Many of the problems the world faces today pre-date the latest conflicts and related refugee crises. Five years ago already...
1. Google asked the global public for ideas to address the following societal issues:
- Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
- Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
- Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
- Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
- Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
- Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
- Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
- Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don't fit into any category at all.
2. Start the Week in its turn asked what has gone wrong in the West:
- Economist Dambisa Moyo charted 50 years of economic folly and argued that only radical changes in policy will stem permanent decline.
- Lord Lawson, the former UK Chancellor, exposed what he called "myths" surrounding economic thinking.
- Journalist Stephen Kinzer called on the US and UK to ditch its present allies in the Middle East - Saudi Arabia and Israel - and look to Turkey and even Iran for support.
- Labour's former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, further explored those seemingly intractable problems, with a series of debates drawn from the "too difficult" box.
3. Meanwhile, by putting the problems of the world onto a 4′x5′ plywood board, the World Peace Game tried to engage schoolchildren in addressing some of the world's most complex and seemingly intractable issues.
Fair to conclude that progress has been mixed over the past five years so, today, what further answers might we dream up and enact together?
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