Q & A Press conference Copenhagen Consensus

The challenges
Copenhagen Consensus analyses 10 very serious challenges. Is it realistic that the 10 challenges treated in Copenhagen Consensus can be described and analysed adequately?
The 10 challenges are described by experts within each topic. These experts are expected to have a complete overview of the challenge, the opportunities solving the challenge and the academic treatment of the problem. Therefore, the papers condense the most up-to-date knowledge of the costs and benefits of opportunities solving the challenge. No new knowledge as such will be produced but an until now unseen overview of the best and most up-to-date knowledge of the challenges and their solution will be produced.

Why only select 10 challenges?
The selection of 10 challenges is due to time constraints. With 10 challenges the expert panel will have a full morning- or afternoon-session discussing each challenge. In the ideal world it would be better to treat more of the challenges and their opportunities in order to be able to prioritise between them, but Copenhagen Consensus should be seen as a start of that way of thinking.

How are the challenges selected?
The challenges are selected by the expert panel on the basis of a gross list of challenges. The gross list is produced based on UN activities and quality insured by two Danish focus groups. It consists of approximately 30 challenges with a brief description of the challenge based on mainly UN material. The focus groups – one with economists and one with non-economists – consists of approximately 15 Danish highly skilled researchers within the social sciences and the natural sciences, businesspeople, authors etc.

Lately, we have been told that a large number of species will be exterminated within the next century due to global warming. Why is biodiversity not selected as a challenge?
This is the choice of the experts. We haven’t got resources to include all the challenges and it is hard to say that any of the 10 selected challenges should have been omitted. Also, if the climate change paper assess the cost of biodiversity loss as substantial it would be included as a cost.

Terrorism is not included as a challenge? Why is that?
The outcome of Copenhagen Consensus will be a prioritized list of opportunities – or solutions – to some of the World’s biggest challenges. There does not seem to be a solution to terrorism as such.

How can you compare challenges as different as Climate Change, Hunger and Financial Instability?
By allocating the resources as we do it today we are in fact making a prioritisation. The goal of Copenhagen Consensus is to make that prioritisation better by comparing the challenges and their opportunities in a common measure.

What is the relation between the 8 UN Millennium Development goals and the challenges?
The UN Millennium Development goals (see: http://www.developmentgoals.org) were used in the process of creating the gross list of challenges.

The expert panel
8 of the 9 experts are from American universities. Why?
American universities host many of the worlds best economists. In the last ten years 20 economist have received the Nobel Prize. 15 of the Nobel Prizes have gone to economists with US citizenship. No women have ever received the prize. Only one developing country citizen (Amartya Sen, 1998) has received the prize.

None of the economists in the expert panel are specialised in environmental economics?
As above: The expert’s task is to prioritise a wide range of very different challenges and opportunities. This demands high academic standards and a wide experience with different areas of applied economics. The experts in the panel all possess such qualifications. (Both Schelling and Rose-Ackerman have written articles and books on environmental issues).

Why is there only one woman in the expert-panel?
Economics is dominated by men. We have striven to bring up the number of women but it has been difficult to find female economists with the right skills. Until now, no woman has received the Nobel Prize in economics.

The Copenhagen Consensus process
The participants of Copenhagen Consensus are all economists. Why are there no scientists from the natural sciences?
Copenhagen Consensus is about prioritisation the scarce resources, and economics is the right tool to do that. It should be noted, however, that the analyses all rely on input from the natural sciences. So the natural sciences are represented in CC indirectly.

CC mainly deals with problems of poor nations. But 8 out of 9 from the expert panel are from Western countries. This makes CC a project for the élite. Why are there so few representatives from poor nations? Why not invite more participants from the 3. World?
Many of the World’s most respected economists live in Western countries. Some economists originating from developing countries have moved to Western countries because of the high standards of the academic environment on many universities in e.g