Bill Gates: don't let climate change fight take money from health

Bill Gates has called on science and technology to play a leading role in helping to improve the lives of those in poverty, in his 2010 annual letter as co-chair of the world's largest charitable foundation.



The annual letter, issued today on the website of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the charitable body Gates runs with his wife and his father, said that investment in science and technology can make more of a difference than charity and government aid alone.

In his 19-page letter, Gates says the foundation currently is backing 30 areas of innovation including online learning, teacher improvement, malaria vaccine development, HIV prevention, and genetically modified seeds.

The Seattle-based foundation focuses most of its donations on global health, agriculture development and education. Since 1994, the foundation has committed to $21.3billion (£13.2billion) in grants. As of Sept. 30, 2009, its endowment totalled $34.17billion (£21.16billion).

'Melinda and I see our foundation's key role as investing in innovations that would not otherwise be funded,' he wrote. 'This draws not only on our backgrounds in technology but also on the foundation's size and ability to take a long-term view and take large risks on new approaches.'

Much of the letter discusses the foundation's work in the area of health, especially relating to his stated goal of eradicating malaria. Bed nets are helping decrease malaria deaths over Africa, he said, but 'malaria is a particularly tricky disease.' The foundation has resorted to a very expensive scattershot approach, with many researchers pursuing a lot of different ideas.


Despite having one vaccine in a Phase III trial, an effective malaria vaccine is still 8 to 15 years away, he said.

Gates he also warned against letting the efforts to combat climate change take money away from other causes. He wrote: 'The final communiqué of the Copenhagen Summit, held last December, talks about mobilizing $10 billion per year in the next three years and $100 billion per year by 2020 for developing countries, which is over three quarters of all foreign aid now given by the richest countries.

'I am concerned that some of this money will come from reducing other categories of foreign aid, especially health. If just 1 percent of the $100 billion goal came from vaccine funding, then 700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases.'

He added that he believes developing electricity that is cheaper than coal and emits no greenhouse gasses is the most important innovation to help fight climate change, but the foundation has not yet found a way it can play a unique role in this area - although outside of the foundation he personally is investing in energy research.

'I am surprised that the climate debate hasn't focused more on encouraging R&D, since it is critical to getting to zero emissions,' he wrote.