Personal vanity misconstrued as philanthropy? More seriously, lots. Any sustainable increase in South East Asian rice yields would help alleviate rural poverty for six hundred million people or so. In term of cost effectiveness endowing an institution to find means of achieving that with the intent of marrying it to environmental best practices probably revolves around optimising crop mixes, adjusting for soil particularities and making allowances for the addition of animals and trees/palms to the mix. I'm inclined to believe that the existing system left-over from earlier efforts ignores regional particularities to such an extent that it actually handicaps production. What works in volcanic Java doesn't necessarily work in shallow soiled Sumatra.
Results would then be disseminated to the people via existent NGOs and government agencies with the resulting adjustments made over decadal horizons largely by the people themselves. Teams of researchers might also be despatched to targeted areas to support the change-over. Model farms might also be established. Affecting improvements to agricultural yields is now best achieved by this kind of approach as most of the low hanging fruit like improved access to fertilisers et. al. have already been attained. Really, all we can do now is tweak at the existing system optimising for the particular contextual features already present.
I guess my willingness to retain control over this is informed by my own observations: (1) most NGOs operate over short horizons to adequately handle this task; (2) I can't think of an existent entity that would cater to these goal; (3) governments are no use as they have an irascible urge to re-task long term projects like this for short term electoral or otherwise goals; (4) while I'm human I'm not under the same pressures to preform, if the outcome takes twenty years then that's fine by me, it was never envisioned to be a quick fix; (5) I don't have to keep donors interests either; and (5) I'm not likely to pull the funding on my own project either.
As to my other goals. Well, I'm not sure what would fix Aboriginal disadvantage in Australia. There is a need for more quantifiable data and I believe that with a fairly modest endowment I could set about rectifying that lacuna. I'm not about to spend money on a problem without knowing what first to spend it on. If I put a substantial amount of that money under lock and key until that day, that's fine. I want to have the highest possible bang for my buck I can.
I also figure that a billion dollars would allow me to purchase concessions to vast swathes of Kalimantan's rainforests. I would do this partly out of legitimate environmental concern, the desire to make some money through properly tourism and in doing so legitimise this kind of conservation as both an economically and environmentally desirable thing to do and finally because tree-clearing is a personally affronting to me because it generates such a pathetically low economic return with little to no visible upside. You need to make money out of something before you can really attach a new value to it. A few hundred dollars per old growth tree is pissing away a huge potential steam of revenue in the long run. People need to be shown that in practice.
I'm also a firm believer in education the benefits of which are pretty obvious.
I'll admit that putting money aside for Early Southeast Asian history is probably a touch vain. But, really, its what I do. I figure it wouldn't hurt anyone if a fairly modest sliver of my money was put towards something that would gain me a measure of personal and professional satisfaction in addition to enriching humanity's store of knowledge.
Good for you. Can you guarantee that your selfless approach would actually achieve anything more than mine?
Sure, so would I. I'd just choose to live in comfort surrounded by books with a fast internet connection so I could be up to date with the boys on the ground.
Because endowing charitable institutions albeit under your titular control for the sole intent of philanthropic purposes is greedy.
I guess you're right.
