傑弗裏·薩克斯 西方奴役非洲幾百年 指責非洲失敗

 

2021年7月27日 （有少量修改，文章僅代表作者本人觀點）

Speech at the U.N. Food Systems Pre-Summit

https://www.jeffsachs.org/recorded-lectures/5jf86pp5lxch35e6z3nct6xnmb8zy5

Transcript (with light edits)

July 27, 2021

What we’ve been hearing from the panelists is how the global food system works right now. I want to emphasize that we indeed do have a global food system. It’s based on large multinational companies, private profits, and very low international transfers to help poor people (sometimes no transfers at all). It’s based on the extreme irresponsibility of powerful countries with regard to the environment. And it’s based on a radical denial of the economic rights of poor people, as we just heard. 

We’ve just heard from the Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many point a finger of blame at the DRC and other poor countries for their poverty.  Yet we don’t seem to remember, or want to remember, that starting around 1870, King Leopold of Belgium created a slave colony in the Congo that lasted for around 40 years; and then the government of Belgium ran the colony for another 50 years. In 1961, after independence of the DRC, the CIA then assassinated the DRC’s first popular leader, Patrice Lumumba, and installed a US-backed dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, for roughly the next 30 years. And in recent years, Glencore and other multinational companies suck out the DRC’s cobalt without paying a level of royalties and taxes.  

We simply don’t reflect on the real history of the DRC and other poor countries struggling to escape from poverty. Instead, we point fingers at these countries and say, “What’s wrong with you?  Why don’t you govern yourselves properly?”

Yes, we have a global food system, but we need a different system. We cannot turn the global food system over to the private sector. We already did that about 100 years ago, and not only to the private sector, but to the private sector with the U.S. military behind it to defend these companies.  

We just heard from the Minister of Honduras.  Let us recall that United Fruit Company essentially ran his country for a long time. United Fruit’s attorney was US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and his brother Allen Dulles was the head of the CIA. On behalf of United Fruit Company, the two Dulles Brothers conspired to overthrow President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, next door to Honduras, in order to stop the land reforms that Árbenz was trying to implement.   

So, yes, we have a global food system, but we need a different system. That different system must be based on the principle of universal human dignity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the principle of national sovereignty in the UN Charter, and the economic rights in the Universal Declaration and the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. In the Universal Declaration, all governments agreed that social protection is a human right, not merely a “nice thing,” or a pleasant thing, but a basic human right. That was 73 years ago. 

The Sustainable Development Goals are our generation’s pledge to honor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet I come from a country that not only doesn’t care about the world’s poor, it doesn’t even care about its own poor. One in seven Americans is hungry right now, but one political party cares about little more than cutting taxes for the rich and filibustering any real solutions to poverty.  

We’re in a world that’s really tough. The private sector is not going to solve this problem. I’m sorry to say this to all the private sector leaders here.  The key for the private sector is simply this: behave, pay your taxes, and follow the rules. That’s what businesses should do.  

What the governments should do is the following: 

First, the G20 should become the G21 by inviting the African Union to be the 21st member. The European Union is a member of the G20.  If we add the AU as the 21st member, making it the G21, we would add another 1.4 billion people to the G20 table.  

Second, we need an order-of-magnitude increase in development finance. According to the IMF, the rich countries have borrowed and spent around $17 trillion in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.  The poor countries have spent less than $2 trillion.  Rich countries can borrow on the capital markets at near-zero interest rates (or even negative rates for some countries in Europe). Yet the poor countries must pay 5% to 10% coupon rates, and many have no access to market borrowing at all.  

Covid-19 has exposed the grotesque inequality of access to market finance that poor countries face.  The US government spent roughly $7 trillion for emergency Covid-19 response with hardly any funds included for the rest of the world. It apparently didn’t cross the mind of the U.S. Congress to include even a few crumbs for the poorest of the poor of the world. 

The need for vastly more development financing is the message we should have just heard from the World Bank. Yet we didn’t hear that.  We didn’t hear any real numbers or financing solutions from the World Bank. 

The real financial needs of the developing countries in the coming decade are in trillions of dollars.  After all, the world economy is now at around $100 trillion a year of output.  Yet we don’t like to talk about the real financial needs of poor countries.  We need to massively increase the flow of development financing to the poor countries, and at near-zero interest rates like the rates paid by the rich countries.  With adequate financial flows to the poor countries, on adequate terms, we could get something done, including achieving the SDGs.  

By the way, in order to achieve universal coverage of Covid-19 vaccines in the coming months, what we really need is for the US Government to sit down with China, Russia, the European Union, and the United Kingdom to allocate the ongoing global monthly vaccine production in a fair and inclusive manner, rather than having a few rich countries hoard a disproportionate share of the vaccines (and then dispose of many vaccines when they hit their expiration date.) 

As a key outcome of the UN Food System Summit, we are going to have “national food system pathways.”  Such pathways are a wonderful idea, but the pathways are going to need adequate development financing. You want to increase access to electricity?  It will have to be financed. You want to promote access to digital services? This access will have to be financed.  You want to ensure access to safe water and irrigation?  It will have to be financed.  We need to link the SDGs – including universal access to healthy nutrition, safe water, green energy, and so on – with the requisite financing.  

The IMF has recently carried out some wonderful studies showing that the Low-Income Developing Countries (LIDCs) face an SDG financing gap of some $400 - $500 billion dollars a year.  Although the IMF has shown this gap, nobody has yet come up with a solution to close the financing gap. This wouldn’t be so hard to do, because $500 billion per year is not such a big number. It’s a mere 0.5% of annual world output.         If we really cared to find answers, we wouldn’t have the G7 promising to devote $3 billion to education, when UNESCO has shown that we need at least $30 billion dollars per year, minimum. But the rich-country governments don’t like to look at the real financial needs. They’d rather check the symbolic box that they’ve given some amount for education, even if it’s only a tenth of what is really needed.  We will need real financing, of the right order of magnitude, to back the national food system pathways. 

Third, we need the United Nations as the core and central institution of our world.  The only way we’re going to have a peaceful, civilized world is through a strong UN.  It’s absurd that the UN core budget is a mere $3 billion per year, when New York City’s budget is around $100 billion.  We chronically underfund the UN system and then ask, “Why don’t things work well?”  

The rich individuals are increasingly hoarding everything.  If the billionaires want to go to space, they could at least leave their money on Earth to solve the critical Earthbound problems.  We now have an estimated 2,775 billionaires with a combined net worth of around $13.1 trillion. I have it on good authority that you don’t need more than $1 billion to live comfortably.  Even if every billionaire kept $1 billion, that would leave around $10 trillion for ending hunger, poverty, and environmental destruction.  We should be taxing the vast and rapidly growing billionaire wealth to help finance a civilized world.  

傑弗裏·薩克斯：西方奴役非洲幾百年，還指責非洲發展失敗

 傑弗裏·薩克斯美國哥倫比亞大學教授 2022-01-13

【文/傑弗裏·薩克斯 譯/觀察者網 寧櫟】

今天，很多人指責剛果民主共和國這些非洲國家的貧窮。但是需要記住，從19世紀70年代開始，比利時國王利奧波德在剛果建立了殖民地，搞奴隸製。剛果被比利時國王奴役了40年，接著被比利時政府控製50年。二戰後，剛果獨立了，中情局就暗殺了受歡迎的領導人盧蒙巴，把獨裁者蒙博托扶上台。蒙博托統治了30多年。嘉能可等跨國公司用很少的費用，就在剛果大肆掠取鈷資源。

比利時殖民者在剛果用砍手等酷刑強迫剛果人勞動。(來源：ANTI-SLAVERY INTERNATIONAL)

這樣，我們怎麽能把問題歸結於剛果自身呢？我們要改變做法，不能把剛果交給私人企業。

一百年前我們就是那樣幹的，讓美國軍事力量支持的私企到處掠奪，包括聯合果品公司之類。聯合果品公司的法律顧問是美國國務卿約翰·杜勒斯，他的兄弟艾倫·杜勒斯當中情局長，兩人辦公室就在隔壁。為了保證聯合果品公司的利益，他們兩人策動美國政府推翻了危地馬拉政府。

現在我們需要改變。新的體製必須建立在人類尊嚴原則上，必須符合聯合國人權宣言，符合主權原則，尊重經濟權利。1948年，各國在聯合國同意獲得食品是基本權利、社會保障也是基本權利。

73年過去了，我們這一代人要達到可持續發展目標，履行對聯合國人權宣言的承諾。

美國不關心世界的窮人，甚至不關心本國的窮人。七分之一的美國人現在挨餓，窮人在受苦。但是共和黨隻關心為富人減稅，並阻撓任何真正的減貧方案。

這個世界現在很糟糕，私企不能解決問題。私企應該交稅、遵守規定，而政府應該做更多。現在政府不想做，但它們應該做。

第一，20國集團應該邀請非盟加入，應該變成21國集團。歐盟是20國集團成員，所以非盟也應該加入，這樣就能增加14億人來共同解決問題。這將能改變討論機製。

第二，大規模增加開發融資。根據IMF數據，富裕國家為新冠疫情融資並花掉了17萬億美元，而窮國花費很少。因為富國能在資本市場上用零利率融資，而窮國的融資利率高達5%至10%，甚至根本借不到。

這種不平衡很荒唐。過去一年，一半富國從來沒有說要緊縮。美國花了7萬億美元緊急資金，其中沒有一毛錢是幫助其他國家的。美國國會從來沒有考慮幫助其他國家的窮人。窮國借不到錢，世行應該有所行動，但什麽也沒有做。

富國能以零利率融資，窮國也應該能，我們應該增加融資規模。要是有充裕資金，窮國就能做點什麽。在疫苗問題上，美國應該和中國、俄羅斯、歐盟、英國合作，分配而不是囤積疫苗。我們製定了聯合國國家糧食係統途徑，但這些都要用錢。用電要花錢，網絡要花錢，供水也要花錢。IMF過去2年的研究表明，要達到可持續發展目標，目前融資缺口高達每年4千億到5千億美元。IMF提出了缺口，但沒有融資方案。這並不難做到，這個數字其實隻占全球總產出的大約0.5%到1%。

如果我們真的重視教育，七國集團就不會隻承諾花30億美元用於教育。聯合國教科文組織已經表明，每年至少需要300億美元。但發達國家不在乎，他們隻是假裝投資了教育。我們需要投入巨資，來支持聯合國國家糧食係統這一路徑的發展。

第三，聯合國應該作為世界的核心和中心機製。要促進世界和平和文明，就需要促進聯合國的強大。但是聯合國的基本預算隻有每年30億美元，遠少於鄰近的紐約市的每年1千億美元。有人經常問怎麽聯合國沒幹成事情，問題就在於資金不足。

最後，富人占有了太多資源。現在富人紛紛飛上太空，要是富人留在太空不回來，把錢留在地球，那會好很多。現在估計資產億萬的富翁有2775位，總資產約13.1萬億美元。一個人有10億美元就能生活得很舒適了，要是他們每個人留給自己10億美元，那還有11萬億美元能用於發展。我們應該對富人征稅，讓世界更美好。

（本文譯自2021年7月27日傑弗裏·薩克斯在聯合國糧食係統峰會預備會議的演講）