UN Diplomats Rank Diseases, Water, Hunger and Education at Top of Copenhagen Consensus Listing NEW YORK, NY (Oct. 30, 2006) – If 24 United Nations ambassadors and other senior diplomats from countries representing 54 percent of the world’s population had their way, top priority for addressing major world challenges would be given to communicable diseases, sanitation and water, malnutrition, and education. This was the outcome of the Copenhagen Consensus Conference in New York this weekend. The unprecedented event with participation from Angola, Australia, Belarus, Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, India, Iraq, Mexico, Niger, Pakistan, Poland, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, Somalia, Tanzania, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, United States, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe was organized by the Copenhagen Consensus Center to focus the UN ambassadors’ attention on priorities for international action on 10 key challenges facing developing countries as well as the world as a whole. Ranked toward the bottom of the 40-category list were issues relating to climate change (carbon tax issues) and financial instability, with the exception of the Kyoto Protocol that ranked below the middle at 23. (A complete list of the results and participants is attached.) The diplomats considered the question: If we had an extra $50 billion to put to good use, which problems should be solved first? Each debate was preceded by briefings on targeted issues from UN and economic experts followed by discussions and individual rankings. “The Copenhagen Consensus process provides a framework for focusing on the top priorities in a world of limited means; if you can’t do everything, do the best things first,” Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and chairman of the two-day meeting, said The UN gathering continued work begun last June when eight UN ambassadors and diplomats participated in a similar exercise at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and the first meeting of the Copenhagen Consensus project in 2004 when a group of internationally renowned economists examined detailed submissions and presentations by experts across the ten challenge areas: climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts and arms proliferation, education, financial instability, governance and corruption, malnutrition and hunger, migration, sanitation and clean water, and subsidies and trade barriers. (more) 1
At the weekend closed-door meeting, the diplomats agreed to a large extent that high priority should be given to communicable diseases, sanitation and water, malnutrition, and education. In some cases there were differing opinions on the choice of particular opportunities within each challenge category. “Some participants attached the highest priority to community-managed water supply, while there were considerably more differences on sustainable food and fish production,” Lomborg said. “In education, some saw physical expansion of education infrastructure as a high priority, while others focused on educational quality.” He said the same was true for communicable diseases where some participants ranked scaled-up basic health services as the best opportunity, while others identified specific initiatives such as malaria or HIV/AIDS prevention as a better opportunity. In the area of trade, the highest rank was given to an optimistic outcome of the Doha round. Germany’s UN Minister Plenipotentiary Wolfgang Stoeckl said of the meeting, “The Copenhagen Consensus 2006 was a timely chance to sit down and discuss how the international community could get more global welfare for its money,” while Uganda’s UN Ambassador Francis K. Butagira said that for developing countries, “investing in projects with good results ultimately means more lives saved, and that is why this conference is so important.” Zambian Ambassador to the UN Tens Chisola Karoma said, “My colleagues and I found the event highly stimulating and timely. I believe all member countries of the UN would benefit from going through a similar process, becoming more aware of the need to prioritize.” Poland’s UN Ambassador Andrzej Towpik said, “We are daily faced with huge problems. The good news is that the Copenhagen Consensus meeting showed that there are many good solutions, which can be implemented at very low costs.” Ambassador Richard Terrell Miller, the U.S. Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, said, “This is the kind of exercise that ought to be mandatory for everyone working with international development issues.” Likewise, ambassador John R. Bolton, Permanent Representative to the UN, said, "The Copenhagen Consensus basically reminds us that there are limited funds available for doing everything at once, and when you say everything is a top priority, then you are saying you don't really have any priorities." Lomborg said that future meetings of the Copenhagen Consensus project are planned for a number of countries and international organizations.
### Media contact: Jennifer Heuer (202) 371-9600 jenniferheuer@GlobalCommuncators.com 2