Solve The World's Problems At A Stroke

At the heart of the proposal, unveiled at a gathering of world business leaders at the Swiss ski resort of Davos, is a push to get countries to account for the cost of failed policies, and use the money saved "up front" to avert crises before they hit. Top of the list is a challenge to the United States to join an international pollution permit trading system which, the UN claims, could deliver $3.64trn of global wealth. Inge Kaul, a special adviser at the UNDP, said: "The way we run our economies today is vastly expensive and inefficient because we don't manage risk well and we don't prevent crises." She downplayed concerns over up-front costs and interest payments for the new-fangled financial devices. "The gains in terms of development would outweigh those costs. Money is wasted because we dribble aid, and the costs of not solving the problems are much, much higher than what we would have to pay for getting the financial markets to lend the money." The UNDP is determined to ensure globalisation, which has generated vast wealth for multinational companies, benefits the poorest in society. It urges politicians to embrace some groundbreaking schemes put in place in the past 12 months to tackle global warning, poverty and disease, based on working with the global markets to share out the risk. These include a pilot international finance facility (IFF) to "front load" $4bn of cash for vaccines by borrowing money against pledges of future government aid. The scheme, which is backed by the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was born out of a proposal by Gordon Brown for a larger scheme to double the total aid budget to $100bn a year. In an endorsement of the report, Mr Brown said: "This shows how we can equip people and countries for a new global economy that combined greater prosperity and fairness both within and across nations." The UNDP says rich countries should build on this and go further. It proposes six schemes to harness the power of the markets: * Reducing greenhouse gas emissions through pollution permit trading; net gain $3.64trn. * Cutting poor countries' borrowing costs by securing the debts against the income from stable parts of their economies; net gain $2.90trn. * Reducing government debt costs by linking payments to the country's economic output; net gain $600bn. * An enlarged version of the vaccine scheme; net gain (including benefits of lower mortality) $47bn. * Using the vast flow of money from migrants back to their home country to guarantee; net gain $31bn. * Aid agencies underwriting loans to market investors to lower interest rates; net gain $22bn. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article341967.ece [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on February 1, 2006]

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