Professor Sachs discussing his views on globalization with Georgetown faculty and students. (Screenshot by Alex Lin, via the Georgetown Global Cities Initiative))

Unsustainable urbanization. Pandemics ravaging the globe. Increasingly grim rifts dividing the rich and the impoverished. For scholars like Professor Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent economist at Columbia, these global issues are inextricably linked. In a virtual dialogue with Georgetown students about his recent publication, The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions, Sachs broke down his sweeping vision on how we should tackle some of our most pressing challenges exacerbated by technological progress run amok.

Perhaps the most salient moment of the event was Sachs’s discussion of barriers that could jeopardize vaccine distribution, particularly with regards to the AIDS outbreak decades ago. Considering the fact that before AIDS came to the U.S. it was prevalent in many parts of Africa, he said the disease exemplifies how “we don’t pay attention to what happens to poor people,” that “we only finally noticed it in San Francisco.” Then even once antiretrovirals came into use in the U.S. in the 1990s, they were not being delivered to or used in Africa. These facts highlight the stark discrepancy between the rich and the poor in mainstream media and institutional agendas.

Graph of recent funding and estimated future requirements for HIV globally. (Our World in Data)

In order to tackle the world’s most pressing issues, like the COVID-19 pandemic, Sachs underlined the importance of proper “funding and organization.” He acknowledges potential issues of supply chains but thinks that strategic planning and coordination can abate them. He also criticized the high cost of many medications as “due to monopoly pricing, not about actual production costs.”

In response to the ever-present question, “Who’s going to pay for it?” regarding the production and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, Sachs made the point that the money is out there. “The richest 500 people in the world today have eight trillion dollars in wealth,” he said. He then joked that the money necessary could come from a quick phone call to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. His idea was that policymakers around the world will need to be more creative and collaborative with unconventional partners in their approaches to the world’s critical problems.

Graph comparing coverage by The New York Times and The Guardian on the number of COVID-19 vaccines at the various phases of development. (Alex Lin) — Graph comparing coverage by *The New York Times* and *The Guardian* on the number of COVID-19 vaccines at the various phases of development. (Alex Lin)

However, even with the economic dilemma out of the way and prospects of a working vaccine on the horizon, technical challenges threaten to undo endeavors to ensure tidy, organized vaccine distribution. Specifically, to ramp up production speed for their up and coming vaccine, Pfizer was forced to make compromises on storage convenience. The company’s mRNA vaccines must be stored at -94°C, an unattainable temperature for almost all pharmacies. To circumvent the storage conundrum, Pfizer is packing its vaccines in shipping boxes filled with formulated dry ice, but these special suitcases can only be opened a few minutes each day and become unstable after ten days.

According to Sachs, equally salient as the fight against infectious diseases is the unsustainable ballooning of urban congregations. Global challenges like the pandemic currently ravaging the world will only become worse with recent and increasing urbanization everywhere. Demographic shifts of rapidly increasing populations in developing countries and growing population densities pose many challenges. Particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, Sachs explained, governments will likely be unable to contain this population and urban growth, leading to increased climate risk. He pointed to policy as a solution for both combating the root of the demographic changes and for mitigating the resulting effects. He explained that “fertility rates remain extremely high… because kids aren’t in school… especially girls,” a problem governments must tackle head-on. On the other side, he discussed the importance of sustainable urbanization, saying, “We need to be very clever about how the [new and growing] cities will be designed.”

Sub-Saharan Africa undergoing rapid urbanization. (OECD/SWAC)

For starters, Sachs suggested that cutting-edge digital technology should lay the groundwork for sustainable and efficient development. For example, 5G grids coupled with an array of other smart infrastructure could enable “low resource-cost” solutions to urban life, such as the rising importance of teleworking that might not have to fade away in a post-COVID world. Moreover, conventional, fossil-fuel burning automobiles could be swapped out for “multi-modal transports” integrating everything from shared and self-driving vehicles to cycling and walking. To complement efforts to harness technology for sustainable goals, Professor Sachs implied that up-and-coming metropolises should think about rejecting the sprawling “LA-model” in lieu of a greener, less resource-intensive paradigm of spatial-organization.

BRT station in Dar es Salaam. (Wikimedia)

Many African cities have embarked upon very similar undertakings. For instance, the Nigerian Smart Cities Initiative, conceived in June 2016, seeks to sync infrastructure with innovative information and communications technologies (ICT). Uganda began extending its waste collection and recycling infrastructure to peripheral urban settlements. Cape Town, Johannesburg, Dar es Salaam, Dakar, and Nairobi have all sought to mitigate congestion and soaring emissions with new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems. However, among all Sub-Saharan African countries, Rwanda seems to be leading the pack in building the cities of tomorrow. To streamline and digitize tedious bureaucratic processes, the government launched the Irembo platform so that citizens can register birth certificates and acquire driver’s licenses online. It also introduced the Smart Cities Blueprint in a 2017 regional summit, vowing to fast-track the integration of state-of-the-art ICT into urban infrastructure. In May of that year, Rwanda announced a partnership with Nokia and SRG to “improve the lifestyle and social sustainability of [Rwandan] citizens.” In light of these developments, Professor Sachs has reason to be optimistic, as it seems that his vision for sustainability has found a powerful resonance within policymaking across the continent.

Rwanda unveiled its Smart Cities Blueprint—a-call-to-action to integrate smart city infrastructure for all its neighbors—at the 2017 Transform Africa Summit. (Flickr)

Throughout the event, no matter the problem at hand, Sachs highlighted the importance of what he called “active problem-solving.” In order to solve real-world issues, he said one must “think like an engineer, not a theorist.” He also underlined the paramount importance of international cooperation. He criticized the negative view of China and globalization that President Trump has recently popularized. While supporting the idea that one should try to “solve a problem at the lowest level of governance one can,” he clarified that “of course we need some global governance.” So, as the world faces new and greater problems, policymakers must get creative and cooperative.