Ways we solve world problems i.e., by education, by reward-penalty, and by design - What worked, what is the catch, and where the focus should shift?

The way we have been trying to solve world problems i.e., by education, by reward-penalty, and by design - What worked, what is the catch, and where the focus should shift?

SOLVING PROBLEMS THROUGH EDUCATION

Education is usually considered the universal and baseline intervention to solve world problems, but there is a catch. Education here may imply, in all its encompassing connotations, from the simple awareness, to the education system, to Reading, Writing, Arithmetic (RRR), to research and innovation, to system thinking, and anything that enables us and inspires us to take action to solve the problems in the life of the individual, community, and world at large.

The catch here in terms of education is manyfold, first, education may take a decade or generation or two to actually see the benefit and by that time whole context and definition of the problem may change. Second, education doesn’t guarantee the resultant desired action due to the lack of accountability, i.e., in spite of education, one may or may not choose to act in a specific expected manner. Third, there is no common denominator in the diversity and pursuit of specialized education, i.e., while everyone acknowledges, faces, and is to some extent accountable for aggravating common world problems through their action, be it a subject of climate change, energy crisis, poverty, inequality, material scarcity, erosion of bio-diversity, etc. but just education has not been a panacea for these problems. The “education” around common big world problems that impact each one of us without discrimination, must find its way to the curriculum across hierarchy and specialization of course without discrimination, i.e., the themes mentioned above (like climate change, poverty, inequality etc.) must be introduced and taught to every stream of education, irrespective of hierarchy and specialization, i.e., from science to law, to agriculture, to hospitality, to philosophy and more. Big world problems require collective action and collective consciousness to resolve them, and for that, a common definition of problems must be understood, and a baseline sensitization and sensitivity across the educated population must be there.

SOLVING PROBLEMS THROUGH REWARD-PENALTY

Reward-penalty is another superimposed approach tried and tested over centuries to solve a range of world problems, essentially in an attempt to bring order. There is the catch again. Reward-penalty may imply here every enforcement effort like incentives, recognition, penalty, and punishment, imposed primarily by institutions of all kinds, across all hierarchies, that encourage actions that are compliant with social and statutory norms and discourages any action otherwise. The simple catch here is this is the archaic notion of attempting to solve problems. In a utopian scenario, in a civilized and conscious world, the systems and actions should be self-regulatory and should be in equilibrium on their own, but the counter forces like unawareness, ignorance, greed, pursuit for short-term gain, etc lead to unbalance and disproportion of individual and collective actions, which hence in turn require checks and balances in terms of reward-penalty.

SOLVING PROBLEMS THROUGH DESIGN

Finally, what you can’t solve through education and reward-penalty, you solve through design. Acknowledging that the most urgent and big challenges of the world are usually wicked problems, still solving problems “by design” may possibly be the most appropriate and fastest way to attempt to solve the small and large problems that the world is facing. The “design” here may imply a framework, schemata, method, system, philosophy, engineering or automation, that provides a ground, a conduit, or a datum, which is conducive, self-regulatory, and self-healing; and that works even if there is a lack or disparity of education and enforcement in terms of reward-penalty. There are numerous ways, examples, and possibilities of how the world’s key problems are being tackled and must be tackled through scaling up this approach of solving problems “by design”. These are a few examples and possibilities for solving problems by design –

?Example includes, connecting poor and remote households with off-grid power, internet, banking, community food bank, and seed bank as a means of empowerment, access to education, food security, and means for bringing them out of the poverty trap, and not leaving this to fate and chance.

?Possibility of leveraging existing supply chain networks of many kinds to serve multiple functions like food and medicine aid networks to connect local, remote communities and entrepreneurs to the global market, is a poised possibility.

?Further, the possibility of leveraging big data to reinvent urban travel by predictive matching of ridership demand and supply around public transport so that no bus is running nearly empty in a city.

?Leveraging big data and AI to reconfigure land use in real-time, matching vacant housing stock and other vacant land use properties with current and predicted housing demand and homelessness, to provide everyone with a home and much-needed shelter.

?Redefining census parameters to include information including, household health condition, household debt profile, and specific skill profiles, that may encourage institutions to take steps towards better social security, service delivery, aid, well-being, encourage entrepreneurship, untapped employment like post-retirement and dual household income (translating opportunity cost to actual economic gains for households).

?Preparing tangible layers/networks/ sub-systems and blueprints for autonomous circular cities and communities based on resource demand-supply match, sharing, pooling, product life extension, community storage and preservation, community repair facilities, off-grid renewable energy provisions, etc.

?Applying AI and robotics for mass-scale waste profiling, segregation, and high-value reuse, and taking humans out of the unhealthy waste stream

?Going beyond documentation, actually devising the easiest means of providing intellectual property rights to indigenous and artisanal community practices across the world to preserve these practices and protect them from exploitation, biopiracy, etc., and strengthen their socio-economic conditions.

There may be many more examples of how small and big problems of the world must be solved “by design”. Of course, there are inherent challenges in doing so primarily, through the aid of technology, but those challenges can always be tackled through appropriate governance. ?

Author: Anoop Jha

Image:Pixabay

#climatechange #energytransition #poverty #inequality #circulareconomy #biodiversity #urbanplanning #urbanmanagement #mobility #transportplanning #census #AI #bigdata #supplychain #community #Rotterdam #Amsterdam #Utrecht #Eindhoven #Hague #Netherlands