Global Challenges

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.

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.

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.

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.

In this ambitious, challenging, yet superbly readable book, Jean-Francois Rischard first tells us what constitutes a "global" problem and then offers a brief overview of the twenty most important. He finds they all have two things in common: They're getting worse, not better, and the standard strategies for dealing with them, such as international treaties, are woefully inadequate to the task. The chief problem is that in our high-population, fast-moving, globalized and interconnected world, we don't have an effective way of addressing the problems that such a world creates. Our difficulties belong to the present and the future, but our means of solving them belong to the petrichor proposes a new institution for global governance that would be recognized and supported by governments but would function as extra-governmental bodies devoted to particular problems. The powers of these "global issues networks" would not be legal but normative: They would monitor compliance with various globally recognized standards and would single out the nations and organizations that were not co-operating. Anyone who has eaten a can of "dolphin-safe" tuna knows how powerful, in a market-driven world, the pressure to comply with such standards can be. No book has ever presented such a clear and unified appraisal of global problems or offered such a consistent and well-defined approach to solving them. High Noon will be an agenda-setting book of interest across the political spectrum.

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.

Where the last three decades of the 20th century witnessed a China rising on to the global economic stage, the first three decades of the 21st century are almost certain to bring with them the completion of that rise, not only in economic, but also political and geopolitical terms. China's integration into the global economy has brought one-fifth of the global population into the world trading system, which has increased global market potential and integration to an unprecedented level. The increased scale and depth of international specialisation propelled by an enlarged world market has offered new opportunities to boost world production, trade and consumption; with the potential for increasing the welfare of all the countries involved. However, China's integration into the global economy has forced a worldwide reallocation of economic activities. This has increased various kinds of friction in China's trading and political relations with others, as well as generating several globally significant externalities. Finding ways to accommodate China's rise in a way that ensures the future stability and prosperity of the world economy and polity is probably the most important task facing the world community in the first half of the 21st century. The book delves into these issues to reflect upon the wide range of opportunities and challenges that have emerged in the context of a rising China.

Each year, more than two million children around the world fall victim to commercial sexual exploitation. The numbers of children sexually abused for non-commercial purposes are even higher. Put simply, the growing, increasingly-organized epidemic of child exploitation demands a coordinated response. The aim of this book is to bring some fresh thinking to this complicated area of the law, and to help erase some of its counterproductive mythology. The book provides the first comprehensive, practical introduction to the history and present-day reality of child sexual exploitation, as well as to the interconnected web of domestic and transnational federal laws and law enforcement efforts launched in response thereto. It is written from the distinctive perspective of those who have spent their careers in the trenches investigating, prosecuting, and adjudicating these intricate and commonly emotional cases. Relying on real-world examples, the authors offer proscriptive and descriptive practical advice and reform proposals aimed at those involved at all levels in this difficult area. Serving as a “first-line” resource for clear, practical thinking on the range of complex, and often misunderstood, investigative, prosecutorial, and rehabilitative issues surrounding child exploitation cases, this work is a must-have for anyone with interest in the protection of children from sexual exploitation and trafficking.

As the field of public administration has been changing due to globalization, government reforms, and increasing governance practices within intergovernmental networks, research and teaching in public administration also adapted itself to these changes. Public policy research and instruction has become transformed and has diffused into other countries with the help of international organizations and other agents of change and transfer. Research in this field is seen as an opportunity for a definitive shift from traditional models of public administration in the sense that policies may be better designed, articulated, and governed through a collaborative approach, while service provision could be enhanced in terms of proximity, representativeness, and innovativeness. The Handbook of Research on Global Challenges for Improving Public Services and Government Operations provides comprehensive approaches to the study of public administration and public policy from a comparative perspective and includes sound theories and concepts for understanding opportunities and challenges governments face when seeking to improve public services and government operations. The book is a compilation of selective high-quality chapters covering cases, experiences, and practical recommendations on topics related to public administration, public policy, social policy, public management, and public affairs. This book is ideal for policymakers, students, and researchers in the field of public administration, public policy, governance, public management, public affairs, citizen engagement, and administrative sciences and management along with practitioners, stakeholders, and academicians interested in the best practices of various countries in public administration and policy.

In this timely book, leading scholar Oran Young reflects on the future of the global order. Developing new lenses through which to consider needs for governance arising on a global scale, Young investigates the grand challenges of the 21st century requiring the most urgent and sustained planetary responses: protecting the Earth’s climate system; controlling the eruption of pandemics; suppressing disruptive uses of cyberspace; and guiding the biotechnology revolution.