Our pick of charities that effectively do good
[This is the 2nd of a series of articles from the SASSE Sustainability Group from the Stockholm School of Economics concerning the global Effective Altruism movement]
We explored the fundamentals of Effective Altruism in our 1st article, where we particularly established that the movement is focused on evidence-based strategies to combat the most pressing problems in the world. In this article, we would like to introduce you to 4 well-known problem areas and provide you with recommendations on effective charities to donate to. The cost-effective work of all the following charities has been proven empirically, such that they are regularly pointed out as forerunners for well-deployed donations. Moreover, those charities act with outstanding transparency, which is essential to ensure their responsible use of resources.
Climate is one of the most pressing areas that we are all aware of ever since the global Fridays for Future movement. Depending on the extent of global warming, we must expect an abundance of threats rooted to climate change. Amongst those are food and water shortages, large scale displacements of vulnerable populations, and decreased global stability. Apart from impacts on mankind, climate change is also likely to induce extreme harm to biodiversity and environmental disasters.
Tradewater is a charity that has just been recently established in 2016. It aims to find cost-effective opportunities to buy up and destroy greenhouse gases in large scale in order to prevent them from being released into the atmosphere. The destruction of 1 tonne of C02e (CO2 equivalent) by Tradewater currently costs around $15. They have been able to eliminate 4.7m tonnes of CO2 thus far, which corresponds to the annual power production for 800,000 houses. While many of the dangerous gases that are up to 10,000 times more potent than regular carbon dioxide are nowadays prohibited to be further produced, there is still an abundance of existing emissions that must be dealt with. Tradewater’s processes are externally verified, such that the successful destruction is ensured.
A shocking 2.8 trillion animals are killed for food alone each year. Although most experts agree that animals display some signs of sentience, it remains an open question to which degree different animals are sentient and therefore how we should compare welfare between species. Despite the great scale and importance of this issue, this focus area is highly neglected: animal charities receive only 3% of charitable donations, and 99% of that money is focused on pets, who make up less than 0.1% of all domesticated animals.
The Albert Schweitzer Foundation (ASF) was rated a top charity by the Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) which seeks to identify and promote the most effective ways to improve the lives of animals. ASF strives to improve the animal welfare standards through its corporate outreach, corporate campaigns, as well as legal work. They mainly target the welfare of chickens farmed for their meat and farmed fish. They also work with companies (distributors, producers, and restaurants) to promote plant-based alternatives to animal products. ASF is able to build capacity for the movement by organizing workshops and training sessions, and in 2019 it was labeled “one of the most cost-effective animal advocacy organizations in the world.”.
According to the Breadfortheworld Institute, around 3bn people worldwide are currently undernourished due to hunger (~800m) and vitamin/ mineral deficiencies (~2bn). The UN Sustainable Development Goals, established in 2015, aim to end global hunger and malnutrition by the end of 2030. However, the situation since 2015 has actually worsened, leaving tremendous progress to be made, mostly due to problems induced by climate change. The covid-crisis further amplified this global inequality and put further pressure on the poorest. The global food system encompassing players such as farmers, transporters, retail operations, and consumers is incredibly complex and requires intervention on a large scale to grant everyone access to an adequate and healthy diet.
Helen Keller International is one of the key actors in combating malnutrition, running a Vitamin A supplementation program. Vitamin A deficiency is a leading cause of blindness for children and substantial risks of infections that can lead to death. This deficiency is particularly prevalent in Africa and Southeast Asia, where around 180m young children between the age of 6 months to 5 years are affected. A single supplement provided by Helen Keller International costs $1.23 and is empirically shown to reduce blindness and mortality by 12% to 24%. The highly cost-effective supplement must only be provided two to three times per year per child.
Malaria, a life-threatening parasitic disease transmitted through infected mosquitos is one of the most devastating diseases in human history. In 2019 alone a staggering 409,000 people died of malaria — most of whom were young children in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is estimated that one child under the age of five dies of malaria every two minutes. 229m clinical episodes of malaria were estimated that year and from 2010 to 2019, the scale-up of interventions has cut malaria mortality by 44%, leading to hopes of a malaria-free future. Given the large scale of the problem, it has unsurprisingly gotten a lot of support and attention around the world. As established before, EA focuses on the cost-effectiveness of intervention methods, and there is actually a huge discrepancy between different treatment methods of Malaria.
And this leads us to the Against Malaria Foundation which focuses entirely on bed nets as it is one of the most cost-effective ways of reducing the harm inflicted by malaria. Each net, costing about $2.50, lasts for three to four years and protects on average two people. AMF purchases long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs) and ships them to their distribution partners who they themselves identify and select. These partners are mainly non-profit organizations or government agencies. One of AMF’s major strengths apart from its cost-effectiveness comes from its transparency with regards to its continued monitoring of partners and evaluation of its own performance. It does so by collecting data on each of its distributions and making this available to the public for scrutiny.
Sources: Effective Altruism Sweden, Givewell, Givingwhatwecan, Tradewater, The Albert Schweitzer Foundation, Helen Keller International, Against Malaria Foundation, Breadfortheworld Institute
