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Let them eat organic cake
Organic food is often presented as a great way to ensure health, improve animal welfare and help the environment. In reality, it is mostly marketing hype, as Bjorn Lomborg points out in his column for Britain's biggest quality daily newspaper The Telegraph.
Organic foods are not significantly more nutritious than conventional foods, they don't avoid pesticides, emit about as much greenhouse gasses as a conventional product, increase soil acidification, and need to occupy 84% more land which then can’t be used for forests and nature.
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Top priorities: TB, infant nutrition, e-government
After considering well over 1,000 pages of new evidence on the costs and benefits of Bangladeshi policy options, an eminent panel including a Nobel laureate economist and three top Bangladeshi economic experts announced a prioritized list of investments that would produce phenomenal benefits for Bangladesh.
The project Bangladesh Priorities: Smarter Solutions for Bangladesh applies the Copenhagen Consensus methodology to spending priorities for Bangladesh. Nobel laureate and Eminent Panel member Prof. Finn Kydland said: "I am excited to see Bangladesh leading the world in using this approach for national priority-setting. It is a framework that can only improve policy outcomes."
The eminent panel, from right to left: KAS Murshid (Director General BIDS), Finn Kydland (Nobel Laureate economist), Mushtaque Chowdhury (Vice-chair BRAC), Selima Ahmad (founder of BWCCI) and Bjorn Lomborg
The conference in Dhaka, at which the prioritized list of 72 policy interventions was presented, was covered by all of Bangladesh's leading media, including Dhaka Tribune, New Age, Financial Express, The Independent, Bonik Barta and Ekushey Television.
The country's biggest newspaper Prothom Alo and Samakal published interviews with Prof. Kydland, and Bjorn Lomborg told Dhaka Tribune that spending just 1% of the Bangladeshi budget on smarter policies could make Bangladesh Tk 3.7 trillion better off over five years.
The research has since been presented to top-level policy-makers in Bangladesh, including Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith (left) and Nojibur Rahman, Chairman of the National Board of Revenue (second from right).
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The Evidence on Education Reforms
What are the smartest educational policies a developing country could adopt? New research for Bangladesh Priorities highlights that fashionable projects such as providing laptops to pupils are very ineffective. In contrast, early childhood interventions to help disadvantaged children can make a great difference. Each dollar spent produces $35 of social benefits.
Read Bjorn Lomborg's column for Project Syndicate in five languages. It was published by newspapers around the world, including New Times (Rwanda), Philippine Daily Inquirer and La Nacion (Costa Rica).
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Bjorn Lomborg presents the research for Bangladesh Priorities: Smarter Solutions for Bangladesh in the country's biggest English-language newspaper, Daily Star:
 
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The project's research has also been published in the biggest Bangla newspaper Prothom Alo as a series of 24 articles. The most recent publications include articles on nutrition, public services in Dhaka, climate change, transportation and health.
Lomborg also wrote several features for Financial Express (here is his latest on health) and one of the biggest Bangla newspapers, Bangladesh Pratidin.
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