Last October Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York wrote a very interesting article for The Economist.

In it he suggested that the US should spend more money on strengthening the bits of the UN that are world-class at tackling humanity's biggest problems - such as AIDS (UNAIDS), education (UNICEF), the environment (UNEP) + health (WHO) - rather than relying on spending vast amounts of time and money on problems such as "terrorism" or Weapons of Mass Destruction in order to make the world a safer place.

Jeffrey also points out that solutions should be applied at the appropriate scale, make use of the best available science, be responsive to specific local knowledge + conditions and applied selectively so that the biggest problems are hit the hardest.

(via Ruminations)