UN Economic Advisor to Address International Financial Leaders in Dubai

Jeffrey Sachs will deliver The Gate Lecture during DIFCweek

Jeffrey Sachs, one of the most influential economists of his generation, will address international financial leaders on the pressing matter of the diversity of wealth, finding an end to poverty, and the UN Millennium Development Goals.

He will give The Gate Lecture on November 20, as one of a series of headline events during DIFCweek, November 17 – 23.

Professor Sachs will explain why wealth across the globe has diverged so much and offers an integrated set of solutions to the problems that hold societies back.

He said: “Our planet is crowded to an unprecedented degree. It is bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms, and in ecological terms.

“This is our greatest challenge: learning to live in a crowded and interconnected world that is creating unprecedented pressures on human society and on the physical environment.”

Sachs has advised heads of state around the world on development issues and global competitiveness. He was special Advisor to (former) UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, spearheading the creation of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. He has the same role for the current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

For more than 20 years he has been at the forefront of the challenges of economic development, poverty alleviation, and enlightened globalisation, promoting policies to help all parts of the world to benefit from expanding economic opportunities and wellbeing. 

He is also one of the leading voices for combining economic development with environmental sustainability and, as Director of the Earth Institute, leads large-scale efforts to promote the mitigation of human-induced climate change. 

Professor Sachs has identified three common and inter-connected problems that are threatening society.

He explains: “The first problem is the Anthropocene: the idea that for the first time in history the physical systems of the planet - chemical fluxes, the climate, habitats, biodiversity, evolutionary processes - are to an incredible and unrecognised extent now under human forcings.

“The second is a challenge of geo-politics - the Age of Convergence. Our world is more connected than ever before, and we have the fabulous prospect for the rapid closing of economic gaps that now exist between the rich and the poor. One result is that there will be in our time a fundamental shift of economic power, and the political power that goes along with it.

“The third issue of the weakest links. In an interconnected world, all parts of the world are affected by what happens in all other parts of the world. We cannot be surprised when events in some far off and distant place can be of fundamental significance for survival.”

Professor Sachs is internationally renowned for his work as economic advisor to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia and Africa, and his work with international agencies on problems of poverty reduction, debt cancellation for the poorest countries, and disease control.

Sachs has been an advisor to the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD, the World Health Organisation, and the United Nations Development Program, among other international agencies.

The Gate Lecture will be offered as a stand-alone event, priced US$ 995 per ticket, or as part of a DIFCweek event pass, with discounts rising according to delegates’ selection of events. For more information, go to www.difcweek.ae.

Delegates booking before August 15 will meet Sachs in person during an exclusive private audience after the lecture.

DIFCweek, the first event of its kind in the Middle East, will focus on Financial Opportunities for the Third Millennium. The week of conferences will address every principal topic in the international financial arena. As well as Sachs’ The Gate Lecture, other headline events include the first-ever FT/DIFC World Financial Centres Summit, November 19 – 20.