What is Sustainable Development and How Can We Achieve It?

Spring 2013 | Public lectures and events | Audio and pdf

Contributor(s): Professor Jeffrey D Sachs | The world has agreed to adopt Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide global development after 2015. Professor Jeffrey Sachs will discuss the choice of SDGs and a policy and normative framework to achieve them. Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and syndicated columnist whose monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 80 countries. He has twice been named among Time magazine's 100 most influential world leaders. He was called by the New York Times, "probably the most important economist in the world," and by Time magazine "the world's best known economist." A recent survey by The Economist magazine ranked Professor Sachs as among the world's three most influential living economists of the past decade. Professor Sachs serves as the director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and professor of health policy and management at Columbia University. He is special advisor to United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, having held the same position under former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. He is co-founder and chief strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, and is director of the Millennium Villages Project. He has authored three New York Times bestsellers in the past seven years: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011).