“President Bush announced a $1.7 billion aid package for Africa devoted primarily to combating malaria, unveiling the initiatives yesterday in advance of an international summit next week dedicated to breaking the continent’s perpetual cycle of poverty, disease and famine,” The Washington Post reports. But is this money enough and well spend?
Consider the following question: “What would be the best ways of advancing global welfare, and particularly the welfare of developing countries, supposing that an additional $50 billion of resources were at governments’ disposal?”
A year ago now, a panel of economic experts, comprising eight of the world’s most distinguished economists, was invited to answer this question and set priorities among a series of proposals for confronting ten great global challenges: civil conflicts; climate change; communicable diseases; education; financial stability; governance; hunger and malnutrition; migration; trade reform; and water and sanitation.
The result was the Copenhagen Consensus and is documented by Bjørn Lomborg in “Global Crises, Global Solutions“.

The Copenhagen Consensus was a project of the Environmental Assessment Institute.