Later this week, world leaders will gather in New York at the United Nations to endorse international development goals for the next 15 years. It is the culmination of a four-year process for setting priorities to help the world’s most disadvantaged people—a process beset from the start by horse-trading, haggling and endless consultation. In a bid not to offend anyone, the new development agenda is expected to include an incredible 169 targets for investment. Giving priority to 169 things is the same as giving priority to nothing at all.

At the end of this month, one of the most consequential political conferences of the decade will take place, with more than 150 world leaders gathering in New York to set the path for global development spending – more than $2.5 trillion – between now and 2030. But, in fact, heads of state are not expected to do much at the conference at all. With the so-called Agenda for Sustainable Development having been quietly finalized by diplomats and United Nations bureaucrats last month, the leaders are expected just to smile for the cameras and sign on the dotted line.

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.