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speaker 1: Hello everyone. Welcome to this episode of the un in China podcast. I am sada chathe, United Nations redent coordinator here in China. And we are profoundly privileged to be joined by Professor Jeffrey sacks today date, an esteemed economist, a man with illustrous career behind him, and a man who has a vision of a world where the sustainable development goals is not just a realm of a dream that can be realzed. Professor sacks teachers at Columbia University and leads the center for sustainable development and serves as a key advisor to the United Nations and champions the un's sustainable development goals. An insightful commentator on China's economic journey, professor SaaS spotlighted that the country's triumph in poverty reduction, innovation and international partnerships. He has also underlined China's significant strides in sustainability, propelled by initiatives such as the Belgian Road Initiative. In addition to his scholarly and policy related endeavors, professor sa's career is truly remarkable. His advisory work spans over 150 governments globally, with significant efforts dedicated to poverty reduction in Africa. He's also joined forces with notable artists like bono from YouTube to advance the global development goals. Recognized by time magazine as amongst the world's hundred most influential people, professor Sachs continues to advocate passionately for a fairer and a more sustainable future. Professor Sachs, we are thrilled .
speaker 2: to have you on this show.
speaker 1: Well, it's great to be with you always. So you once said, and I quote, economic shock therapy is the medical shock therapy. It's brutal, but sometimes necessary. End of code. Reflecting on your early work in Bolivia or Eastern Europe, was there a common moment that you thought that this isn't just policy, this is about saving lives? How did you shape your lifelong focus on humane development?
speaker 2: Well, like treating a medical patient as my wife Sonia does? Each economic crisis has its own characteristics, and one has to address them in a particular way. When I was working in Bolivia, which is now 40 years ago, actually 40 years ago this year, the inflation had reached 24000%. When you reached 24000% inflation in a year, you need some decisive measures. And in that case, recommendations that I made that the government accepted ended the hyperinflation immediately in the fall of 1985. Thereafter, in order to sustain that progress, I made other recommendations that at the time were somewhat unusual, for example, canceling almost all of Olivia's debts so that it could get a fresh start. In other circumstances, you need other kinds of approaches. When the crises came in Eastern Europe and 1989 to 91, I helped governments introduce new currencies in the case of Estonia and Slovenia. In the case of Poland, I helped to design a strategy for Poland to restore economic growth after really decades of crisis. And fortunately, it worked in cases in Africa. S, you mentioned working with bono and others. The crisis was a crisis of disease. How to address the crises of aids, tb and malaria? And I recommended in 2000, when I worked with Secretary General kfiand, an the idea of a new Global Fund that could fight these diseases. And of course, then Secretary General Kinan championed that idea, took it on, took it to world leaders. It became the Global Fund to fight aids, to be in malaria. It's credited with the saving tens of millions of lives, and very proud of that. It's one of the recommendations that I've made that was accepted, adopted, demonstrated, and I'm very proud of the results of that. So I found early on, as I watched my wife save children, she's a pediatrician, that each case requires its own diagnosis, its own analysis, its own understanding of the context. In medicine, that's called a differential diagnosis. In 2005, when I wrote a book called the end of poverty, I coined the phrase clinical economics. I want economists to be as good as doctors. So if a doctor takes the history of the patient, I want an economist to understand the history, the culture, the society, the context, the nature of the crisis. I believe that with these tools, it's possible to solve problems that solvery important problems. And today we face innumerable problems. So whether it's the climate crisis or other environmental crises, or the continued existence of extreme poverty or hunger in different parts of the world, these require analysis and then a creative approach. And then if we can do it to get the world, the major governments behind such approaches and actually implement solutions. So this is more or less the story of how I viewed what I've been doing for the last 40 years. You know, it's interesting .
speaker 1: that you mentioned the Global Fund. In 2004, I was working with unicef and Somalia as the deputy representative, and we became the principal recipient for the global funds to tackle hiv and malaria. What a profound difference it made. That was the first time that the Global Fund said, let's also go into places which are in emergency loans.
speaker 2: It's wonderful to hear that that link, and I can tell you was, I know you know very well, when I proposed the Global Fund, there were countless opponents that said, this can't work. Oh, Somalia, they could never do this. Anytime you propose something, a thousand people will stand up and say, that's impossible. That's a dream, that won't work. That can't be done. There were so many explanations of why it would not be possible to treat people in Africa with the aids, for example, so many claims made why it would not be possible to treat people with malaria. Interestingly, the fund went forward, but it faced lots of opponents of people who should have known better. And during those years, when you were fighting disease in Somalia, I was fighting a basic point, which was that governments, including the United States government and many in Europe, were insisting that poor people should pay a certain amount for some of these medicines or these bed nets and so forth that were the anti malaria bed nets. And as late as 2007, when I was trying to convince the governments for poor people, let them have these things, they will use them, right? You'll save lives. I went to a meeting in Tanzania, and the donor community tried to boycott the meeting. They sent an email all around, don't go Saxis coming. Don't go to the meeting. But by mistake, they included me on the cc list of the email. So I was able to write to all of them and say, Oh, please join me. We're going to have a good discussion. But the upshot of that is that we had a new incoming Secretary General by kimun. I was profoundly privileged and honored that he asked me to advise him on these issues. And I recommended to him in his first days that the free distribution of the bed nets and other life saving measures should be a hallmark of the un. He's a very wonderful, remarkable person. And he immediately made a statement that it's time for us to make a major step forward in access to these life saving means. And he changed the whole un system by that statement, who the World Health Organization immediately said, yes, we will go for free distribution of the bed nets. And hundreds of millions of bed nets were distributed in the following two or three years thanks to what he did. And the result was a dramatic decline of malaria deaths and malaria disease. It was a stunning proof of what can be done when you have leadership like bankimoon, when you have clarity, when you have the technology.
speaker 1: it all came together and and a vision of yours. Jeff, had it not been for you, this may not have happened because I've seen firsthand the impact these bed nets have had on the lives of women and children, not just in Somalia, in Sudan and in South Sudan, in Darfur, at the height of a conflict. How a simple bed net has so much of has a multiplier effect on .
speaker 2: wellness and wellbeing. I appreciate you saying it. You know, I can tell you a story that between 2000 and 2007, I was nonstop pushing forgive and that's for free for heavensake. These are poor people. And Sonia can testify that we were at a actually, it was a World Economic Forum meeting to be to tell the truth. And they called me to stand up and to say something. And somebody at the table of my wife said to another guest, but my wife heard it, Oh my God, now we're gonna to hear about bed nets. And so during those years that's, I was saying it every time my mouth opened, give the bed nets. And finally, the breakthrough came because of Secretary General bkimon. And the results were were remarkable. We need to learn the lessons. We can do things in this world. We can solve problems. We can end hyperinflations. We can help countries get started after major crises. But it takes the desire to solve the problems. It takes the analytical approach to ask what seriously can be done. Then inevitably, it requires some investment, it requires some money, it requires some spending. And if we don't put all of those pieces together, the ethics that you care, the analytics of what to do, the financing of getting it done, well, then unfortunately, we dream but don't solve the problems. But when we put the three together, we really can solve one problem after another.
speaker 1: Absolutely. So Jeff, that brings me to a very important point, which is the United Nations Secretary General and to new guteras issued clarion called on rescuing the sustainable development goals where we are at approximately 17% implementation rates. The world is experiencing a poly crisis of sorts, the first step we've ever seen post the Second World War in these circumstances. And as a United Nations champion for the sustainable development goals, is there hope? Where should we double down to make sure that this one collaboration of 17 goals, where the entire world came together to agree that, yes, we must achieve these goals? Where do you see hope? Where should we double down? What can be done to make sure we can get the sustainable development goals back on track?
speaker 2: The hope starts with the fact that unanimously in September 2015, in fact it was September 20 fifth 2015, with banki moon presiding with the Pope Francis giving the opening remarks at the un General Assembly, all 193 world leaders agreed to the sustainable development goals. Why? Because these goals express deep aspirations that are shared around the world for basic ideas, that everybody should have a basic economic standard for their dignity and for their well being. Second, that we should have social justice that know groups, not women, not minority groups, not religious minorities, not racial minorities, should be left out of the story. As we say at the un, leave no one behind. Third, that we have an environmental crisis that is unique in human history. It was, after all, only because we are so economically productive, so much output in the world, so much economic activity, so many people, 8 billion people, that we also have the scale of activity that can really. Perturb the planet. You know, a thousand years ago, who could think that humans could wreck the oceans one way or another? Of course, it was impossible. Now we can really do this, unfortunately. So we have this unprecedented crisis that some politicians don't get, some people don't understand. Mutes never happened before in human history this way. And sad to say, we have wars everywhere, which are fundamental impediments to accomplishing anything else, and also dangerous to our very survival. And that's why in the sustainable development goals, sdg 16 is for peaceful and inclusive societies, and sdg 17 for global partnerships. And so this is very basic yearning of humanity. These are not fancy goals that somebody dreamt up. These are expressions of what the world wants, what we need to achieve for our basic well being, even for our survival. So that's actually the basis of hope, because the world came together, really decided on these things. A second reason for hope is, as I said earlier, if you analyze these goals, and that's what I do for a living and that's what I've done for 30 years with sustainable development, these are big, bold, ambitious, but achievable objectives. So this is a wonderful, wonderful point. We can actually ensure that everybody has access to electricity. We have mico grids now that we're unimaginable for everybody with a bit of effort could have access to the digital world. Certainly, we can produce enough food on this planet for everybody. We already do so in the aggregate, but not in how the food is actually harvested, used and distributed. Because of the inequalities in the world, goal after goal is absolutely practicable, but we are not achieving the goals. And we're not achieving the goals, sad to say, and to put it bluntly, because we don't have the high level political commitment to implement the practical solutions and to finance them. This wouldn't break the bank, but it's not for free. This is hundreds of billions of dollars, but we're in 100 trillion dolplus world economy. We're talking maybe one or two percentage points of world output that should be shifted to ensure that all of the developing countries can have the kids in school, can have access to basic technological needs, can build the infrastructure that they need. This is what our task is now, even being, I hope, not politically out of line. But I have to say it because it's my own country, the us is not pulling its weight in this, and this is just an absolute fact. One way to see this, which is a little bit shocking, is that, as you know very well, countries are asked governments, that is, the members of the un, are asked to present their Sustainable Development Goal plans to their peers. Every summer in July, at the un headquarters, we have the high level political forum in which countries present what are called their voluntary national reviews. Vnrsome governments have done it three times, four times. Almost every country in the world has presented at least one voluntary National Review. I'm sorry to say that there are three countries right now, three out of 193, that have yet to do so. Haiti and Myanmar, conflict, war, violence. The United States is the last one. The us. Has not presented a voluntary National Review. That was from the Obama years to the first Trump administration, to the Biden presidency and now the Trump presidency. It's even a little bit more dramatic because in a recent vote in the un, for something that was absolutely not controversial at all, it was a General Assembly resolution of the government of Bahrain for a day to celebrate peaceful coexistence. And in that document, in not only non objectionable way, but a very standard way, it reiterated the world support for the sustainable development goals. And the United States spokesman said, well, we can't support it because we don't support these goals. This is the current new government in the United States. All of this is to say we have a real challenge right now. We have a very serious challenge of holding the world together, holding multilateralism together, making the United Nations work. We depend on the un for our survival. We depend on the un for our well being. But we have to understand that we're under stress right now, and multilateralism is extraordinarily fragile. Interestingly, importantly, one of the reasons why multilateralism is so fragile is that our geopolitics has changed rather decisively. As many people have said, including the new us secretary of state, Marco Rubio, we are now in a multipolar world. That means that China is a great power, Russia is a great power, India is a great power, the United States is a great power, and so forth. And these great powers need to get along with each other. They need to say, we, as very important countries of the world, need to take up the responsibility together to ensure that the goals that the world is yearning for are actually achieved. This is not happening at the moment. It can happen. It needs to happen. It's extremely .
speaker 1: important. But you know just on that, I think the vision of of Harry Truman and Roosevelt on when the United Nations came into being in 1945, I believe that vision has sustained, you know the charter has sustained, and it now needs much more effort by leaders across the world to keep it together. I mean, when I look at something like pefar and the number of lives that she saved from the hiv pandemic across the countries that I've worked in, I think the us continues to remain a beacon of hope for the advancement of multilateralism. And I've always said this, that the us and China together, that relationship is the most consequent relationship of the 20 first century as we want to move the world forward in advancing human development, our humanity, the sustainable development .
speaker 2: goals and a better future for all. I couldn't agree more how far as another another case I had a bit of a hand in. And just to say that when George W. Bush, junior became president on January 20 entieth 2001, I went to the White House almost immediately afterward, because I was invited by the national security advisor, condollia rice, and she asked me to brief her on the aids crisis. She reached out and invited me in. We were in the situation room of the White House, which is already gives you some little bit of gosebumps. And I gave a briefing to the National Security Council about the aids crisis. And at the end of it, I said the United States should have a program, $3 billion per year, to fight aids. And Interestingly, at the time, one of my former students was the economic advisor to the new administration. And he put his armaround my shoulder and led me out of the west wing of the White House and said, Jeff, that was, that was really good. But, you know, you don't stand a chance, really. And I said, you know, no. He said, no, no, no, Jeff, anyway, you did a good job. Two weeks later, condolles rice called me back, said, I'd like a second session on this test. So I came back and again. And then President Bush said, we need to do this. This is good for America. And he understood it wasn't counting dollars. It was $3 billion. It's a lot for you and me, but it's not a lot for the United States. He understood that this would be something special, something dramatic. And so the us launched the pepvar. And when President Bush left office, he was asked, what's your proudest accomplishment? And he said, pepfiactually. He said, we've saved a lot of lives. This was good, good for the United States. We need to keep that spirit. I think the American people have it. I think it's possible. You rightly mentioned that the United Nations itself was the brainchild of the president of the United States of Franklin Roosevelt during the war. He knew that we needed a new way to stop wars, prevent them and end them. And he was determined he didn't survive to the full fruition. But he brought it into existence. And the American people still overwhelmingly support the un. We need our government to do the same. It serves the purpose of all of humanity without question, and there's no way we're going to survive actually without it. This is a hard, literal truth. We need the nuclear arms control. We need agencies like the World Health Organization. We need what all of the un family accomplishes. And it's so vital, it's fragile. I think we need, I would say, an upgrade given the added responsibilities that the un needs to face that only the un can take on. I'm in favor of strengthening the un in many, many ways, including new fiscal capacities. Right now, the un has to beg from its own member states for the budgets. But actually we need to fund all of these global activities on a far more systematic basis than we have in the past. We had a summit last year, summit of the future. It has several recommendations for strengthening the un. We need to use that outcome to actually move forward now. And I believe that with leadership from China, with leadership from India, with leadership from the African Union, with leadership from Brazil, with leadership from countries around the world, Indonesia, I could mention also, the call for a stronger un will be heard. And it would be of inestimable benefit for humanity completely. In fact, on March 20 fourth.
speaker 1: together with the ministry of foreign affairs of China, our office, the un China office co hosting an event on the pact for the future with a number of member states to look at how do we start the implementation process of the pact for the and this is .
speaker 2: what the Secretary General.
speaker 1: Antonio guterre, is trying to really make the un also fit for purpose so that know the membership sees a value proposition and people see the value proposition. So I'm hopeful, Jeff, in fact, given the Polly crisis that we are confronted with, that perhaps the U's moment to be resurrected in some form and the Renaissance of the un is absolutely necessary. So I'm glad that you know, the un has people like you that are guiding and advising the Secretary General, because this is precisely a moment that we need the finest minds to come together to take this organization forward. Let me come on to another interesting part, which came out as from the summit of the future, which was the digital compact. And you've often said that artificial intelligence is a double edsword. It can empower or divide. If, as you say, technology must serve dignity, not displace it, what's one policy or project that gives you hope that will avoid the digital cost system, and especially in the marginalized parts .
speaker 2: of the world? Well, first, I think we're all just stunned by the daily advances of these technologies. And deep seek was also a great moment. Chagpt was a remarkable moment, and deep seek was another remarkable moment. It showed, first of all, the us isn't alone by any means in these technologies, and China's leadership is extraordinarily important. Deep seek also shows that it can be brought at much, much, much lower cost than was expected through really ingenious design of these AI systems. So I'm very happy about that. The best part of what AI in the digital world offers is an incredible leapfrogging of poor places today in the ability to deliver goods, services, education, skill upgrading. Every aspect of development is made more within reach by these technologies if they're properly deployed. Now, you can teach anywhere as long as a child has a device and there's a base station somewhere nearby. Electricity, we know, can really be brought anywhere through micro grids if the national grid is not online. Expert medical opinions and care can be brought either through AI systems because right now they're already very, very good at diagnostics and at being able to support local health providers. But also we can provide health care online, remote remote diagnostics, reading x rays anywhere in the world. If we get our act together, things can be done in the next few years in terms of health, education, payment systems, finance, banking, that were completely unimaginable even five years ago. And today, you can go to the most remote rural villages in India, for example, to a vegetable Celler on the side of the dirt road, and there's the qr code and you're gonna na pay online. And they're part completely of the digital world. And this can come everywhere and will come everywhere. I should mention, India's leadership in bringing low cost solutions for digital inclusion will be of huge benefit for Africa. And I always like to think of Africa as basically the same size as China and Indian population, all three are about 1.4 billion people. And if Africa thinks like a unity, which is the promise of the African Union rather than the 55 countries that were left by the colonial enterprise, if I could put it that way, but Africa, if Africa's leadership says, look, we can do what India and China are doing, the same breakthrough will occur there. So I see huge potential in every area, in education, in healthcare, in finces I mentioned, in agriculture, in manufacturing, in service provision, in linking the economies, in culture and fashion and tourism. Everything is advanced through these technologies, and they're not expensive. They are usable everywhere. Much of it is open source. Having the physical connectivity of the infrastructure is not prohibitive anywhere, whether it's starlink or a similar system. We have now the ability to have access anywhere on the planet, in fact. And so harnessing all of this is so close to fruition, if, as in the case of Disease Control, like we talked about, an organized, concerted effort is made. Now let me talk about the downside, because every advance of technology is an empowerment. But then the question is, empowerment for what? Empowerment for the good, yes, if we're guided by our goals. Empowerment for the bad, yes. If the technologies are misused, abused, militarized or privatized in inappropriate ways, I don't have to relate all of the risks that come with this empowerment. But military, we're watching it even day to day in the war in Ukraine, how AI has been introduced into the battlefield. You can kill people with drones. You can kill people with the weaponry that was, again, infeasible, not even dreamt of just a few years ago. And the armies are racing to incorporate all of this surveillance, pervasive. We know that governments can survey everything we see in the United States, recent cases that are rather shocking, of governments accessing materials and using that to deport people without going into the details. It's extremely unpleasant. But there's a lot of surveillance that has come with this. We know that these AI systems can incorporate the biases that are implicit in the data that they use to train these systems. So the same racial biases or the same gender biases, or the other biases that are pervasive in society are also pervasive in digital data that then gets incorporated into the training of these models. We know that we're only at the beginning of very sophisticated deep fakes, because in a digital world, you can create digital stories of all kinds. You can create, put literally, words in people's mouths that can be extremely dangerous. You can simulate the onset of wars. You can try to destabilize regimes through manipulation of data. So this is a very powerful set of tools. It is in the hands of powerful corporations in the United States. These corporations are closely increasingly linked with the Pentagon, with the cia, with others. We need to get a grip on this. And we face these issues with nuclear arms starting roughly 75 years ago, what's now 80 years since the first atomic bombs were developed and used. And it took harrowing periods and many years before there were treaties that began to get those weapons under control. And they're still not adequately under control. We're only at the beginning now with AI of a serious approach to governance and with a lot of obstacles, because when you have powerful commercial interests and when you have powerful militaries and intelligence systems, you can be sure that to really bring about .
speaker 1: effective governance .
speaker 2: will be a profound challenge. Again, it's another reason why we need the United Nations and why we need international law and why we need a level of trust among major governments so that they sit down and actually engage in diplomacy.
speaker 1: not simply in an arms race way. Well put, Jeff. You know, I think going on to, let's say, the biggest challenge that humanity faces today, in fact, an existentialist threat, is the climate crisis. And you know what the Secretary General often refers to as the triple planetary crisis of climate change and biodiversity laws and air pollution, which is having a huge impact on lives, livelihoods, public health systems. Now, you've often praised Chas greatly forward in renewables and calling it the most important energy story of the 20 first century. Now, how can China essentially turn these domestic winds into global bridges, especially in regions that are still trapped in fossil fuel dependency? And where do you see the United Nations, through its multilateral platforms, being able to give more velocity to what China has achieved locally into the global sphere?
speaker 2: China, over the last 20 years has moved to absolutely the forefront of almost every zero carbon or low carbon technology that we have and that we need. It's the low cost producer of photovoltaics. It's the low cost producer of wind turbines. It's the world's low cost producer for the new hydrogen economy. It's the world's low cost effective producer for electric vehicles. It's the world's low cost producer for the battery supply chains that we need. It's the world's low cost producer for long distance transmission of renewable energy. It's the world's low cost producers of five point 5G for digital transmission, which now becomes the backbone of the new power sector and the energy sector infrastructure. It's the world's leader in fourth generation nuclear power. This was not by accident. China took on this challenge. It really took on this challenge starting about a dozen years ago, very intensively. And in its technological blueprint, it identified these sectors as sectors of the future where China wanted to make sure that it was investing in the research and development. It has succeeded. Now China offers something unique in the world, which is a massive manufacturing platform of advanced technologies for the energy transformation. Just what we need. People in the us said, Oh well, China has over capacity. This is not at all right. China has massive capacity and it needs to be deployed massively globally. I believe that the most important single program to do that is the Belt and Road Initiative, because the Belt and Road Initiative is essentially China making an observation and an offer to the rest of the world. And the observation is we will be better if we are interconnected through physical infrastructure, through the digital world and aiming to achieve a sustainable development trajectory. That's the division. And the offer is we will help to finance that. We will help to provide the financing, the technology, the partnership, the design, the connectivity, the openness of markets so that this works. I see belt and road projects all over the world. I was in rural Ethiopia a few months ago, was taken to very poor areas of agriculture. It happened to be avocado growing region. Now why? Because China had built a fast rail between Addis aba and Djibouti, and because China had financed a major increase of power capacity. So suddenly, these farmers had two things that they never had before. They had energy for their pumps, for their irrigation, for their harvesting, for their machines. And they had transport to Carry their avocados to the port and Djibouti so that they could be fresh and on the breakfast table in Dubai the next day. And this was a breakthrough. And these farmers were making money and they were expanding their farms, and they were showing a, my wife and me there, new houses that they were building. This was really economic development. And this is what bri, the Belt and Road Initiative, makes possible. It makes possible a way for a massive uptake of digital and Green technologies. In the case of Ethiopia, the powers hydroelectric power. In other places, its massive solar fields or massive wind fields. China's electric vehicles are, of course, setting the world pace right now. They're dominating the world markets. Interestingly. Why? Well, I can tell you why. On the one side, in Europe, for 15 years, I watched it closely. Volkswagen, Daimler Benz, Mercedes said, you know, we produce great cars. The orloves them. Why should we shift and yousay? Well, climate change, well, yes, but that's a long way off. So they procrastinated. They dragged their feet. In the United States, it was on again, off again. We want ev's. No, we don't want ev's. We're in a phase right now where we don't want ev's, according to our government, and so forth. China said, of course, we need electric vehicles. It made a major effort both in terms of infrastructure and in terms of promoting the technology. And suddenly there were hundreds of ev manufacturers in China in the most intense competition during the last ten years. A few not only have come out on top, at least for the moment, in this intense competition, but they become the world leaders. And so this is a breakthrough by a mix of government design and private sector innovation and initiative. All of this is what the world needs right now. So we're in a complicated geopolitical and macroeconomic environment. The United States has turned protectionist, partly because it's so late to the game in some of these areas. The us says, Oh, we can't compete with the China on ev's. Oh, we can't compete with China and some of these other areas because they wasted their time for so long. But in any event, with the us market closing, China sees that, well, we have all this capacity we would have exported to the us. What do we do? Some American economists say, Oh, you should boost consumption. I take a little bit different point of view, which is boost the Belt and Road Initiative, make it a bigger program. The whole world needs these technologies. We need to transform the world. If China lends to these countries, they will grow rapidly. I recommend that the loan should be 20 or 30 year loans, not five to ten year loans, because. In five or ten years, these economies will still be poor. 25 years that they followed the Chinese path, they're going to be rich enough to have the huge benefit of the financing and to repay everything that was lent to them. So my basic view is that China's tremendously significant capacity in these areas is really lucky for the whole world. We should just strike out the term overcapacity. That's ridiculous. We need even more capacity because the scale of the transformation we need globally is immense, and we need to do it quickly. And I'll come back to that in a moment. And China will play a huge role in that. Incidentally, China should not only lend to other countries, but also Chinese companies. The great Chinese companies should invest in direct investment and production in these countries, help build their economies as well through the direct increase of the manufacturing or industrial base in the partner countries as well. All of this is taking place at a moment where the climate crisis is suddenly dramatically accelerating before our eyes. And I just want to underscore this point. In the last four years, the earth's temperature has increased by more than point three degrees Celsius. It used to take 15 to 20 years for that kind of increase. It happened in the last four years. And at first scientists said, well, yes, we have an El Nino that's a temporary warming, but things will revert. Well, now we have a La Nina in the Pacific, and the temperatures aren't coming back down. What we're understanding now is we've essentially reached the 1.5 degrees Celsius level that we pledged not to reach, and we're just about there, or even beyond it, or just below it, on trend. This is dramatic news. This should be saying to the governments, Oh my God, it's even farther along than we thought. We have to go even faster than we thought. We've not heard that right now from certainly not the United States, which is apparently planning to pull out of the Paris Agreement again, just at the wrong moment. But the rest of the world should take notice. We are on an accelerated trend of warming that is extraordinarily dangerous and calls on everybody to go even faster than they thought they had to go.
speaker 1: Yes, indeed. And you know, Jeff, I, in 2023, I'd actually taken the United Nations deputy Secretary General, Amina Mahammad, to visit the seventh largest desert of China in Inner Mongolia.
speaker 2: It's called kbuchi.
speaker 1: It is mind blowing to see an entire desert ecosystem being turned into an agricultural wonderland. And that place, when you go there, you are looking at like a sea of solar and wind bar. And they produce 3.2 gigawatts of electricity there. About 70% of it is sent back into the national grid. And it is just, I mean, that's the amount of electricity countries produce.
speaker 2: Yeah, of course. And this this is a remarkable accomplishment and it's what should be done. And I've got a number of deserts on my list. I'd like to see the .
speaker 1: same implementation, right? And there's great hopes. I hope one day I'm able to invite Sonia and you to come and join me there, because I feel that if many of these countries in Africa that we both know can actually grapple with combating desertification, this is a fantastic model. And what they've managed to do in China is to put big data technology and innovation. So they're really leapfrogging. They have actually robotic devices which are going and planting trees along the sand dunes. So sand dunes has virtually disappeared. You know, in Somalia, for example, where I served, a lot of the pastoralist communities used to get into conflilicts, which each other, which one of the major reasons for conflict is conflict over pastures conts. There are no conflicts there because people have settled down well. Their herds are well taken care of. They have enough of food and livestock, everything coexisting. All the needs are brilliantly met. And what they've done is they've got these really high solar panels. So the real estate underneath is fully utilized for agriculture work. It is just pretty incredible. Ounding, it is astounding. Well, you know, I mean, I really hope that again, in the space of multilateralism, you know, China and the us, working together in the space of climate, can really transform the world, transition us to a Green economy, and also make the world extremely wealthy and prosperous .
speaker 2: through that. It should be done. It's the right answer.
speaker 1: Well, now, on the un itself.
speaker 2: and in the book.
speaker 1: in the end of poverty, you wrote that, and I quote, the United Nations is one institution that can truly speak for all of humanity, end of. And yet critics argue that it's often hamstrung by bureaucracy or competing national interests, with the world facing unprecedented shifts and the un undergoing significant reforms. The role of the United Nations redent coordinator, my role, and you being to many, many countries, is evolving in different ways and fascinating ways. If you look beyond the traditional tasks in this new era of global challenges and change, what's one hidden lever that could transform the resin coordinators from being coordinators into game chanfor global progress?
speaker 2: One key that the un needs is more financial heft. I don't mean the financing of the un itself, although that's important, but the un and you as resident coordinator and the team that you lead of who and unesco and itu and unicef and fao and a World Food Program and countless other organizations and agencies in the un system have solutions that are astounding, that are powerful, that are in practice, that are already demonstrated, but they don't get scaled up because they require finance. And our global financial architecture is not up to the job right now for many, many reasons. But the private capital markets do not understand the growth potential of poor countries. They give unduly harsh credit ratings to these countries, cutting them out from the private capital markets and the official institutions including the un system including the Global Fund which we talked about including many of the new funds that have been established under the Paris Agreement for losses and damages or for adaptation to climate change or for energy systems are dramatically underfunded compared to the needs so that they can't really provide governments with the scale of support. I think we need a fundamental rethink of this global financial architecture and one step will be in fact, a meeting this summer, June thirtieth to July three, in sevvia, Spain, the fourth financing for Development Summit. And the reason for that summit is that we don't have a financial system to truly finance the sustainable development goals. Now I believe, for example, that we need international taxes that go straight to the un system. What I mean by that is, instead of taxes that are collected by our national governments, we should have taxes that the un collects as a United Nations that's providing global public goods. This idea is a bit anathema to some governments. Oh, that's our purview. You can't get into this. But the fact of the matter is the world cannot address its problems without financing for global goods, not just national goods. I've been spending a lot of time looking at the early history of the United States in this regard, because it's really quite interesting. The us, as everybody knows, were British colonies, originally 13British colonies. They declared independence on July Fourth, 1776, and then in a war with Britain, and with the help of the French, they were victorious in gaining independence in 1781. At that time, on independence that did not create the United States of America the way we know it now, it created 13 independent nation states. And they made a little un at the time they called themselves United States, but it was not the there was no federal government. There was no central government. There was no president, there was no tax authority. It was something like the un. And it was not called the un charter that organized and was called the articles of confederation. So it was what we could call a confederation, a loose gathering of 13 sovereign states that said, well, we'll join together for certain things, but you need unanimity. You won't have tax authority. Any taxes are at the nation state level, Pennsylvania or Massachusetts or Virginia. They were nations. They were real nation states. And six years later, it wasn't working. They weren't solving their problems. They couldn't agree on things. They couldn't find unanimity. They couldn't raise the taxes. The debts weren't being paid. In other words, they had a real economic and financial crisis because they weren't a United Nations. They were 13 independent states, essentially going to a General Assembly and saying, we should do this and that, but they couldn't actually do it. And a very clever political entrepreneur came along, and he figured out, through some pretty deft maneuvers, by the way, that we need a new charter. And he led to the convening of what became the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. And this politician is named James Madison. We know him today as the father of the us constitution. What he was at the time was a very clever, a rather brilliant Virginia politician who had to convince these 13 independent nations, Hey, you better give some of your sovereignty to a federal government that can actually have some tax authority. And that wasn't an easy sell, by the way. It looks kind of obvious now, because that's the United States. People even forget this period of the articles of confederation. And when I was in junior high school and high school, I learned a little bit about it, but I didn't appreciate how remarkable it was that 13 independent nations actually gave power, real power, not just lip service, not just sdgs, not just goals, but real power to get something done to a new collective that was agreed would be in the district of Columbia, now Washington, dc. So what's the analogy? What's my point? We have 193 governments. They want to do certain things. They really want to do them. But we're not getting the job done adequately. We need the James Madison of our time right now to say, Hey, come on, ladies and gentlemen, there's there's a way to be effective here. Here are the steps we need. Here's how we could get together. And if you give up a little of your sovereignty, quote unquote, it empowers you. It doesn't weaken you. It makes you better. It makes you more effective as national governments. This is the idea that needs to be inculcated. It's really important right now. I would like a global tax on co two emissions, by the way. I'd like a global tax on international financial transactions. I'd like a global tax on aviation. I'd like a global tax on international shipping. One principle of taxation is tax something that isn't being taxed at the national level. Shipping, for example, is basically untaxed. You have the world trade carried on oceanic vessels, but they're not taxed. International aviation essentially the same way. International financial transactions, which are trillions of dollars a day. Are not taxed. So there's a base there. And if we had that financing, believe me, youhave the solar panels, youhave the wind turbines, youhave the water supplies in today's conflict areas, youwould have the transport systems, youhave the hydrogen economy, weactually be making this transformation successfully. So this is the one thing that I think would tremendously empower what we're trying to do in this complex collective of 193 sovereign states.
speaker 1: I've actually Jeff, if you recall, we actually have a good model of this called unit eight in in Geneva, which just started by you know dustoblai and with you know a tiny €2 tax or something at chargical airts and some of the airports in France is actually helping to finance a lot of their aids, tv, malaria work.
speaker 2: which the global funds is not able to cover. Yes, you know we have plenty of examples of what works, but they all work at too small scale. So this is our main point, which is it's not a deep mystery what needs to be done. It's not even a deep mystery how to do it. It's us understanding that for our own good, we had better do it. Indeed.
speaker 1: indeed, indeed. Jeff. Well, Jeff, let's come to the last question, which is a little about bu and Sonia. And you know, in your book, you write the ages of globalization, and you write about humanity's resilience across crisis. How do you personally recharge? You have a mantra like bonos, it's a beautiful day, don't let it get away. That reminds you to embrace moments of joy even amidst today's overwhelming challenges that we face.
speaker 2: You know, working on these things, I don't know if it's fair or right to say it, but it's actually fun because you meet remarkable people all over the world. You see remarkable things all over the world. The world is a wonderful place. The diversity is the great gift that humanity has. The idea that someone is the enemy is almost always completely wrong. If you go anywhere in the world, okay, admittedly, if the bullets are not whizzing by, but you go any place in the world, you'll meet people that will share their homes with you, their meals with you, common experiences, fun, remarkable culture, and a shared idea about what we ought to be doing in this world. That, to my mind, is the fundamental motivator, driver exhilarator of all of this. I can't hide the fact that many days are unbelievably frustrating. Of course they are. If they weren't, we wouldn't be taking a realistic view of the situation. Many days are terrifying. Many days bring you to tears, actually. But the basic idea that we really are all in this together, and that that is a wonderful thing, not a burden, is, I think, the most important point, at least for Sonia and me. Every place we've been, no matter the culture, the economic structure, the level of development, the extent of poverty, the religion, the race, the geography, we've been warmly welcomed. And that's been throughout our lives, throughout our careers, and that is the exhilaration.
speaker 1: Thank you so much, Jeff. Thank you for making the time for me as the un redent coordinator in China, as well as as a un staff member. You know we look up to you for a lot of the wisdom that you've been providing, the energy and enterprise you bring to the sustainable development goals. It's a honor to have .
speaker 2: had this opportunity challenge for me. You're doing such a wonderful job helping to lead the un system, so I'm really grateful. Thank you. Thank you very much.