Copenhagen Consensus

The Copenhagen Consensus 2004 (English: Copenhagen Consensus ) is a beheimatetes at the Copenhagen Business School, Danish project that tried to set on the basis of economic cost -benefit analyzes priorities for the most important challenges facing humanity, such as hunger, AIDS, water supply, access to sanitation, trade restrictions, corruption and global warming. The project makes use of the methods of welfare economics. It was continued with the Copenhagen Consensus 2008.

The idea for this came from Bjørn Lomborg and other members of the Institute for Environmental Assessment, a foundation of the Danish Government and co-funded by the magazine The Economist.

All participants are economists who place the emphasis on a priority list, which is based on an economic analysis. Despite the billions that are spent by the UN, the governments of the rich countries, foundations, charities and non-governmental organizations to global challenges, is enough the money is used for problems such as malnutrition or climate change, is not. The World Bank estimates that the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations in addition would cost $ 40-70 billion in addition to the previously issued annual U.S. $ 57 billion a year.

A book which summarizes the results, Global Crises, Global Solutions, was edited by Lomborg, published in October 2004 by the Cambridge University Press. Further project meetings were held in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012, the project is now financed privately. 2012 dietary supplements was given the highest Priority.

Experts

The process of how he was being followed, is based heavily on the expertise of economists with great reputation, so about four carriers of the so-called Nobel Prize in Economics.

The participants were ( winner of the Prize for Economics in the Swedish Riksbank in ):

Areas - challenges facing humanity

The experts evaluated ten different challenges and possible solutions for each.

  • Conflicts ( Paul Collier )
  • Climate change ( William R. Cline )
  • Infectious diseases ( Anne Mills )
  • Education ( Lant Pritchett )
  • Financial instability ( Barry Eichengreen )
  • Government and corruption (Susan Rose- Ackerman )
  • Malnutrition and hunger ( Jere Behrman )
  • Population and Migration ( Phillip L. Martin)
  • Subsidies and trade barriers ( Kym Anderson)
  • Water and sanitary facilities ( Frank Rijsberman )

The expert team was given the task to answer these ten challenges the question: " What would be the best way to improving the welfare of humanity, especially for the benefit of developing countries, on the assumption that funds in the amount of $ 50 billion to the governments additionally available stood? "

By type of cost-benefit analysis was to determine how well these problems could be solved by various measures for the policy; doing so they were classified into four categories: Very good; Good, Adequate and Poor.

  • Very well

Highest priority according to this view, the fight against HIV and AIDS. The economists estimated that an investment of $ 27 billion by 2010 could prevent nearly 30 million Infizierungsfälle. Measures to combat malnutrition and hunger were considered zweitsinnvollst. Central here are dietary supplements, particularly against iron deficiency due to an unbalanced diet. This had an extremely high cost-benefit rationality. Spending was estimated at $ 12 billion. The third point includes trade liberalization. Although, unlike the aforementioned matters are no lives in danger, but the experts agreed that here so could be considered for the world as a whole as well as for developing countries at low cost huge benefit well. The fourth point concerns the malaria. $ 13 billion would mean a great benefit for the cost, especially if they would be issued for the chemical mosquito control.

  • Good

As a point five of the consensus calls increased investment in new agricultural technologies specifically for developing countries. Three proposals for the improvement of health and sanitation facilities and water quality for a billion of the poorest people follow in the list. ( Set to the places 6-8: simple water technology for households, jointly organized water supply and sanitation and research for a greater return of water in food production ). The last item in this category concerned the governance and dealt with how the cost of establishing new businesses could be reduced.

  • Sufficient

Number 10 was a migration project, whose goal was the easing of barriers to immigration for skilled workers. 11 and 12 were malnutrition projects - Improving infant and child nutrition and reducing the spread of low birth weight. Number 12 was to increase the primary care medical goods or the fight against disease.

  • Deficient

The points 14-17 included migration projects ( guest worker programs for non- skilled workers ), which was viewed as an obstacle to integration, and climate change projects ( carbon tax and the Kyoto Protocol ), which saw the Forum as little cost-effective for the expected benefits.

Results 2008

In Copenhagen Consensus 2008, the solutions were global problems according to their cost / benefit ratio brought in following ranking (here, the first 20 of a total 30):

Criticism

Some critics, among them economists such as Jeffrey Sachs, questioned the usefulness of a cost-benefit analysis even in highly complex and scientifically uncertain terrain, the use of certain discount rates to classify current and future values ​​, as well as the assumptions of the forum regarding the availability of aids. In this sense, the restriction of consensus on the level of current development aid has been criticized. Instead of house hold with the lack, rather sums should be called, with which all critical problems could be solved.

Furthermore, it was criticized that the panelists were exclusively professional economists. Also the connection of the project with Bjørn Lomborg, who takes controversial positions on environmental issues, provoked skepticism. The other economists, selected from Lomborg, were also suspected to be strongly committed to the ideas of the free market and thus have little sympathy for a Staatsinterventionalismus in environmental issues. Therefore, the consensus organized parallel a forum of non-experts that drew up its own list of recommendations (these were essentially those of the experts).

However, the actual proposals provoked less opposition because their priorities number 1 and 2 (AIDS and malnutrition ) are generally regarded as highly important. However, criticized the proposal on trade liberalization in point 3 ( the critics of globalization would be unacceptable ) and the low placement of the recommendation to climate change.

According to recent studies, however, may have an opening of trade and climate change mutually bring forward: Free trade can promote the dissemination of low carbon technologies and give developing countries more opportunities to use these technologies, conversely environmental criteria can be incorporated into trade agreements.

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