10 BIGGEST GLOBAL CHALLENGES THAT ARE THREATENING LIFE ON EARTH

The entire world came together to fight against COVID-19. The Global Crisis has become the foremost challenge in our times.

While nations are working hard to overcome the Covid challenge, for years there have been many global and social problems that nations have not worked to their fullest potential to solve.

Our planet is beautiful and we should be grateful to have a home called Earth to live on. We are blessed with an abundance of resources and we have achieved a lot over the centuries.

We are immensely fortunate to have taken birth as human beings. We work hard to keep this world in shape. But can you think of areas where we could have done more than we did?

Why couldn’t we do more? What stopped us, or rather, what made us not do it?

The world is not in complete order. Humans are not perfect. We have failed at many things and we keep failing at them time and again.

Why?

Because of either our selfish interests or simply because of disinterest.

Some of the issues are man-made and are much easier to solve than the present pandemic.

Here are 10 of the biggest global challenges we are facing today.

POVERTY

When we say the word ‘Poverty’, the image that comes to our minds is that of people having no food, no shelter, no education and a lack of all the essentials that one needs to live a decent life.

Most of the poor people are unemployed or earn income that is too low to help them sustain themselves. They lack access to health facilities, clean water, proper sanitation and sufficient food.

Poverty is closely tied to hunger. The poor suffer from it regularly and the children grow up malnourished.

While we continue to raise the standards of our lives, the poor hand over their broken lives to the next generation and the chain continues.

We may or may not be personally responsible for such a tragic situation for our fellow human beings, but we definitely have the ability to help them out of their problem.

A lot of us try to help the poor by providing them with materials and food. But that is not a long-term solution. The goal to end poverty should focus on empowering the less fortunate.

Helping the poor can give us satisfaction and add meaning to our lives. However, it is not an achievement.

Achievement is when we help them such that they do not remain poor anymore. We need to help them get out of the situation they are in.

According to the World Bank Data, as of 2017, 9.3% of the world’s total population lived on less than $1.90 a day at 2011 international prices.[ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY]

Poverty is a man-made phenomenon and it is definitely solvable if there is a collective will. Although, there has been a setback in the decline of poverty due to the Covid-19 crisis, let us hope that the various humanitarian aids and programmes succeed in wiping it away from our planet.

Imagine a world where no child dies hungry. Wouldn’t it be a dream come true?

CLIMATE CHANGE

You don’t need a definition to understand what Climate Change is. The significance of this crisis is known to all.

With the boom of the industrial age, the amount of Carbon dioxide spiked on our planet. The earth has since been getting hotter resulting in global warming.

The melting of glaciers, rising sea levels, species extinction, increasingly severe climates, and droughts in various regions have forced people to abandon many affected areas.

With the growth of the world’s population, there is a corresponding increase in consumption, leading to elevated carbon dioxide emissions.

While we are all set to leave behind innovative inventions and effective technologies for future generations, let us hope that we also leave them a planet to live on.

Climate change is one of the most popular challenges that we face today and people all over the planet advocate for this cause.

And they should never stop.

What if the Arctic melts? READ THE POEM: https://neoprotagonist.com/the-arctic-in-our-hearts-shall-melt/

WAR AND CONFLICT

How quickly did we acknowledge the danger of the pandemic?

How actively are we trying to fight it for the protection of human beings?

If only, saving lives held as much importance to the ones involved in wars and conflicts.

One can argue that when a nation targets another nation, it is acting out of responsibility for its citizens and defending them. But is bombing and killing people more feasible than a bilateral or multilateral dialogue to end a conflict?

According to the UNHCR, the number of people fleeing war, persecution and conflict exceeded 70 million in 2018. [ https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/press/2019/6/5d03b22b4/worldwide-displacement-tops-70-million-un-refugee-chief-urges-greater-solidarity.html]

Victims of war and conflict do not fail to garner worldwide solidarity in a time of crisis. But even empathy has failed to save such lives.

I agree that countries need a defence system and we shall always be proud of those who gave away their lives for their countries but the fact that we NEED defence from each other signifies that we CANNOT trust each other and we CANNOT rely on each other.

This is the sad reality we all live with and as long as humans need to defend themselves from other humans, World Peace shall continue to remain a dream.

LACK OF PRIMARY EDUCATION

Most of us spend one-third of our lives gaining proper education. Education not only secures our future and allows us to raise the standards of our living, but it also plays a huge role in our character development and shapes us into assets who can benefit the world.

If education is quintessential for an average urban family, it is an unaffordable luxury for many rural people.

Many developing countries have rural areas with no primary schools. Poor economy and raging wars destroy schools and the system of education.

Even if there are schools, many children skip school because they start working at an early age for a living. As such, poverty also plays a major role in preventing children from accessing education.

Women often face more significant challenges in these areas than men. This is a result of gender inequality, where girls are not sent to school. In India, many girls leave education midway when they start menstruating.

Illiteracy in any country creates a roadblock to its development. It deteriorates the country’s economy, brings down living standards and ushers people into poverty.

Imparting education to all sections of society, especially primary education should be one of the primary goals of every developing nation.

Fortunately, it is one of the easiest problems to solve for us individually, if we participate and join hands with those who are fighting it.

Multiple Non-Profit Organisations need people like us to volunteer and educate the ones who need it. With the trending online education, it has become much easier to reach out and contribute to building a better tomorrow.

So, what are you waiting for?

UNEMPLOYMENT

People can be jobless because of several reasons. People choosing to not do a job is not a challenge. Unemployment becomes a challenge when the number of people who are searching for work does not get it.

It also encompasses those who have to choose a job they are overqualified for. This means there is an imbalance between the demand and supply of jobs.

When a large-scale population falls into this trap, it is often a consequence of recession. It signifies that the nation’s economy is falling and people are losing jobs.

During the Covid pandemic, more people lost their jobs as unemployment rates rose higher. People depend on their jobs to run their families, get their children to school, pay for healthcare and pay their rent and interest.

This is perhaps the worst of times to be unemployed, as the Coronavirus has taken away the lives of many earning members of the family. The economy has been hit and employers have been forced to fire the workers.

This challenge is just as significant as the others. This is because if a person cannot earn enough to sustain himself or grow further, it simultaneously brings down the opportunity for the world to grow.

FOOD SECURITY

This might be one of the issues least talked about on this list. At least, I can speak for myself when I say that I did not comprehend the gravity of this issue.

Most of us might be unaware of the challenge of food security.

The vast industry of food thrives on a huge supply of water and fuels. From running machines to treating crops with chemicals, fuels play a big role in helping us get our food.

Then we need vast arable lands to grow our food, we need healthy crops and a suitable climate to grow them.

Food is not secure.

It is threatened by the rising world population, climate change, water shortage, food loss and wastage, new diseases in plants and animals and loss of arable lands to industries.

The demand for food is only going to increase with the increase in population.

Unfortunately, the supply is going to decline.

Unfortunately, not everyone will be able to afford food in the future due to the increasing difficulty in food production.

Currently, initiatives to produce food in a sustainable manner are on the go. Let us hope we get to escape this threat through a systematic plan.

Because we simply cannot do without food. Nobody can.

HEALTH CRISIS

This issue is more relevant today than at any other time. With the advent of COVID-19, we are all vividly witnessing and experiencing the effects of what is known as a Health crisis.

Although global life expectancy increased over the years and we have overcome the challenges faced by many diseases like aids, tuberculosis etc, health management across the globe is still far from perfect.

More and more people are suffering from major health issues like cancer and heart disease because of their sedentary lifestyle and food habits. Many are unable to afford proper diagnosis and treatment of their diseases.

The poor receive meagre to no health benefits. They don’t have access to essential medicines. Many rural areas don’t even have hospitals or proper healthcare facilities.

And when there is a pandemic like COVID-19, it becomes even more daunting to manage the health emergencies. We have lost too many lives due to the infectious disease within just a year.

While countries blame their governments and institutions in such a crisis, many look for help from the organisations created to serve us in such trying times.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is responsible for detecting and responding to acute health across the world. But funding for the treatment and prevention of this outbreak is no easy task. The virus has shaken all the systems to its core.

Health crises can be fought not just by more scientific research and preparations to fight an epidemic or pandemic but also by the collective conscious effort of every global citizen to safeguard their health.

 Check out this latest data on Covid-19’s impact on countries on WHO’s Covid-1 dashboard https://covid19.who.int/table

and find out which countries are doing their best to fight Covid-19.

Maybe others can follow them too.

GLOBAL WATER SHORTAGE

Do you recall a time when the impact of climate change was only read in theory and a drastic change of that sort seemed like an illusion?

That is exactly what is going to happen with Water.

Although our planet has an abundance of water, most of it is either saltwater that is found in oceans or water that cannot be accessed.  

Only about 0.3% of the Earth’s water is available to humans. And we are gradually running out of it.

The water crisis is quite complicated to manage because, unlike many non-renewable resources, the water demand cannot be made to decline by making water expensive.

 A measure of such a kind will hit the poor the most. This is because water is not a luxury. It is a need.

And that is exactly why we need to conserve it. Because if we lose fuel, we can somehow find another source.

If we lose water, we die.

SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION AND RACISM

How did discrimination start? Well, we can delve into the history of why our ancestors held it in medieval times.

Surprisingly, many millennials still harbour these prejudices.

Why?

It is not that we were born having such prejudices. So, we have definitely acquired it from the environment. We have been influenced to believe a certain thing about a certain group of people.

The worst thing you can own is the feeling of superiority that makes you look down upon fellow human beings.

As much as one should try not to, one is free to hate. And people might harbour hatred depending upon their experiences.

But is it worth it?

What did the planet gain by the death of George Floyd?

Why can’t a man love another man?

Why can a lower-caste individual not marry an upper-caste individual in India?

Social discrimination and racism are social vices that we millennials should have eliminated by now.

But they still thrive strongly in society.

And just like termites feed on and destroy woods, these vices gnaw at humanity and put the prospect of a healthy world at risk.

INEQUALITY

There are two worlds on the same planet- one of the people with money and power, and one of the people with no money and no opportunity for growth.

The rich-poor gap has always been extreme and with the rapid growth of the richest people in the world, it is becoming more and more severe.

The issue is controversial as it often tends to blame the rich. But it is not always productive to blame people who are accumulating their wealth for the conditions of those who are working hard to make ends meet.

Of course, those who have immense wealth can take the moral responsibility to empower those at the bottom of the hierarchy. A conscious global effort to narrow this gap can be made not by stopping someone’s growth but by ensuring that everyone grows together.

The abundance of wealth at the top can be invested to empower the downtrodden and lift them up.

Empowering the less fortunate cannot be imposed on everyone; it requires the will to make a change.

Some people just need a chance, not a charity!

CONCLUSION

When we connect the dots, we find that every crisis is interconnected to or a result of another crisis.

This means that if we start anywhere, the situation can improve in many other areas.

One of the biggest initiatives taken to overcome most of the global challenges was taken in 2015 when 193 member states of the United Nations unanimously adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Under this initiative, countries will work hard to address many of the global challenges we have discussed above by the year 2030.

Most of us are concerned and we show it.

Many of us are concerned about the planet and advocate for its well-being.

Many of us are doing our best to help those around us in ways we can afford.

Even our trivial efforts can generate major impacts. We can make a difference if we actually want to.

Check out what the 17 SDGs are and what actions can you take to achieve them: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

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But if your heart BELONGS HERE there is so much you can do.

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