Prof Jeffrey Sachs - Building Back Better: Sustainability Post-COVID-19

In his address to the IIEA, Professor Sachs discusses how global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to ‘build back better’ in seeking sustainable and equitable solutions to longstanding challenges. Professor Sachs considers how this can be achieved and what kind of blueprint the Sustainable Development Goals provide for recovery. Professor Sachs reflects on the obstacles facing these efforts and the role to be played by a multilateral approach and the United Nations.

This event is part of our Development Matters lecture series supported by Irish Aid.

About the Speaker:

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs is a renowned economist, author, educator, and global leader in sustainable development. He currently serves as Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a Commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, and a UN Advocate for the Sustainable Development Goals. Among his prior roles, Professor Sachs held the positions of Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Special Advisor to UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan, Ban Ki-moon and Antonio Guterres. He is the author of numerous books, including three New York Times bestsellers, and was the co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize for environmental leadership.

Recorded on the 10th of November 2020

[johnleong]

Jeffery speaks from his mind, the man who looks into FACT. One of the few professors who sticks to the point, not by judging the colour and position of a person.

[AbiFrench]

None of you represents us, speaks for us or can make decisions on our behalf. Therefore we send your plans back to you. You can build back better for yourselves if you’d like to, we will carry on building what we already started years ago and it might take another years more but we’re not in a hurry. Thanks but no.

[haikus]

500 people have over 2 trillion dollars. This money can be redistributed into STG's (short term goals) and LTG's (long term goals) that support societal transition of adaptation and mitigation of Global Heating. 

If not these same 500 people will find themselves living in some sort of technically adapted survival capsule in the midst of a planetary extinction process. Either their miniaturised earthship will continue operating successfully for some years or decades before failing for or they will be able to keep it functioning on the millenium time scale needed for atmospheric CO2 to return to optimal Holocene levels... and therefore constitute the human species's preservation project. 

Multiple projects of this sort might occur in different parts of the world most likely initiated by nation states. They would necessarily become highly militarised in hopes of guaranteeing protection from the remainder of the humans during the dangerous period before these excluded people die off completely.

So the choice among futures happens now regardless if we accept it or avoid accepting it.

[manuelmanuel]

Mr Sachs is a true humanist intellectual. Kudos to him,

[donnadee]

Ordinary can be boring...carry on & GoodNight

[daviddoink]

Nice sentiments from Mr Sachs Re taxing big tech, but doesn't he realise(he should) that the only reason that they are in Ireland is to avoid paying tax. Maybe Ireland should take his advice, but my bet is they would just relocate or use their Cayman Island vehicles to avoid paying anything. I don't know why, but with his reputation, I expected more.

[dbeezy]

Democrats have the same slogan as the U.N and globalist across the world, they are shutting the country down to create mass unrest so they can bring in the U.N! Agenda 21....they r really going for it!

[daviddoink]

XLE went from 33 10-Nov to 53 10-Mar, don't take investment advice from this man. And even if the US does stop using oil China won't, that's why they have recently done a 450 Bl$ deal with Iran, but he wouldn't dare criticise China.

[madmanjshum]

CIA troll team working hard for their pay here. Hahahaha. GO Professor Sachs 100% with you.

[alexsimpson]

I agree that China is potential partner, not an enemy!

[donnadee]

Yo Professor ding dong, populism is support for the concern of ordinary people. How dare him!