21st-Century Problems

Introduction

We have put people on the moon, eradicated smallpox, increased food production to feed a burgeoning world population, and developed transportation and communication systems that connect the world.

However, most of the really large problems facing humanity in the 21st century don't seem to be yielding to our traditional approaches. For example, we have so damaged the ability of our natural systems to support us that according to the most inclusive and authoritative study ever done on the state of our planetary life support system: [Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board 2005, 5]

Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.

Add to this the sobering conclusion of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences [Board on Sustainable Development 1999, 4]:

Certain current trends of population and habitation, wealth and consumption, technology and work, connectedness and diversity, and environmental change are likely to persist well into the coming century.. . . If they do persist, many human needs will not be met, life support systems will be dangerously degraded, and the numbers of hungry and poor will increase.

Why is it that problems such as

• global climate change,
• long-lived organic toxins in our food chains,
• pernicious extreme poverty and hunger,
• lack of access to primary education,
• gaps in gender equality,
• childhood mortality, and
• deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS

are proving so remarkably resistant to our best efforts to understand and solve them [United Nations n.d.]? In fact, scientists noticed this conundrum more than 30 years ago:

I doubt if there ever has been a period in history when a greater proportion of people have found themselves frankly puzzled by the way the world reacts to their best efforts to change it, if possible for the better . . . recently things seem to have been going wrong so often, and in so many different contexts, that many people are beginning to feel that they must be thinking in some wrong way about how the world works. I believe this suspicion is probably correct. [Waddington 1977, xi]

Our traditional tools and approaches, which worked well for many of the problems in the 20th century, are not working well today; weare dealing with something new.