Inside a clinic in southern Malawi, dozens of children were lying in comas and suffering from cerebral malaria. Yet, the disease could have been completely cured with a series of pills that cost $1.

"This is what I mean by extreme poverty: You are fighting for sheer survival, day in and day out," said renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs, who delivered the 2006 Jill and Ken Iscol Distinguished Environmental Lecture April 21 to an overflow crowd in the David L. Call Auditorium in Kennedy Hall at Cornell.

Sachs described how extreme poverty, defined by hunger and disease, is afflicting more than a billion people in sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, the prolonged destitution in the region has robbed the area of its ability to prosper again. Breaking this "poverty trap," he noted, will require foreign investments to improve agriculture, health and infrastructure.

Sachs is the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and a professor of health policy and management at Columbia University. He directs the United Nations Millennium Project and is a special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the project's goals to cut global poverty in half by 2015. He received the Sargent Shriver Award for Equal Justice in 2005 and was named among the 100 most influential world leaders by Time Magazine in both 2004 and 2005.

Drawing parallels with the struggles for civil rights and abolishing slavery, Sachs called extreme poverty "the challenge of our time." People tend to blame corrupt African governments, said Sachs, but in his view corruption is not the main cause of poverty.

"Development is not a morality story. It is an investment story," said Sachs, noting that well-directed foreign aid can lead countries out of the poverty trap. Sachs outlined three areas where funding should be focused: green revolution, health revolution and connectivity revolution (such as roads and railways).

Green revolution, for example, is a package of technologies aimed at relieving the current crop production crisis in Africa, Sachs explained. By applying such techniques as high-yield crop varieties, fertilizer and irrigation, the farmers could potentially produce eight times the current yield, as one study showed. But the poorest farmers need fresh investments to get started.

"I don't understand how we can let people grow the same crop, year after year, when we know it is biophysically not viable," said Sachs, warning that the situation is dire after years of neglect and nutrient mining.

As the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, Sachs is testing out his own ideas with the Millennium Village Project, which partners scientists with local authorities to apply modern technology in model villages.

"The idea is to operate in each ecological zone of Africa so we understand the different issues," said Sachs. "We want to know what underlying investments can crack the poverty trap." Currently there are two research villages in Kenya and Ethiopia and 10 additional villages are planned.

Sachs said he believes the key is to stick with practical solutions: "Poverty can be ended, and it is a matter of our decision to do so," said Sachs.

The annual lecture was founded by Cornell alumnus Ken Iscol, ILR '60, and his wife, Jill. They also started the Iscol Family Program for Leadership Development in Public Service in the College of Human Ecology.

Graduate student Alex Kwan is a writer intern at the Cornell News Service.