International aid programmes are in crisis, with governments around the world failing to honour funding promises, individual donors sceptical about aid policies and wealthy philanthropists losing money in the economic turmoil.

Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the United Nations, told The Times: “We have a terrible situation because the overall aid system is on its knees and that was true even before this global economic crisis.”

Professor Sachs said that the commitments made in 2005 as part of the Gleneagles agreement, when the G8 group of the world's richest nations agreed to substantial debt relief and a commitment to increase aid to Africa, have not been fulfilled.

“Promises that were made in 2005 are our benchmark with very specific time-bound commitments,” he said. “Europe is not meeting them, the United States is not really at the table properly, Japan has been cutting aid relentlessly and this is a very serious problem.”

He added that the economic downturn will have dire consequences for the poorest nations. “It has recently been reported that the number of deeply hungry people has risen to nearly a billion,” he said. “There is an energy crisis, a continuing food crisis, a global economic crisis and aid efforts that are definitely flagging at best.”

Professor Sachs's work as adviser to Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, has led him to argue strongly the case for aid as the key to economic development. “There are a tremendous number of things that can be done and aren't being done,” he said. “And we are really emphasising the need to step up aid in magnitude and intensity but also to improve the quality of aid.”

Professor Sachs is critical of suggestions that it is more important for developing countries to secure a trade agreement in the World Trade Organisation talks than to be given more aid. He said: “Trade issues are not the most important issues, actually.

“I can tell you that the problems of the poorest countries are the need for basic infrastructure, roads, power, skills, education, water, climate resilience and foreign partnerships that will come along in co-operation with the private sector.

“The markets are not perfectly open and there are some egregious abuses — for instance in cotton, where African countries are competitive but face completely unjustifiable barriers in Europe and the US. However, it is not right to think that they are the main obstacles.

“Markets are open enough, but the problem is the low productivity in the poorest regions that reflects the lack of critical capital.”

Professor Sachs has sought to raise the profile of Africa and its developmental needs among government leaders and the public. Time magazine recently dubbed him a “celebrity economist” after he travelled to Africa with celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Bono and showed them around his many projects.

He cautions, though, that the earlier momentum could stall with the threat of recession and a public that is more sceptical and more scrutinising of the effects of aid policy.

“I think in many cases there is too much talk and not enough action, and too much theorising and not enough practical results,” he said.

Professor Sachs adds that “by being very focused and identifying specific needs and opportunities, we can win the public support that is vital for an on-going aid programme.”

He is also concerned that philanthropic foundations, such as his own Earth Institute at Columbia University in the US, will find funding difficult in the future. The academic says that the world is experiencing “a remarkable loss of wealth unprecedented in modern times”. As a consequence, virtually every philanthropic foundation is finding its revenue streams squeezed and he describes a similar situation among universities.

Professor Sachs is head of the UN's Millennium Project, which provides research to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, which are to reduce poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women by 2015.

The goals were signed up to by 189 UN countries, including the UK and the US. Professor Sachs is highly critical of the US Administration for its failure to support the meeting of these pledges.

His comments come in the same week that the World Bank has published its annual development report. In a press conference, Justin Lin, its chief economist, said: “We know that, in developing countries, every 1 per cent reduction in the growth rate will mean that about 20 million people will lose the opportunity to get out of poverty.”

The World Bank has recently downgraded its annual growth prospects for developing countries to 4.5 per cent for this year, it having been 7.9 per cent in 2007.

On current trends, it is unlikely that many of the development goals will be achieved — but Professor Sachs believes that the targets can be met and his Millennium Cities and Villages Initiatives will demonstrate how this is possible.

CV: Jeffrey Sachs

Born: November 5, 1954
Education: BA, Harvard, 1976; MA, Harvard, 1978; PhD, Harvard, 1980
Career: Director of the Earth Institute, Columbia University. Special adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Millennium Project. In 2004 and 2005, Time named him among 100 most influential people in the world
Books include: The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilites for our Time and Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. What they say about Sachs: “In [Sachs’s] view, Western experts like himself can solve world poverty by bringing their superior technical knowledge to the locals,” William Easterly, Professor of Economics, New York University, said in The Lancet, in April 2006

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