2021, Jeffrey Sachs 在联合国粮食系统峰会演讲

杰弗里·萨克斯在联合国粮食系统峰会前的演讲

July 27, 2021 ,Jeffrey Sachs' speech at the U.N. Food Systems Pre-Summit

https://www.jeffsachs.org/recorded-lectures/5jf86pp5lxch35e6z3nct6xnmb8zy5

我们从小组成员那里听到的是全球粮食系统目前的运作方式。我想强调的是，我们确实拥有一个全球粮食系统。 它基于大型跨国公司、私人利润和非常低的国际转移来帮助穷人（有时根本没有转移）。它基于强国对环境的极度不负责任。正如我们刚刚听到的那样，它是基于对穷人经济权利的彻底否定。

我们刚刚收到刚果民主共和国部长的来信。许多人将贫困归咎于刚果民主共和国和其他贫穷国家。然而，我们似乎不记得，也不想记住，从1870年左右开始，比利时国王利奥波德在刚果建立了一个持续了大约40年的奴隶殖民地；然后比利时政府又管理了该殖民地50年。1961年，刚果民主共和国独立后，中央情报局暗杀了刚果民主共和国第一位受欢迎的领导人帕特里斯卢蒙巴，并在接下来的大约30年里任命了一位美国支持的独裁者蒙博托塞塞塞科。近年来，嘉能可和其他跨国公司在不支付一定程度的特许权使用费和税款的情况下吸取了刚果民主共和国的钴。

我们根本不反思刚果民主共和国和其他贫困国家努力摆脱贫困的真实历史。相反，我们指责这些国家并说：“你们怎么了？ 为什么不好好管教自己呢？”

是的，我们有一个全球粮食系统，但我们需要一个不同的系统。我们不能将全球粮食系统交给私营部门。 大约100年前，我们已经这样做了，不仅针对私营部门，而且还针对有美国军方支持的私营部门来保护这些公司。

我们刚刚收到洪都拉斯部长的来信。让我们回想一下，联合果品公司基本上在很长一段时间内管理着他的国家。 联合果品的代理人是美国国务卿约翰·福斯特·杜勒斯，他的弟弟艾伦·杜勒斯是中央情报局局长。两位杜勒斯兄弟代表联合果品公司密谋推翻与洪都拉斯相邻的危地马拉总统雅各布·阿本斯，以阻止阿本斯试图实施的土地改革。

所以，是的，我们有一个全球粮食系统，但我们需要一个不同的系统。这种不同的制度必须基于《世界人权宣言》中的普遍人类尊严原则、联合国宪章》中的国家主权原则以及《世界人权宣言》和《经济、社会、文化国际公约》中的经济权利 权利。在《世界人权宣言》中，所有政府都同意社会保护是一项人权，不仅仅是一件“好事”或令人愉快的事情，而是一项基本人权。那是73年前。

可持续发展目标是我们这一代人对遵守《世界人权宣言》的承诺。 然而，我来自一个不仅不关心世界上的穷人，甚至也不关心自己的穷人的国家。 现在有七分之一的美国人在挨饿，但一个政党只关心为富人减税和阻挠任何真正的贫困解决方案。

我们生活在一个非常艰难的世界。私营部门不会解决这个问题。我很抱歉要对在座的所有私营部门领导人说这些。私营部门的关键很简单：行为、纳税和遵守规则。这才是企业应该做的。

政府应该做的是：

首先，G20应成为G21，邀请非盟成为第21个成员。 欧盟是G20 的成员。 如果我们将非盟添加为第21个成员，使其成为G21，我们将在G20表中再增加 14 亿人。

其次，我们需要在发展融资方面有一个数量级的增长。根据国际货币基金组织的数据，富裕国家为应对 Covid-19大流行已借入并支出了约17 万亿美元。贫穷国家的支出不到2万亿美元。富裕国家可以以接近于零的利率（甚至欧洲一些国家的负利率）在资本市场上借款。然而，贫穷国家必须支付5%至10%的票面利率，而且许多国家根本无法获得市场借款。

Covid-19暴露了贫穷国家在获得市场融资方面的严重不平等。美国政府花费了大约7万亿美元用于紧急响应 Covid-19，其中几乎没有任何资金用于世界其他地区。美国国会显然没有想过要为世界上最贫穷的人提供哪怕一点面包屑。

需要更多的发展融资是我们应该从世界银行那里听到的信息。然而我们没有听到。我们没有从世界银行那里听到任何真实的数字或融资解决方案。

未来十年，发展中国家的实际金融需求将达到数万亿美元。毕竟，世界经济现在的年产出约为100万亿美元。然而，我们不想谈论穷国的真正金融需求。我们需要大量增加流向穷国的发展融资，并且利率接近于富国支付的零利率。如果有足够的资金流向贫穷国家，条件适当，我们就可以完成一些事情，包括实现可持续发展目标。

顺便说一下，为了在未来几个月内实现Covid-19疫苗的普遍覆盖，我们真正需要的是美国政府与中国、俄罗斯、欧盟和英国坐下来分配正在进行的全球疫苗接种 以公平和包容的方式每月生产疫苗，而不是让少数富裕国家囤积不成比例的疫苗，然后，在疫苗到期时处理掉许多疫苗。

作为联合国粮食系统峰会的一项重要成果，我们将拥有“国家粮食系统路径”。这样的途径是一个绝妙的想法，但这些途径将需要足够的发展资金。你想增加电力供应吗？ 它必须得到资助。您想推广对数字服务的访问吗？ 这种访问必须得到资助。您想确保获得安全的用水和灌溉吗？ 它必须得到资助。我们需要将可持续发展目标——包括普遍获得健康营养、安全饮用水、绿色能源等——与必要的资金联系起来。

国际货币基金组织最近进行了一些精彩的研究，表明低收入发展中国家 (LIDC) 面临每年约400至5000亿美元的可持续发展目标融资缺口。尽管国际货币基金组织已经表明了这一缺口，但还没有人提出解决融资缺口的办法。 这并不难做到，因为每年 5000 亿美元并不是一个很大的数字。这仅占世界年产量的0.5%。如果我们真的想找到答案，G7就不会承诺投入30亿美元用于教育，而联合国教科文组织已经表明我们每年至少需要300亿美元，至少。但富国政府不喜欢看真正的金融需求。他们宁愿勾选他们为教育提供了一定金额的符号框，即使这只是真正需要的十分之一。我们需要真正的融资，数量级合适，以支持国家粮食系统路径。

第三，我们需要联合国作为我们世界的核心和中央机构。我们要拥有一个和平、文明的世界的唯一途径是通过一个强大的联合国。荒谬的是，联合国的核心预算每年仅为30亿美元，而纽约市的预算约为1000亿美元。我们长期为联合国系统提供资金不足，然后问：“为什么事情不顺利？”

富人越来越多地囤积一切。如果亿万富翁想去太空，他们至少可以把钱留在地球上，以解决关键的地球问题。我们现在估计有2,775位亿万富翁，他们的总资产净值约为13.1万亿美元。我有充分的证据表明，你不需要超过10亿美元就可以过上舒适的生活。即使每个亿万富翁都保留10亿美元，也将留下大约10 万亿美元用于消除饥饿、贫困和环境破坏。我们应该对庞大且快速增长的亿万富翁财富征税，以帮助资助一个文明的世界。

 

Jeffrey Sachs' speech at the U.N. Food Systems Pre-Summit

 

Transcript (with light edits)

July 27, 2021

What we’ve been hearing from the panelists is how the global food system works right now. I want to emphasize that we indeed do have a global food system. It’s based on large multinational companies, private profits, and very low international transfers to help poor people (sometimes no transfers at all). It’s based on the extreme irresponsibility of powerful countries with regard to the environment. And it’s based on a radical denial of the economic rights of poor people, as we just heard. 

We’ve just heard from the Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many point a finger of blame at the DRC and other poor countries for their poverty.  Yet we don’t seem to remember, or want to remember, that starting around 1870, King Leopold of Belgium created a slave colony in the Congo that lasted for around 40 years; and then the government of Belgium ran the colony for another 50 years. In 1961, after independence of the DRC, the CIA then assassinated the DRC’s first popular leader, Patrice Lumumba, and installed a US-backed dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, for roughly the next 30 years. And in recent years, Glencore and other multinational companies suck out the DRC’s cobalt without paying a level of royalties and taxes.  

We simply don’t reflect on the real history of the DRC and other poor countries struggling to escape from poverty. Instead, we point fingers at these countries and say, “What’s wrong with you?  Why don’t you govern yourselves properly?”

Yes, we have a global food system, but we need a different system. We cannot turn the global food system over to the private sector. We already did that about 100 years ago, and not only to the private sector, but to the private sector with the U.S. military behind it to defend these companies.  

We just heard from the Minister of Honduras.  Let us recall that United Fruit Company essentially ran his country for a long time. United Fruit’s attorney was US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and his brother Allen Dulles was the head of the CIA. On behalf of United Fruit Company, the two Dulles Brothers conspired to overthrow President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, next door to Honduras, in order to stop the land reforms that Árbenz was trying to implement.   

So, yes, we have a global food system, but we need a different system. That different system must be based on the principle of universal human dignity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the principle of national sovereignty in the UN Charter, and the economic rights in the Universal Declaration and the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. In the Universal Declaration, all governments agreed that social protection is a human right, not merely a “nice thing,” or a pleasant thing, but a basic human right. That was 73 years ago. 

The Sustainable Development Goals are our generation’s pledge to honor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet I come from a country that not only doesn’t care about the world’s poor, it doesn’t even care about its own poor. One in seven Americans is hungry right now, but one political party cares about little more than cutting taxes for the rich and filibustering any real solutions to poverty.  

We’re in a world that’s really tough. The private sector is not going to solve this problem. I’m sorry to say this to all the private sector leaders here.  The key for the private sector is simply this: behave, pay your taxes, and follow the rules. That’s what businesses should do.  

What the governments should do is the following: 

First, the G20 should become the G21 by inviting the African Union to be the 21st member. The European Union is a member of the G20.  If we add the AU as the 21st member, making it the G21, we would add another 1.4 billion people to the G20 table.  

Second, we need an order-of-magnitude increase in development finance. According to the IMF, the rich countries have borrowed and spent around $17 trillion in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.  The poor countries have spent less than $2 trillion.  Rich countries can borrow on the capital markets at near-zero interest rates (or even negative rates for some countries in Europe). Yet the poor countries must pay 5% to 10% coupon rates, and many have no access to market borrowing at all.  

Covid-19 has exposed the grotesque inequality of access to market finance that poor countries face.  The US government spent roughly $7 trillion for emergency Covid-19 response with hardly any funds included for the rest of the world. It apparently didn’t cross the mind of the U.S. Congress to include even a few crumbs for the poorest of the poor of the world. 

The need for vastly more development financing is the message we should have just heard from the World Bank. Yet we didn’t hear that.  We didn’t hear any real numbers or financing solutions from the World Bank. 

The real financial needs of the developing countries in the coming decade are in trillions of dollars.  After all, the world economy is now at around $100 trillion a year of output.  Yet we don’t like to talk about the real financial needs of poor countries.  We need to massively increase the flow of development financing to the poor countries, and at near-zero interest rates like the rates paid by the rich countries.  With adequate financial flows to the poor countries, on adequate terms, we could get something done, including achieving the SDGs.  

By the way, in order to achieve universal coverage of Covid-19 vaccines in the coming months, what we really need is for the US Government to sit down with China, Russia, the European Union, and the United Kingdom to allocate the ongoing global monthly vaccine production in a fair and inclusive manner, rather than having a few rich countries hoard a disproportionate share of the vaccines (and then dispose of many vaccines when they hit their expiration date.) 

As a key outcome of the UN Food System Summit, we are going to have “national food system pathways.”  Such pathways are a wonderful idea, but the pathways are going to need adequate development financing. You want to increase access to electricity?  It will have to be financed. You want to promote access to digital services? This access will have to be financed.  You want to ensure access to safe water and irrigation?  It will have to be financed.  We need to link the SDGs – including universal access to healthy nutrition, safe water, green energy, and so on – with the requisite financing.  

The IMF has recently carried out some wonderful studies showing that the Low-Income Developing Countries (LIDCs) face an SDG financing gap of some $400 - $500 billion dollars a year.  Although the IMF has shown this gap, nobody has yet come up with a solution to close the financing gap. This wouldn’t be so hard to do, because $500 billion per year is not such a big number. It’s a mere 0.5% of annual world output.         If we really cared to find answers, we wouldn’t have the G7 promising to devote $3 billion to education, when UNESCO has shown that we need at least $30 billion dollars per year, minimum. But the rich-country governments don’t like to look at the real financial needs. They’d rather check the symbolic box that they’ve given some amount for education, even if it’s only a tenth of what is really needed.  We will need real financing, of the right order of magnitude, to back the national food system pathways. 

Third, we need the United Nations as the core and central institution of our world.  The only way we’re going to have a peaceful, civilized world is through a strong UN.  It’s absurd that the UN core budget is a mere $3 billion per year, when New York City’s budget is around $100 billion.  We chronically underfund the UN system and then ask, “Why don’t things work well?”  

The rich individuals are increasingly hoarding everything.  If the billionaires want to go to space, they could at least leave their money on Earth to solve the critical Earthbound problems.  We now have an estimated 2,775 billionaires with a combined net worth of around $13.1 trillion. I have it on good authority that you don’t need more than $1 billion to live comfortably.  Even if every billionaire kept $1 billion, that would leave around $10 trillion for ending hunger, poverty, and environmental destruction.  We should be taxing the vast and rapidly growing billionaire wealth to help finance a civilized world.