Over the next 15 years, some two billion children will be born, 90% in the poorest parts of the world. Providing these kids with a better start would be one of the greatest achievements that humanity could make. Doing so also would be one of the most efficient uses of the resources that the world dedicates to development.

Over the last 15 years, India has experienced large strides in its development, not the least urged by the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for 2015. Impressively, India has reached the target of halving the proportion of people in poverty in 2011-12, well ahead of this year’s deadline. From almost half of all Indians below $1.25 per day in 1994, more than three in four are now above the poverty line. (...)

In developing countries more than three-quarters of food waste occurs before it reaches consumers, through inefficient agriculture. 

Pope Francis’s much-vaunted Encyclical is rightly concerned with helping the world’s poorest. Climate change will have a bigger impact on poorer people. But the real question is which policies and investments would make the biggest difference for the most vulnerable.

The Pope derides those who have “blind faith” in technological advances as a solution to climate change. Instead, his encyclical declares that the world must stop consuming so much. That, he says, will help the poor people who stand to be affected most by global warming. That is troubling, because technical innovation is exactly what we need more of.

One-quarter of all the food in the world is lost each year, owing to inefficient harvesting, inadequate storage, and wastage in the kitchen. Halve that waste, and the world could feed an extra billion people – and make hunger yesterday’s problem.

Copenhagen Consensus Center Director Bjorn Lomborg explains how the United Nations can set rational goals for its next antipoverty agenda.