What are consequential world problems? As "grand societal challenges", one might define them as problems that affect a large number of people, perhaps even the entire planet, including problems such as climate change, distributive justice, world peace, world nutrition, clean air and clean water, access to education, and many more. The…

Amid the global economic crisis dominating policy makers' recent attention, the world faces many other equal if not greater long-term challenges that will require concerted and highly skilled policy efforts in coming years. Those interwoven challenges include the mitigation of climate change, the control of emerging diseases, the reduction of…

Argues for broadening of the scope of discussions about sustainable resource management to include pressing but often overlooked "mundane" problems. Discusses bias against the mundane, cookstoves for the poor, Grameen (a bank in Bangladesh) banking, and five key fallacies regarding mundane science. (JRH)