Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. Between 2005 and 2007 I completed an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. I worked for five years for the Canadian federal government, including completing the Accelerated Economist Training Program, and then completed a PhD in Political Science at the University of Toronto in 2023.

Malaria’s lifelong economic impact

Successful campaigns to eradicate malaria have been studied in a number of different countries. Each of these studies compares high-malaria-prevalence regions in the country with low-prevalence regions and checks what happens to children born in this areas before and after the campaign. They all find that life outcomes (such as education or earnings) of children born after the campaign in areas where malaria was once prevalent catch up with those of children born in low-incidence areas. This strongly suggests that eradicating malaria indeed results in a reduction in long-term poverty, although the effects are not nearly as large as those suggested by Jeffrey Sachs: One study on malaria eradication in the U.S. South (which had malaria until 1951) and several countries in Latin America suggests that a child who grew up malaria-free earns 50 percent more per year, for his entire adult life, compared to a child who got the disease. Qualitatively similar results were found in India, Paraguay, and Sri Lanka, although the magnitude of the gain varies from country to country.

Banerjee, Abhijit V. and Esther Duflo. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. Hachette; New York. 2011. p. 45

British Columbia’s 2020 election

I’m not celebrating NDP premier John Horgan’s successful gamble on an election to secure a majority government. For one thing, I think minority governments which sometimes seek support from the Greens are likely to enact more responsible climate change policies. For another, I have been consistently frustrated by the NDP’s inconsistent and inadequate positions on climate change.

Both federally and provincially I think it would be desirable for the left-wing parties (Liberals, NDP, and Greens) to adopt a Pact for Humanity in which they pledge to at least keep in place their predecessors’ climate change mitigation policies. That would help give some certainty to industries, municipalities, and individuals who are deciding whether to invest in fossil fuel infrastructure or alternatives. Of course, there would still be uncertainty from possible future Conservative governments which will roll everything back, but it’s better than having the left remain split on what approach to take and left-wing parties competing with each other about whether to support industry at the expense of the environment, keep tightening carbon restrictions in line with the best scientific and economic advice, or keep jumping unproductively between one approach to GHG regulation and another.

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