Prioritizing The World

by Bjørn Lomborg

In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals set a few, highly effective targets for the world, e.g. halve the proportion of poor and hungry and reduce childhood mortality by two-thirds. The goals have been a huge success. Now, the UN and the world is to decide which new goals will take over in 2015.

The UN s Open Working Group has proposed 169 targets. But we need to know which are most effective. Copenhagen Consensus has asked 30+ of the world s top economists to highlight phenomenal, good, fair and poor targets, weighing up the social, environmental and economic benefits and costs. The world will spend $2.5 trillion in development aid from 2015-2030, and these goals will influence a large part of that spending. Making just one target better can do hundreds of billions of dollars worth of good.

Copenhagen Consensus Center is a think tank that investigates and publishes the best policies and investment opportunities based on data and cost-benefit analysis for governments and philanthropists to make the world a better place. Copenhagen Consensus Center works with 100+ of the world s top economists and 7 Nobel Laureates to prioritize solutions to the world's biggest problems, on the basis of data and cost-benefit analysis.

For his work with Copenhagen Consensus, Bjorn Lomborg was named one of the world s 100 most influential people by Time Magazine, one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st Century by Esquire magazine, and one of the 50 people who could save the planet by the UK Guardian. He has repeatedly been named one of the top 100 public intellectuals by Foreign Policy.

118 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2014

About the author

Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish author and president of his think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is former director of the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI) in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, in which he argues that many of the costly measures and actions adopted by scientists and policy makers to meet the challenges of global warming will ultimately have minimal impact on the world's rising temperature.