Scientific critic aims at new target
Eric Pfanner IHT
Friday, March 5, 2004
A professional skeptic takes on development
LONDON Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish economist who outraged many environmentalists three years ago with a book that argued that their claims were overstated and alarmist, turning himself into the darling of many conservatives, is thinking even more globally these days.
In his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Lomborg countered many mainstream environmentalists by saying there was little empirical evidence that the state of the world was deteriorating. Though praised by some scientists as courageous and candid, the book infuriated others who said it applied unsound methods; some critics even compared him to a Holocaust denier.
In his new venture he seeks to apply statistical scrutiny to a broader array of global policy issues, from slowing the spread of communicable diseases to resolving international conflicts, and from smoothing out financial instability to dealing with population migration. He is taking on what amounts to the better part of the global development agenda.
At a news conference Friday in London, he is to detail plans for an initiative to set priorities for the development debate, based on weighing their costs and benefits. Nine prominent economists, including the Nobel laureates Robert Fogel and James Heckman of the University of Chicago, Douglas North of Washington University in St. Louis and Vernon Smith of George Mason University, will gather in Copenhagen to rank up to 50 specific proposals that were suggested by a separate panel.
"The basic idea is that there are lots and lots of problems in the world," Lomborg said in an interview in London. "We'd like to fix them all, but we can't, so here are the ones we should look at first." He argues that many efforts to alleviate the challenges facing poor countries fail because governments, aid groups, nongovernmental organizations and others interested lack such priorities. Though the money available from taxpayers and donors in wealthy countries is limited, billions of dollars in development aid are simply wasted on problems that cannot be solved easily, he says. Development groups would prefer that the overall aid pie be increased rather than pitting one project against another.
Cost-benefit analysis sounds hollow to these groups, which say that looking at the complex issues facing poor countries through a strictly financial prism ignores important political and human variables that can sometimes be more powerful than money.
"There's a tremendous danger in letting something like this be driven only by what's considered politically and economically feasible at the moment," said Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, director of the United Nations Development Program's human development report.
For instance, the struggle to provide drugs for people with HIV or AIDS in Africa might have looked hopelessly expensive only two or three years ago, when the big pharmaceutical companies resisted calls for them to lower prices or make generic versions of treatments available; as a result, money for AIDS initiatives might have dropped far down any cost-benefit ranking. But pressure from activists and political leaders led to a significant lowering of prices and wider availability of generic drugs, and the cost-benefit balance may have shifted. Under the UNDP's Millennium Development Goals, economic factors are just one of eight yardsticks.
Lomborg said that in an effort to address changing political and economic realities like these, he hopes the exercise will be repeated every four years.
"There are so many conferences where people gather and say, 'Oh, it's all important,'" he said. "This will focus attention on where we should spend the money."
International Herald Tribune |
