Project Syndicate: Mission Sustainable Development
Jeffrey D. Sachs, professor of sustainable development and professor of health policy and management at Columbia University, director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and author

“…Our generation’s moonshot is sustainable development on Earth. … The coming year can … mark a breakthrough for the planet, a positive coda to the deaths and despair of 2020. With intensified public health policies around the world modeled on the successes of the Asia-Pacific countries, and with the introduction of vaccines, the [COVID-19] pandemic can be brought under control, thereby opening the way for a fresh global start on sustainable development. There will be three major U.N. gatherings in 2021 — on biodiversity conservation (in Kunming, China in May), food systems (at U.N. headquarters in September), and on climate (in Glasgow in November). All are opportunities to launch our generation’s bold mission for sustainable development. To seize them, governments, academia, and businesses worldwide should work together intensively in the coming months to chart out the pathways to the future we want and need so much” (12/1).