Best Things First: The 12 most efficient solutions for the world’s poorest and our global SDG promises

World leaders have promised everything to everyone. But they are failing. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are supposed to be delivered by 2030. The goals literally promise everything, like eradicating poverty, hunger and disease; stopping war and climate change, ending corruption, fixing education along with countless other promises. This year, the world is at halftime for its promises, but nowhere near halfway. Together with more than a hundred of the world’s top economists, Bjorn Lomborg has worked for years to identify the world’s best solutions. Based on 12 new, peer-reviewed papers, forthcoming in Cambridge University Press’ Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, this book highlights the world’s best policies.

Some things are difficult to fix, cost a lot, and help little. Other problems we know how to fix, at low cost, with remarkable outcomes. We should do the smart things first.

Governments and philanthropists should focus on these 12 smartest things. Fix tuberculosis, malaria, and chronic disease, tackle malnutrition, improve education, increase trade, implement e-procurement, and secure land tenure. This will improve the world amazingly. The cost is $35 billion a year. The benefits include saving 4.2 million lives each year and generating $1.1 trillion more for the world’s poor.

We can definitely afford it: The cost of $35 billion is equivalent to the increase in annual global spending on cosmetics over the last two years. This is likely the best thing the world can do this decade.

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