Jeffrey Sachs, a recognized world expert on sustainable development, professor at Columbia University and senior advisor to the UN, will receive an honorary master's degree in Management - Green Economy and Sustainability on Monday 12 February in Brescia. The acknowledgment comes from the University of Brescia and promises to be an event of absolute importance for the Italian scientific community, the world of energy and the green economy. With his studies, Sachs correlated the development of sustainable economy with the social doctrine of the Church. He has critiqued the self-defeating forms of modern capitalism and has twice earned a listing among Time magazine's 100 most influential leaders in the world. Some have called him the greatest economic engineer after Keynes and others the most important economist in the world.
In fact, as he argued in a meeting at the Pontifical Academy – the social doctrine of the church offers a crucial path towards a global ethic of sustainable development. A very suggestive vision, but which must be placed in relation to the virtuous behavior of thousands of companies that deal with climate change and the protection of the planet. The University of Brescia has long been involved in the topics of the UN 2030 Agenda with seminars and conferences. Sachs on Monday also testifies to this course of study.
The ceremony will open with greetings from the Minister of Education, University and Research, Valeria Fedeli and the Rector Maurizio Tira. The professor. Raffaele Miniaci will pronounce the laudatio which for the academic body is one of the highest moments of the participation of the Lombard University in the international network on sustainability. In the motivation for the degree, we read that Sachs "author of numerous scientific publications on sustainable economic development issues of international importance, winner of the "Blue Planet Prize" in 2015, award for leadership in environmental issues, is recognized as one of the world's leading experts on the issues of economic development, the fight against poverty, hunger and disease".
Interpreting the thought of Pope Francis - one of his main admirers - and in the search for a way out between neoliberalism and neo-statism, prof. American recognizes the right to private property, but in an ethical context made up of universal and acceptable values. In his books he agrees on the opportunities created by scientific and technological progress, on the market economy, on global exchanges. Without these factors, the world does not progress. Successes in every field, however, must not create other imbalances.
Irreparable damage is done, at the origin of wars, rebellions and new planetary poverty. In one of his best-selling books – The Age of Sustainable Development – the theme of global growth is welded with fear. The idea of sustainable development finds its roots in a completely new way of interpreting climate change, the relationships between peoples, between rich and poor, between those who produce and those who consume, between those who would like to and who cannot. Something more than seductive development programs designed by those who experience business and the economy as an "economy of abuse just to obtain wealth and put unlimited greed first". To quote a sentence that Sachs pronounced in front of Pope Francis.
