over the DDT ban behind us and unite in praising Bush’s initiative it may not be that simple.
There are undoubtedly many on the right who think that the solution to the malaria problem is simple – extend the use of DDT. It’s quite possible that Republican politicians in the US, influenced by such claims will seek to add wording to the legislation to appropriate funding for Bush’s plan to make funding dependant upon increased use of DDT. In areas where DDT resistance is common this would actually be counter-productive. In other areas it may take resources away from more effective measures.
I thought we reached a reasonable bipartisan stance on DDT.
As to the effectiveness of aid, as some people have been saying for decades, it can literally do more harm than good unless it is delivered to persons or projects, or it is provided with tight strings attached to nations that have institutional structures that are capable of accountability.
Key references for learning from past mistakes can be found in the work of Peter Bauer (links from my site) and books on Africa and South America by Stanislav Andreski.
Rafe – I agree 100% about aid.
As I pointed out here a week or two back, Cellnet has probably done more for Africans than all aid combined.
That’s becasue its mobile phones effectively were the first phone service ever in much of the continent and becasue they helped create a new generation of entrepeneurs renting phones and selling phone cards.
Rafe, you have posted false claims about DDT and refused to correct them. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination reaching a bipartisan stance.
I just went and read Clive’s little outburst.
He’s got a point of course, but we don’t get a word about actually helping out a little. All the effort goes into a bit of factional/ideological war. That’s pretty poorly judged in my opinion.
JQ —
I’ve not yet read Sachs’ book, but have read reviews of it and read & heard several interviews with him. Having lived in Africa for 6 years, I am naturally suspicious of single remedies for an entire continent’s problems (who would argue, for example, that one economic policy would work for both Britain and Poland?), and suspicious indeed of this particular Professor Fixit: Having first worked over Latin America and then Eastern Europe & the Russian Federation, he’s now noticed Africa.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050620/dcm053.html?.v=11
“Whenever the U.S. military has been deployed to an area with significant malaria transmission during the past 150 years, malaria has been responsible for more casualties than hostile fire. Malaria vaccine development is a major humanitarian and military objective.”
The US military – Duh!