BJORN LOMBORG: New year’s resolutions that make a difference

The beginning of a new year is a time to envision the positive changes we can bring to the world. While shining a light on the power of doing good, it is a time to consider how we can extend our impact and do as much as we possibly can.     

The world’s governments came together in 2015 to promise to fix the biggest issues we face by 2030, through the so-called sustainable development goals: end hunger, poverty and disease; fix corruption, climate change and war; ensure job creation, growth and education; and a bewildering array of major and minor promises such as developing more urban gardens. Unfortunately, even the UN has admitted that we are failing badly. Promising everything means nothing is a priority.

We need to insist that our politicians get real in 2024 and focus first on the most efficient policies. And in our own corporate social responsibility donations we should similarly look to achieve the most good we can for every rand spent. Together with my think-tank, the Copenhagen Consensus, in recent years I have worked with more than 100 of the world’s top economists and several Nobel laureates to discover where each of us can help most.

Our peer-reviewed findings, which can be found in the book Best Things First, offer a road map for the 12 smartest initiatives for politicians around the world. They highlight proven solutions to persistent problems that deliver immense benefits at low cost. These are policies such as delivering more mosquito nets to tackle malaria, nutritional supplements for pregnant women to boost the baby’s opportunities even before it is born, and better legal protection to protect poor farmers’ rights over their land, increasing productivity.

In total, politicians could set aside just $35bn a year — a rounding error in most global negotiations — to deliver immense benefits. Implementing these 12 policies would save 4.2-million lives annually and make the poorer half of the world more than $1-trillion better off every year. On average, a dollar invested would deliver an astounding $52 of social benefits.

But just as these overarching goals should inspire and guide politicians, they can also guide us as we make our own corporate donations to help make a better 2024.

We need to focus more on the tuberculosis epidemic. TB has been treatable for more than 50 years, yet still kills more than 1.4-million people annually. The solution is straightforward: ensure more people get diagnosed and make it easier for patients to stay on their medication, which is needed for a gruelling six months.

Many organisations push for these simple solutions, and you can help them. Governments should similarly increase their funding. Just $6.2bn annually can save a million lives a year over the coming decades. Each dollar delivers an amazing $46 of social benefits.

We also need to pay attention to cheap and efficient ways to increase learning for children in schools. Shared tablets with educational software used just one hour a day cost only $31 per student over a year and result in learning that normally would take three years. Semi-structured teaching plans can make teachers teach more efficiently, doubling learning outcomes each year for just $9 per student.

As individuals, we can donate to organisations doing amazing work in these areas, across Africa and beyond. And governments could collectively dramatically improve education for almost half a billion primary school pupils in the world’s poorer half for less than $10bn annually — to generate long-term productivity increases worth $65 for each dollar spent.

We can help far more with maternal and child health. Research shows a simple package of policies that improve basic care and family planning access are incredibly powerful — and many organisations are working hard in these areas too. If we could convince politicians to commit less than $5bn annually, we could save the lives of 166,000 mothers and 1.2-million newborns annually.

Across all of the 12 policies we identified there are inspiring organisations doing incredible work. These are the areas where our donations — and any additional government spending — can have the biggest impact.

The holiday season, with its moments of reflection and celebration, should encourage us to pause and take stock of the positive aspects of our lives and the world at large. For 2024, let us resolve not only to help more, but to help better.

• Dr Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus and a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is the author of “Best Things First”, which The Economist recently named one of the best books of 2023.