Un Banco Mundial para un nuevo mundo

Feb 24, 2012 Jeffrey D. Sachs

NUEVA YORK.– El mundo está en una encrucijada. La comunidad global puede unirse para luchar contra la pobreza, el agotamiento de los recursos y el cambio climático, o enfrentar una generación de inestabilidad política, zozobra ambiental y guerras por los recursos.

El Banco Mundial, con una conducción adecuada, puede jugar un rol fundamental para evitar esas amenazas y los riesgos que implican. Es mucho lo que está en juego a nivel mundial en esta primavera, ya que los 187 países miembros del Banco elegirán un nuevo presidente para suceder a Robert Zoellick, cuyo mandato finaliza en julio.

El Banco Mundial fue establecido en 1944 para fomentar el desarrollo económico, y casi todos los países son actualmente miembros. Su misión principal es reducir la pobreza mundial y garantizar que el desarrollo global sea ambientalmente sólido y socialmente incluyente. Lograr esas metas no solo mejorará las vidas de miles de millones de personas, también impedirá violentos conflictos alimentados por la pobreza, el hambre y las luchas por recursos escasos.

We hope you're enjoying Project Syndicate.

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Already have an account? Log in

Support High-Quality Commentary

For more than 25 years, Project Syndicate has been guided by a simple credo: All people deserve access to a broad range of views by the world's foremost leaders and thinkers on the issues, events, and forces shaping their lives. At a time of unprecedented uncertainty, that mission is more important than ever – and we remain committed to fulfilling it.

But there is no doubt that we, like so many other media organizations nowadays, are under growing strain. If you are in a position to support us, please subscribe now.

As a subscriber, you will enjoy unlimited access to our On Point suite of long reads and book reviews, Say More contributor interviews, The Year Ahead magazine, the full PS archive, and much more. You will also directly support our mission of delivering the highest-quality commentary on the world's most pressing issues to as wide an audience as possible.

By helping us to build a truly open world of ideas, every PS subscriber makes a real difference. Thank you.

Subscribe Now

Jeffrey D. Sachs

Writing for PS since 1995
330 Commentaries

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as Special Adviser to three UN Secretaries-General. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, and most recently, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism.

new comment has been posted. new comments have been posted.

0 Comments on this paragraph, 5 Comments on this article

Kir Komrik Apr 1, 2012

Thank you for the balanced article.

Only with a codified, global constitution can the issues raised in this article be effectively addressed. We are living a fantasy if we think otherwise. Global rule of law will be necessary to ensure that the policies of a central treasury are uniform and if applied for one nation then applied for all (symmetric).

It is the very elision of uniform rule of law that allows the conditions described to exist; namely, for the United States to have undue and unproductive influence on the World Bank.

kirkomrik.wordpress.com

- kk
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Juan Camilo Moreno Mar 25, 2012

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2012 - The Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank confirmed today that, as announced on February 17, the period for submitting nominations for the position of the next President of the World Bank closed on Friday, March 23. The Board is pleased to announce that the following three nominees will be considered for the position:

Jim Yong Kim, a US national and President of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire

José Antonio Ocampo, a Colombian national and Professor at Columbia University, New York

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian national and Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, Nigeria

In accordance with the procedures previously announced, the Executive Directors will conduct formal interviews of the three candidates in Washington, D.C., during the following weeks, with the expectation of selecting the new President by consensus by the 2012 Spring Meetings
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Zahed Yousuf Mar 18, 2012

I do agree that the President of the World Bank needs to be both politcally neutral as well as neutral in terms of economic ideolgy - if the WB wishes to achieve its developmnet goals. Professor Sachs sounds like you have already submitted your CV for the position
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Procyon Mukherjee Feb 27, 2012

Jeffrey Sachs is raising the fundamental point that interests of the sustainable world economy is obstructed by the narrow interests of capital that chooses havens of ‘return’ that is at variance with the overall interests of communities that need basic education, health and housing.

This co-variance and divergence of interest cannot simply be left to the right choice of the leader alone, although it does drive a point; the lack of over-riding consensus needed to make the sweeping reforms in the functioning of the Bank belies the tragic theme of our times that in augmenting the marginal propensity to consume of a whopping majority one must allocate capital through a program that could actually dis-incentivize the current methods that benefit a miniscule minority.

Procyon Mukherjee
A new reply to this comment has been posted.