Bjorn Lomborg is the president of the Copenhagen Consensus and visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His latest book isAs we close out the past year and look ahead to 2025, the holiday season is a time when we reflect on what we’ve achieved and how we can make next year better – achieve our personal goals, give back to our communities, and contribute to the betterment of the world.
When we give, there’s no shortage of noble causes, from alleviating poverty and improving education to protecting the environment and advancing health care. We should, in theory, all align around shared aspirations to make 2025 a year of progress for all. But the hard truth is that global co-operation has struggled mightily over the past decade. In 2015, the UN came up with a 169-point agenda to fix all the problems facing humanity by 2030. The so-called Sustainable Development Goals were agreed on by all the world’s leaders with the best of intentions. Yet, with five years left, the world is wildly off-track on almost all of the 169 promises. The fight against poverty, disease and hunger has lost momentum. Why aren’t we making more headway? In large measure, because we try to do too much. Trying to focus on everything means we have prioritized nothing and achieved very little. A new year offers a fresh opportunity. Instead of trying to do it all – both as a society but also as individuals with our own giving – we should focus first on the interventions that yield the most progress. That means those that provide the highest returns on investment for people, the planet and future generations. Here’s the catch: the best investments aren’t necessarily the ones that grab headlines or attract celebrity endorsements. I’ve worked with more than 100 of the world’s top economists and several Nobel laureates to find which of the many global goals deliver the most return on investment.to make life better for the poorer half of the plane