Jeffrey D Sachs, a world-renowned professor of economics and a global leader in health policy and sustainable development, is visiting Nepal this weekend at the invitation of the National Planning Commission (NPC), the apex body that frames the country’s development plans and policies.

Prof Sachs, who is visiting Nepal after 22 years, is scheduled to land in Kathmandu late Saturday night. He will leave Nepal late in the evening of Sunday.

During his nearly 24-hour stay in Nepal, he is expected to meet with Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, ministers, former finance ministers, top government officials, political leaders, academicians, civil society leaders and members of the diplomatic community.

He is also scheduled to hold discussion on Sustainable Development Goals with government secretaries and deliver a lecture to a special gathering on ‘Sustainable Development in an Uncertain World’ before his departure.

“We at the NPC are very excited to welcome and host Prof Sachs in Nepal. He is not only an economist of world-wide fame, but also a passionate advocate of the cause of sustainable development and a global thought leader on a wide range of topics, from health and climate change to trade and economic growth,” NPC Member Swarnim Wagle, who is coordinating the visit of Prof Sachs, told the Post.

Prof Sachs, who was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954, received his Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD degrees from Harvard University, and went on to become a full professor at the age of 28.

He then spent over 20 years as a professor at Harvard University, before moving to Columbia University in 2002, where he was appointed University Professor in 2016. Now, he also serves as Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University.

Prof Sachs, a globetrotter who has visited over 125 countries and is credited for helping Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru to end hyperinflations in the 1980s, has been to poorest countries in Africa and met with locals suffering from tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS.

He’s seen people dying just because they could not afford medical treatment costing as low as $1 per day. He’s also met with stunted kids, whose parents could not put two meals a day on the table.

These heartbreaking sights coupled with intellectual ferocity probably prompted him to shift his orientation from being a strict economic disciplinarian to an advocate of more equitable and inclusive society.

It is therefore not surprising that Prof Sachs became one of the intellectual fathers of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a United Nations-led initiative that aimed at halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education within 2015.

After success of the MDGs, Prof Sachs, who has advised dozens of heads of state and governments on economic strategy across the globe for over 30 years, has started focusing more on sustainable development.

This generation’s greatest challenge, he says, is sustainable development, meaning a nation that is prosperous, fair, and environmentally sustainable.

To him sustainable development is more than a checklist of policies. “It is a coherent idea that holds firmly that economic growth can and should be fair, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable. It calls for a society very different from the one we have today, where the elites run the show and the rest are compelled to scramble to make do the best they can,” he recently wrote.

Despite fighting for noble cause, he has drawn critics.

One of them is Nina Munk, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. She has closely followed Prof Sachs's Millennium Villages Project in Africa under which a number of sub-Saharan African villages were selected and interventions were made in areas such as agriculture, health and education to fight poverty.

In her book ‘The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty’, Munk has called Prof Sachs's work “well-intentioned, but ultimately naive theories about ending poverty in Africa”. He’s also been criticised as being too idealistic, and for placing high hopes on the efficacy of foreign aid or in top-down planning.

“I think these are simplistic criticisms of a man who is one of the most consequential economists of his generation. It takes an extraordinary talent and chutzpah to help shepherd economies away from abject mismanagement, poverty traps, and stagnant growth. Sachs has done this now across dozens of countries on five continents,” Wagle said, calling Prof Sachs a “people’s professor”.

During his previous visit to Nepal in August 1994, Prof Sachs had urged Nepal not to “remain aloof from the Indian market”, calling it “dynamic”. He had also said Arun III hydroelectric project should not come through foreign aid.

In an interview with a local magazine at that time, he had said: “Putting all the eggs in one basket of aid is not sound economics. Nepal should look for international private financing to fund such huge projects.”

“More than twenty years later, the leveraging of the economic rise of India and an accelerated pursuit of clean energy development remain high on our policy agenda,” Wagle said. “His visit is, therefore, apt and well-timed from multiple perspectives.”

Books authored by Jeffrey Sachs

The End of Poverty (2005)

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008)

The Price of Civilization (2011)

To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace (2013)

The Age of Sustainable Development (2015)