Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

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Penguin, Mar 18, 2008 - Business & Economics - 400 pages
“Lucid, quietly urgent, and relentlessly logical . . . this is Bigthink with a capital B.” —The New York Times Book Review

Common Wealth explains the most basic economic reckoning that the world faces.” —Al Gore, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and former vice president of the United States

In Common Wealth, Jeffrey D. Sachs-one of the world's most respected economists and the author of The New York Times bestseller The End of Poverty- offers an urgent assessment of the environmental degradation, rapid population growth, and extreme poverty that threaten global peace and prosperity. Through crystalline examination of hard facts, Sachs predicts the cascade of crises that awaits this crowded planet-and presents a program of sustainable development and international cooperation that will correct this dangerous course. Few luminaries anywhere on the planet are as schooled in this daunting subject as Sachs, and this is the vital product of his experience and wisdom.
 

Contents

The Anthropocene
57
Global Solutions to Climate Change
83
Securing Our Water Needs ྡྲ
115
A Home for All Species
139
Global Population Dynamics
159
The Strategy of Economic Development
205
Ending Poverty Traps
227
Economic Security in a Changing World
255
Rethinking Foreign Policy
271
Achieving Global Goals
291
The Power of One
313
Acknowledgments
341
List of Acronyms
347
References
361
Index
371
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. Sachs is also President and Co-Founder of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty.

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