Using simple economic reasoning, this book analyzes a broad range of global challenges including global warming, ozone shield depletion, acid rain, nuclear waste disposal, revolution dispersion, international terrorism, disease eradication, population growth, tropical deforestation, and peacemaking. These challenges are put into perspective in terms of scientific, economic, and political considerations. This book is intended for a wide audience drawn from the social sciences. It should also interest the general reader who wants to learn about global challenges.

Design for Global Challenges and Goals charts the developments, opportunities and challenges for design research in addressing global challenges facing developing contexts focusing on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The book explores the role that design and social responsibility play in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and how design works in developing contexts. It presents 10 design-led case studies addressing different Sustainable Development Goals ranging from reducing poverty and hunger, improving health and wellbeing, promoting gender equality, developing more sustainable cities and communities, encouraging more responsible consumption and production, and tackling climate change. Design for Global Challenges and Goals also addresses the future, offering foresight into the research in global challenges by identifying the opportunities and emerging trends for researchers. Providing a guide to the state of the art of design research that addresses the Sustainable Development Goals, this book will be of interest to researchers, practitioners and students who want their research to address global challenges.

Climate change is increasing the severity of disasters and adverse weather conditions worldwide, with particularly devastating effects on developing countries and on individuals with lower resources. Climate change is likely to impact mental health and psychosocial well-being via multiple pathways, leading to new challenges. Direct effects such as gradual environmental changes, higher temperatures, and natural disasters, are likely to lead to more indirect consequences such as social and economic stressors, population displacement, and conflict. Climate change, largely the product of industrialized nations, is projected to magnify existing inequalities and to impact the most vulnerable, including those with low resources, individuals living in developing countries and specific populations such as women, children and those with pre-existing disabilities. This book outlines areas of impact on human well being, consider specific populations, and shed light on mitigating the impact of climate change. Recommendations discuss ways of strengthening community resilience, building on local capacities, responding to humanitarian crises, as well as conducting research and evaluation projects in diverse settings.

There is an increased interest in integrating insights from the complexity sciences to studies of governance and policy. While the issue has been debated, and the term of ‘complexity’ has multiple and sometimes contested interpretations, it is also clear the field has spurred a number of interesting theoretical and empirical efforts. The book includes key thinkers in the field, elaborates on different analytical approaches in studying governance, institutions and policy in the face of complexity, and showcases empirical applications and insights.

This book presents a historically situated explanation of the rise of global water governance and the contemporary challenges that global water governance seeks to address. It is particularly concerned with connecting what are often technical issues in water management with the social and political structures that affect how technical and scientific advice affects decisions. Schmidt and Matthews are careful to avoid the pitfalls of setting up opposing binaries, such as ‘nature versus culture’ or ‘private versus public’, thereby allowing readers to understand how contests over water governance have been shaped over time and why they will continue to be so. Co-written by an academic and a practitioner, Global Challenges in Water Governance combines the dual concerns for both analytical clarity and practical applicability in a way that is particularly valuable both for educators, researchers, decision-makers, and newcomers to the complexities of water use decisions.

Offering the first in-depth global analysis of the innovation ecosystem in the mining industry, this book is aimed at policy-makers and academia alike. A wide range of international contributors assess this from different perspectives, using both a novel mining patent and innovation database and a wide set of analytical approaches.

In this age of instant communication and biotechnology, on this ever-smaller planet, what kinds of problems have we created for ourselves? How do we tackle them in a world where the accustomed methods used by nation-states may be reaching their natural limits?In High Noon, J. F. Rischard challenges us to take a new approach to the twenty most important and urgent global problems of the twenty-first century. Rischard finds their common thread: we don't have an effective way of dealing with the problems that our increasingly crowded, interconnected world creates. Our difficulties belong to the future, but our means of solving them belong to the past.Rischard proposes new vehicles for global problem-solving that are startling and persuasive. With its clear-eyed urgency and refreshing specificity, High Noon is an agenda-setting book that everyone who cares about the future must read.