“There is an ideological consideration behind this (policy)”, Sachs (2009) criticizes his opponent in one interview with the CBC TV station. As an economist-celebrity, running with Bono and Angelina Jolie, Sachs has been campaigning alleviation of extreme poverty movement for many years. Not only trough his position as Ban Ki-Moon’s (United Nations-Secretary General) special advisor, his great achievement on academic career gives him authority to speak out about poverty alleviation and also health aid policy. His thought on MDG’s targets which ambitiously trying to decrease a half of poverty in 2015, giving hope among people in poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the rest of the world. This paper will argue that Sachs’s stance has strong argument and practical basic, but lack of detail in many areas.
Sachs’ position on economic thinking is very special, since he has an United States citizenship, has many experiences as problem solver in many countries from Bolivia, Poland, Russia, China to India and especially as a retired IMF’s economist (from 2002 to 2006). Although, Sachs is living and growing in a capitalist country and ever works on many prestigious international financial institutions, his opponents named him likely a social activist, because in many occasions Sachs critiques The US administration because their lack of attention to the poor countries.
To begin with, Sachs (2005) argued that The United States have to increase their international aid to the poorest countries in the near future, as it has been promised by Washington. Sachs’ arguments on hunger and poverty elimination for the poorest countries, of course does not based on religious teaching such as Christianity, Islam or else, but based on the fact that The United States has been spending too much money on their war in many regions rather than on their international aid development. Reducing spending on war for international aid development and finally for safer and better future as Sachs’ proposed is made sense at any level of intellectual thinking.
In one of his interview, Sachs (2009) insisted that the US’s spending on one day Pentagon’s war is more than all spending efforts have been decided by policy maker to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. It is interesting that he contrasting the lack of The US international aid with US military spending on war, something that will underline the importance relation Sachs trying to connect between aid and US’s future security.
He also arguing about how “cheap” is the effort for example to prevent malaria pandemic in Africa, by giving free bed net for the poor that have been reduce 90% of illness that is in longer period will increase productivity and drive better economic condition of many countries. These arguments sound rational since many countries have been trapped on poverty and unhealthy life condition. In this hopeless condition, the international development aid is very needed by the society to help and improve their condition (Sachs, 2005, p. 85).
In many of his intellectual articles, Sachs insisted that his country in 2003 have been spent for international aid development only less than 0.15% of their GNI, far away from its commitment in the MDG’s and the number that The US public believing (Sachs, 2005, p. 80). With more detail explanation, Sachs (2005, p. 81) argued that most of it has been spent for politically important countries such as Iraq and Pakistan to support the “war on terror policy”, but not for the poorest countries.
Sachs’ explanation using data numbers basically giving new understanding of how the rich country like The US wasting their money for unnecessary business, for example war on terror. Sachs’ new information convinced the reader about the importance of “investing” money in international development aid that politically will alleviate The US bad image as a “neo-colonialist” country.
Sachs (2005, p. 90) addresses that in many levels the future of US security is depending on the welfare of the rest countries, since many security threats and illegal immigrants are coming from the failed and poor countries and regions such as Somalia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sri Lanka, and The Middle East. Sachs (2005, p.85) urged The United States to increase by around two times their international aid in the near future as moral obligation as a rich country.
Sachs’ opinion on “doubling US’ international aid development” is not surprisingly invites criticism from many economists, especially in the North America. The list starts from William Easterly, Dambisa Moyo, Amir Attaran to Naomi Klein (Wikipedia, 2010). At any frankly level they critique Sachs as acting a “Santa Clause like” who charitably presenting “Christmas gift” for many poor people around the world from the “blank check” of The US government’s money.
They argued that The US have spent more than 500 billion dollars to Africa having only been waste money since there are not good governance in those countries, which it was rebutted by Sachs as inaccurate stereotypes (Sachs, 2005, p. 83). In other occasion, Easterly (2006 in Postrel 2006, p.12) criticize Sachs as does not considering economic paradigm in giving international aid, by giving some bad result evidence of “bed net program” in Zambia contrasting from a good result in Malawi. Implementing semi-market paradigm in international aid development in some countries is more successful, for instance like it happened in Tanzania (Molenaers, 2010). Also, share funding from the local population as part of international aid development will increase self ownership of aid recipient and increase the success of the program.
On a more politely sound, Hughes (2006) proposed that trade mechanism is better than aid mechanism to reduce the poverty in the world. International aid in longer term will make many countries depended on it. In his article, Hughes (2006, p. 118) stated that China and India as underdeveloped Asian countries in the 1980’s have been relatively successful in development and finally reducing their poverty, achieving their previous high economic level trough production and trading. By almost average above one digit (10%) yearly in economic increase, China has been alleviated most of their extreme poor citizen in just three decades. Overall, as Hughes (2006, p. 118) stated, there are almost 500 million people in Asia get their “middle income” standard of living and also another two billion improving their condition by rapid economic development, not international aid. On the other language, China and India almost successfully escaped from poverty trap by foreign direct investment and free market rather than by international aid.
The next question, is the same economic-mantra will be successfully implemented in the rest of the poor world, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa countries? Of course not, because as Easterly (2007) argued, “There is no single set of policy that can be guaranteed to ignite sustained growth”. Every region (country) has specific social and economic characteristic and Sachs (2005) argument is relevant because he insisted in many articles that international aid development should be given to the poorest of the poor countries, which was trapped in poverty and hopeless condition. Giving bed net, fertilizer, laptops for children and clean water only some of examples of smart project to solve the local problems.
Sachs argued international aid is the spearhead of the effort to alleviate the poverty, especially in the poorest of the poor countries which do not have sufficient money, infrastructure, and capital (Sachs, 2005, p.85). In addition, international aid development also important for countries which struck by huge disaster. Giving hope to the poorest countries is the core of Sachs opinion. For his stance, Sachs has many “follower” in the intellectual “battlefield” such as Nouriel Roubini and Simon Maxwell. Moreover, Sachs believes that dead hunger or disaster as problem solver for world’s demographic excess is morally unaccepted, hence the demographic excess problem should be solved in naturally way such as by family planning program.
Finally, in my own opinion Sachs is quite successful addressing his opinion as an international issue. However, in the real world poverty alleviation should be solved by every component subject. There must be established the synergetic cooperation between government and non-government organization to alleviate the poverty problems. In the case of Bangladesh, such effort like the Grameen Bank model by Muhammad Yunus have been successfully alleviate many families from their extreme poverty by giving soft loan to drive their small scale business. The interesting one, majority subjects of this program are women that in many countries is the worse victims of the poverty trap. Special approach of program can be differently designed from one country to another.
Furthermore, the faster development can be achieved if private sector is including in the effort to alleviate the poverty with the “market language”, like in the previous case of China and India. The two countries have been successfully breaking their technological constrain to alleviate their poverty using production and trading as a tool. With the low content technology and labor intensive, China’s product has been flooding the world market. China and India have been transformed as the new economic “giant” power in the last decade.
One thing that Sachs (2005) forgot to consider is the necessary for recipient aid to avoid dependency to the donor countries in the future. His spirit as social activist-celebrity together with Bono and Angelina Jolie may make him forget for thinking about dependency of recipient aid countries to donor counties. Sustainability development in the future should be achieved by recipient aid countries by their own effort, as poverty not only the matter of “the lack of money on hand”, but also related to structural and inferiority complex problems on a society (Quibria, 1996).
*Jeffrey D Sachs 2005, “The Development challenge”, Foreign Affairs, Volume 84 No. 2, March/April, pp. 78-90.
References:
Easterly, William, 2007, “Was development assistance a mistake?”, AEA Papers and Proceedings, Vol. 97 No.2, pp. 328-332.
Hughes, Helen 2006, “Policy forum: economic development: trade or aid?”, The Australian Economic Review, vol. 39, No. 1, pp 63-68.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, 2009 (on interview with the CBC), viewed 14-02-2010, 10:45,
Nijs, Leen and Nadia Molenaers (2009), “From the theory of aid effectiveness to the practice: The European Commission’s Governance Incentive Tranche”, Development Policy Review, Vol. 27 No. 5, pp. 561-580.
Postrel, Virginia, 2006, The Poverty puzzle, New York Times Book Review, March 19, p.12.
Quibria, M. G. (ed.) (1996), Rural Poverty in Developing Asia, Volume 2: Indonesia, Republic of Korea, Philippines and Thailand, Asian Development Bank Publication, Manila.
Weerdt, Joachim De (2010), “Moving out of poverty in Tanzania: evidence from Kagera”, Journal of Development Studies, vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 331-346.
Wikipedia 2010, Jeffrey Sachs, viewed 14-02-2010, 10:33,
nice article
BalasHapus