Jobs and sustainable development

Today, I had the great privilege to host Professor Jeffrey Sachs at the World Bank, where – despite the cold – he spoke to a packed auditorium (with another 1700 tuning in online) and signed copies of his new book, The Age of Sustainable Development.In this book and in his talk, Sachs outlined his views on the new era of sustainable development, one that encompasses the three pillars of economics, society and the environment. The book could not come at a better time, given that the UN is aiming to reach agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at itsGeneral Assembly in September and then reach further agreement at the climate conference in Paris in December.In his approach, Sachs reminds us that there are reasons why some countries are poor and that those reasons can be addressed. Moreover they can be addressed at an individual country level through diagnostics and scorecards. The SDGs are a once in a generation opportunity for each country to make the bridge to where they want to be in 2030. One of those SDGs concerns sustainable growth and decent jobs.Sachs notes that all over the world young people are unemployed and they are dissatisfied with the high levels of inequality. Conflicts such as those in Syria and Somalia are a function of poverty, environmental degradation and a lack of opportunity. Lack of employment leads to local violence and so we need sustainable development to improve local governance to help people get jobs.
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He also spoke about the jobs challenge caused by the increasing use of robots and technology. He noted that – in principle – we are all better off as a result of the increased productivity of robots: we can do more with less. But if we just leave this to the markets, then many people will become much poorer as they pay for this increased productivity with their jobs. Moreover, for society as a whole, better robots will lead to lower wages, lower savings and thus lower well-being. But with a little bit of forethought in redistributing the benefits of increased robot productivity, we can ameliorate many of those potential problems.

The one area which the book fails to explore in any depth is how to use official aid flows to leverage the private sector to pay for many of the aims of the SDGs. These aims – including creating more and better jobs – can only be paid for with public and private sector finance. Even so, I find that Professor Sachs’ overall approach to solving these problems chimes closely with what we at the World Bank are looking to achieve.