Economist: Putting the world to rights: What would be the best ways to spend additional resources on helping the developing countries?

IN RECENT weeks The Economist has been following and supporting the Copenhagen Consensus project—an unusual, ambitious and, some have argued, misguided attempt to set priorities among a range of ideas for improving the lives of people living in developing countries. Starting on April 17th, we began publishing, both in print and on our website*, reviews of essays commissioned by the organisers from leading economic researchers. Each of the papers addressed one of ten global challenges, and proposed possible responses. During May 24th-28th, a panel of distinguished economists assembled in Copenhagen. Their task was to review these papers alongside critical commentaries commissioned from other researchers, to question the various authors, and to decide what to make of it all.
The organising idea was that resources are scarce and difficult choices among good ideas therefore have to be made. How should a limited amount of new money for development initiatives, say an extra $50 billion, be spent? Would it be possible to reach agreement on what should be done first?. . .
At an earlier stage, the panel had narrowed a much larger number of development challenges, drawn from assessments of the United Nations and its agencies, down to just ten:

•Civil conflicts
•Climate change
•Communicable diseases
•Education
•Financial stability
•Governance
•Hunger and malnutrition
•Migration
•Trade reform
•Water and sanitation

That list itself was somewhat controversial, mainly because of what it left out. (“Why nothing on the role of women?” the panel was repeatedly asked by the press during the course of the week.) But the list of ten challenges will strike many as less surprising than the prioritised list of policies that the panel then drew up. . . .
In fact, by the ordinary standards of project appraisal, [the best proposals] are not just very good but extraordinarily good, with benefits exceeding costs by a factor of ten or more, and sometimes much more. That proposals this good should fail to be adopted for lack of finance is a scandal, especially when you reflect on some of the projects that governments are currently financing.
The bottom of the list, however, aroused more in the way of hostile comment. Rated “bad”, meaning that costs were thought to exceed benefits, were all three of the schemes put before the panel for mitigating climate change, including the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions. (The panel rated only one other policy bad: guest-worker programmes to promote immigration, which were frowned upon because they make it harder for migrants to assimilate.) This gave rise to suspicion in some quarters that the whole exercise had been rigged. Mr Lomborg is well-known, and widely reviled, for his opposition to Kyoto."