'I'm thrilled at the quality of material being produced'.

• Author: Sutter, Noel
• Position: Towards a Global Partnership for Development - Jeff Sachs - Interview

Academic institutions join in the determination to help solve the world's most challenging problems as realization is sought of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Columbia University's Earth Institute creates knowledge on global well-being and sustainability by integrating earth, life and social sciences in ways that no other institution in the world can be said to have done before. And at the centre of it all is Jeff Sachs.

Noel Sutter spoke with Jeff Sachs on behalf of the Chronicle.

Jeff, you have already accomplished so much! And now you are Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General and, at the same time, Director of Columbia's Earth Institute, where you can steer research Into areas of your choosing. Is this one of the most exciting opportunities you have ever had?

Well certainly, you have got it exactly right. This is a dream of a combination of responsibilities. I am absolutely thrilled to be taking on both. The connections between them are so powerful and I think they are going to be so fruitful, it's really thrilling.

What successes in the fight against global poverty brighten your spirits the most?

This is not a good period for the poorest of the poor. So I think the successes in there have to be seen against the backdrop of a very grave crisis. The AIDS pandemic is the most significant pandemic in modern history. It has already claimed more than 25 million lives, and the world has not done a good job responding. However, there have been successes. In economic development, China, a country with 1.3 billion people, has been the most striking because of its significant increase on economic well-being. And in the past decade we've seen much economic progress in India and in many other places. We have also seen some important successes in the fight against disease. Partnerships to fight leprosy, African river blindness and Guinea worm have proven successful. But when you add it all up, I say the balance is more troubling than positive, because of the profound gap between what we could be accomplishing and what we have accomplished so far. We have a lot of work to do and absolutely no right or time to congra tulate ourselves on accomplishments. Rather, it's time to get to the hard work of actually achieving the goals that we, as a world community, have set for ourselves but so far have not mobilized to achieve. So political will starts with the broad realization that we have to attend to our future in a more serious and...