Author: Jeffrey Sachs Jeffrey Sachs, born in 1954 in Detroit, Michigan, USA, is a renowned development economist and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He gained public recognition as the director of the UN Millennium Project for global poverty alleviation. He has advised governments worldwide, including in Latin America and post-communist Poland and Russia, where he helped implement market-oriented reforms. Sachs is the president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, co-chair of the Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican, and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development. Contributions by: Oskar Lafontaine Oskar Lafontaine was born on September 16, 1943, in Saarlouis. Two years later, he lost his father, who died as a soldier at the age of 29. Throughout his political career, he served as the mayor of Saarbrücken, the minister-president of Saarland, chairman of the SPD, chancellor candidate, and federal minister of finance. In March 1999, he resigned from all his political offices in the SPD in protest against the government policy of Gerhard Schröder. He was the founding chairman of the party DIE LINKE, which was established on his initiative from the PDS and the Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG), chairman of the Left faction in the German Bundestag, and the lead candidate in the Saarland state elections in 2009, 2012, and 2017. Until his departure from the party in March 2022, he led the Left faction in the Saarland state parliament since 2009.