Apocalyptic reports about rising sea levels and shrinking job prospects roll in by the hour. They announce that just as lower-earning factory workers are the ones displaced by robotic workers, climate change will push aside less affluent communities that cannot afford to move or invest in infrastructure to protect themselves. Just as the poor and already marginalized have borne the brunt of past social problems, these same groups will be faced with more challenges in the future.

In the face of such daunting problems, some would call it quits. Yet Jon Shaffer, Executive Director of the Boston Network for International Development (BNID) and Ph.D. student in Sociology at Boston University, is optimistic. He thinks that everyone sitting in a place of privilege has an obligation to help make the world a better place. “We should be critical based on a study of how we think about global health and development,” Shaffer says. “But I think we can do that.”

Working as the Executive Director at BNID allows Shaffer to do just that. The Boston Network for International Development is a platform for discussion, a place for siloed projects and people in the development sphere to come together. While speaking with Shaffer, it was clear to me that he is an expert not only on global health, but also at engaging an audience to think more deeply about their beliefs. In his work at the BNID, Shaffer brings together practitioners, students of development, and academics to discuss topics in international development. Some people are liberal, some are market fundamentalists, and others are far left, Shaffer says, but BNID opens up the space so that everyone is on equal footing to debate.

Development is a big topic that requires these larger discussions. For some, it means raising a country’s GDP and increasing manufacturing capacity. For others, it’s the process that increases literacy and decreases infant mortality rates. For Shaffer, development is about redistributing resources from richer parts of the world to areas with fewer resources.

As he sees it, resources determine health outcomes and livelihood opportunities. Shaffer began thinking more deeply about global health as an undergraduate student at Northwestern University. A biomedical engineering major, Shaffer was “steeped in tech stuff,” yet his family values pushed him to think about his obligation to those with less. He became involved with GlobeMed, the national organization aimed at forming lasting partnerships between university groups and community health groups in underserved areas. “[GlobeMed] started to build this organization … that was about redistribution, about moving stuff –money primarily–to places that stuff had been taken out of,” Shaffer said.

From his perspective, those struggling with the AIDS epidemic in Lesotho or with rising sea levels in Tuvalu have much more in common than might appear at first glance. In Lesotho, the epidemic has been especially devastating because of the lack of resources for treatment and prevention. The small atoll nation of Tuvalu doesn’t have the money that wealthier coastal areas like Boston do to protect itself from rising sea levels. In his work and research, Shaffer focuses on how the poor have limited access to healthcare, and connects the causes of the problems faced by Basotho and Tuvaluans: the unequal distribution of resources.

In his analysis of these problems, Shaffer points to another commonality: events in the recent and not so recent past that led to this unequal distribution of resources. In order to understand the root cause of health crises, and other international development issues, Shaffer says, we need to learn a history lesson.

Consider the 2014 Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone. While the immediate cause of the epidemic was the Ebolavirus, Shaffer sees the causes of the outbreak in a longer history. “You have to go back to colonial times,” he explains. Since colonists arrived in the country, they have been extracting Sierra Leone’s most valuable natural resources, especially diamonds. As resources flow out of the country, so do the profits. That leaves Sierra Leoneans without the health care systems or infrastructure that they need and deserve.

But the story doesn’t end here. Post-colonial states got caught up in the debate about the best way to provide social safety nets: through government spending or through the market? When these newly independent countries fell deep into debt in the 1970s and 1980s, institutions like the International Monetary Fund imposed conditions on loans that kept states from providing welfare services. In exchange for the loans, states had to deregulate, decrease barriers to trade, and reduce government spending. This meant that essential social services like education and health care were to be provided by private actors instead of being guided by the states.

While some economists celebrate the success of these loans, Shaffer sides with those who are more critical. In Sierra Leone, the lack of resources was devastating: when Ebola struck, a legacy of underfunding in the health sector meant that there were fewer than 150 doctors for 6 million people.

The weight of historical inequality continues to bear down on the parts of the world that have been subject to colonization and natural resource extraction, explains Shaffer. But how do we unravel the past to create a healthier and more just future, especially with the doomsday reports about climate change and global epidemics?

Foreign aid can help, Shaffer believes, despite the flaws in major development institutions. It’s clear that foreign aid is key to keeping programs that people depend upon in check. Many rely on it to meet their everyday needs, including those who receive drugs to treat the HIV virus or food to feed their children. But aid—whether it is through direct foreign investment, World Bank Group grants, or microloans from NGOs—must be carefully watched and analyzed, Shaffer says. We must use forums like BNID to discuss what’s going on and to find the most just outcomes.

According to Shaffer, everyone who is trying to help address these multifaceted problems has their heart in the right place. “Even if people are going at it in what I would consider boneheaded ways, there’s the idea that we all have some sacred shared humanness and that that ought to be protected,” Shaffer says.

Despite the challenges facing our world, Shaffer brings a message of hope. For him, helping others isn’t just a hobby or something to do to look good. It is a moral imperative based on a shared humanity. Those of us in rich countries need to become conversant both in terms of volume of aid and the important details about how it is structured and where it goes. We need to talk to our politicians, and think about how foreign aid, donations, and loans could be more effective at redistributing resources.

“We have to fight for moving money into programs we know make a big difference for folks that are otherwise marginalized,” Shaffer says. Only by doing this can we make the world a better place.