Copenhagen Consensus

The participants are all economists, with the focus of the project being a rational prioritization based on economic analysis. In spite of the billions of dollars spent on global challenges, by the United Nations, the governments of wealthy nations, foundations, charities, and non-governmental organizations, the money spent on problems such as malnutrition and climate change is not enough. The World Bank estimates that the UN's Millennium Development Goals would cost per year an additional $40-$70 billion on top of the $57 billion already spent annually as of 2004 [1]; this increased expenditure would have to continue each year until 2015 in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

The emphasis on "rational priorization" is both a recognition that the funds provided for global challenges will remain insufficient, and a belief by the organizers that media attention and the "court of public opinion" results in priorities that are sometimes arbitrary and/or sentimental.

Table of contents

1 Process 2 Experts 3 Challenges 4 See also 5 External links

Process

Experts

• Jagdish Bhagwati
• Robert Fogel (¤)
• Bruno Frey
• Justin Yifu Lin
• Douglass North (¤)
• Thomas Schelling
• Vernon L. Smith (¤)
• Nancy Stokey

• Climate change (William R. Cline)
• Communicable diseases (Anne Mills)
• Conflicts (Paul Collier)
• Education (Lant Pritchett)
• Financial instability (Barry Eichengreen)
• Government and corruption (Susan Rose-Ackerman)
• Malnutrition and hunger (Jere Behrman)
• Population: migration (Phillip L. Martin)
• Sanitation and water (Frank Rijsberman)
• Subsidies and trade barriers (Kym Anderson)

Very Good They assigned the highest priority to implementing certain new measures to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS. They estimated that an investment of $27 billion could avert nearly 30 million new incidents of infection by 2010.

Policies to reduce malnutrition and hunger were chosen as the second priority. Increasing the availability of micronutrients, particularly reducing iron deficiency anemia through dietary supplements, has an exceptionally high ratio of benefits to costs, which were estimated to be $12 billion.

Third on the list was trade liberalization; unlike the top two priorities, lives are not at risk, but the experts agreed that this challenge's modest costs yielded large benefits both for the world as a whole and for developing nations.

The fourth priority is to control and treat malaria; $13 billion produces very good benefits for the cost, particularly if applied toward chemically-treated mosquito netting for beds. [1]

Good The fifth priority is increased spending on research into new agricultural technologies appropriate for developing nations. Three proposals for improving sanitation and water quality for a billion of the world’s poorest followed in priority (ranked 6 to 8: small-scale water technology for livelihoods, community-managed water supply and sanitation, and research on water productivity in food production). Closing this group was the project concerned with government - lowering the cost of starting new business.

Fair Number 10 was migration project on lowering barriers to migration for skilled workers. Eleven and twelefe were malnutrition projects - improving infant and child nutrition and reducing the prevalence of low birth weight. Number 12 was the scaled-up basic health services project for fighting the diseases.

Poor Numbers 14-17 contained migrations project (guest-worker programmes for the unskilled), which was deemed to discourage integration, and climate change projects (optimal carbon tax, the Kyoto protocol and value-at-risk carbon tax), which the panel judget to be least cost-efficient of the judged proposals.

See also

• UN Economic and Social Council
• UN Human Development Index
• Measuring well-being
• Canada Well-Being Measurement Act
• Physical quality-of-life index

• The project's website
• The Economist's home page for the project