cc DemoshWhile Jeffrey Sachs has done well to highlight the roles of colonialism, the Cold War and the ‘ongoing political and economic plunder’ in creating Africa’s poverty, Jason Hickel argues that Sachs’ ‘Big Five’ solutions are rooted in the same system that he seeks to criticise: ‘The problem here is that Sachs calls on us to think within a paradigm of aid when we should be thinking within a paradigm of justice.’ Instead, then, Hickel proposes an alternative big five based on this ‘paradigm of justice’: Forgiving debt, protecting resource commons, installing an international minimum wage, democratisation of international institutions and reducing the greenhouse emissions of the West and China. Hickel notes, however, that ‘Implementing these changes would require enormous political will and moral courage… [these solutions] would run up against Western economic interests, and would most likely cut into the profits of those who presently pride themselves on their philanthropy.’
Jeffrey Sachs has become something of a force in international development circles over the past decade. As special advisor to the United Nations’ (UN) secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, former director of the UN’s Millennium Development Project, and a decorated economist at Columbia University, Sachs certainly has much to commend him. And his recognition has been no less outstanding: The publication of his runaway messianic bestseller, ‘The End of Poverty’, bagged him his second showing on Time’s list of the world’s top 100 most influential people.