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Copenhagen Concensus Center

Bjorn Lomborg, Copenhagen Concensus Center ... OWG Pesentation ... 8 May 2014 and related material

Burgess COMMENTARY
I don't know why I have been attracted to the work that Bjorn Lomborg has done over the past few years, but I think it might be the idea that he wants to do analysis of data and get answers that are sensible based on the data ... but it goes beyond that, I believe, to a further idea that there are multiple perspectives that should be taken into consideration.

As my own work on Multi Dimension Impact Accounting evolves, it is clear that the results of my efforts are likely not only to be multi dimension but also multi perspective ... and it becomes clear that the management of anything and everything in the very complex world that we inhabit requires a very new type of analytical approach, and beyond that new types of institutional arrangements in order to get the results that we need.

TVM-MDIA is starting to have more of the characteristics needed to help. Stay tuned.
Peter Burgess

Using economic evidence to identify the most effective sustainable development goals and targets

Too many goals means no priorities The UN is contemplating a successor scheme to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which directed perhaps $200 billion of development aid worldwide. Obviously, now everyone wants to get their favorite issue on the agenda. To get a sense of what really works, not just what sounds good, Copenhagen Consensus is now asking some of the worlds top economists how much each target will cost and how much good it will do. Read more in six languages on Project Syndicate. It was published in newspapers around the world, e.g. The Korea Times, allafrica.com or La Nacion (Costa Rica).

Bjorn Lomborg's presentation 'Using economic evidence to identify the most effective sustainable development goals and targets' presented at a side event to the 11th session of the OWG, 8 May 2014.

You can read more about our research on our Post-2015 Consensus project site.

Open PDF ... Bjorn Lomborg, Copenhagen Concensus Center ... OWG Pesentation ... 8 May 2014

It was a great honor and pleasure to co-host a workshop for the United Nations' Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals yesterday.

The OWG is working to set in motion the targets that will succeed the Millennium Development Goals after 2015. These goals, as I told the New York Times, 'are going to mobilize up to $700 billion in resources. If we can just get one poor target replaced by one phenomenal target, we can generate billions in benefits.' (http://nyti.ms/1j2Vgj1)

With the Copenhagen Consensus Center, we have commissioned some of the world's top economists to help us identify the most effective targets for the post-2015 development agenda. So far, there have been few attempts to explicitly quantify the costs and benefits of proposed post-2015 goals and targets, and we are trying to help filling this knowledge gap, providing missing information to the post-2015 debate.

Yesterday’s workshop, with about 80 participants from UN agencies, missions and NGOs, was a great first step in this direction. All participants were engaged and interested, and even though not everyone agreed with our economists’ preliminary recommendations, it was a great debate that we will keep going over the course of the year, when we receive more academic input.

A US ambassador said (paraphrasing) that 'we all benefit from evidence and analysis' and that there 'were a lot of important evidence that the US will pay attention to.'

You can find my presentation entitled 'Using economic evidence to identify the most effective sustainable development goals and targets' here: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/publication/un-owg-presentation

Also, watch our 3-minute video about the project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5BDIBRwQ88

Preliminary Benefit-Cost Assessment for 11th Session OWG Goals

In a world of limited resources, we can’t do everything, so which goals should we prioritize? The Copenhagen Consensus Center provides information on which targets will do the most social good (measured in dollars, but also incorporating e.g. welfare, health and environmental protection), relative to their costs. Some of the world’s top economists have assessed the targets from the 11th session Open Working Group document into one of five categories, based on economic evidence:

• PHENOMENAL – Robust evidence for benefits more than 15 times higher than costs

• GOOD – Robust evidence of benefits between 5 to 15 times higher than costs

• FAIR – Robust evidence of benefits between 1 to 5 times higher than costs

• POOR – The benefits are smaller than costs or target poorly specified (e.g. internally inconsistent, incentivizes wrong activity)

• UNCERTAIN – There is not enough knowledge of the policy options that could reach the target OR the costs and benefits of the actions to reach the target are not well known

Just think: if we could prioritize a goal that saves 10 lives for every $250,000 spent, over another goal that saves 1 life for the same amount, we could do billions of dollars more good over the next 15 years!

The assessments were put together by interviewing 16 of the world’s top economists in their respective fields. They were asked to consider the economic costs and benefits associated with the strategies that would be available to implement the targets. As much as possible non-economic considerations such as rights based arguments and political considerations were ignored. This is not to imply that these other considerations are not important – only that the intention of this document is to focus purely on the costs and benefits. In many cases, the targets were not specific enough to assess a benefit and a cost, however we urged the economists to err on the side of providing a recommendation, even if it would not normally reach the very high confidence required of academic articles.

It should be noted that the benefits and costs do NOT solely reflect money. In line with standard welfare economics principles, all benefits and costs have been considered (such as improved health, environmental impacts) – which have subsequently been converted into a dollar value.

Open PDF ... Copenhagen Concensus Center ... Report analysis of OWG Pesentation ... 8 May 2014

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