The challenges we face are considerable: from rethinking our relationship with the environment, and the wide-reaching implications this has, to tackling the persistent inequalities and injustices that characterise our relationships with each other. The WFC has identified 24 key issues that it will seek to address. With each campaign the WFC will highlight the connections between these areas, and aim to integrate them into its policy recommendations.The global challenges can be roughly grouped into three categories:
Global Challenges
Environment
The key global challenges grouped together in this category concern our relationship with the planet that supports us. With limited natural resources, an increasingly urbanised and ever-growing population, and the looming threat of irreversible climate change, the need to reconsider the way we interact with our environment has never been more pressing. Paramount to this is the acknowledgement that we are a part of the global ecosystem and not its rulers.
Social Issues
The key global challenges grouped together in this category are concerned with ensuring that people across the world can lead healthy and fulfilled lives. This involves embracing the diversity of human traits and capabilities, and acknowledging that we are all equal and yet distinct.
Economics and Politics
The key global challenges grouped together in this category are concerned with the organisation of human societies and the relationships between them. This involves fair and peaceful exchange, and an equitable distribution of costs and benefits in the creation of global welfare.
Sustainable Uses of Forests
The rich countries have decimated their forests long ago and yet they are telling poor countries not to do the same. Timber demands by rich countries mean unprecedented forest destruction and an associated loss of biodiversity in the tropics, whilst ancient forests in countries like Russia are also being decimated. We are mining virgin forests without adequately understanding the consequences, and we often replace them with monocultures that are highly unsustainable.
What needs to be done to ensure a wider understanding of the value of forest biodiversity? How can we assure sustainable global timber supplies? How far can tree plantations take the pressure off virgin forest? Can we curtail our demand for timber and paper to reduce pressure on forests? Can forests play a role in carbon sequestration in an age of climate change?