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.
Responsible Entrepreneurship
On our finite planet economic growth faces increasing constraints. We need to refocus the entrepreneurial spirit on the primacy of service and responsibility, for both people and planet. There is a case for disbanding corporations that are putting profits before social benefit, and that doing more harm than good environmentally.
Where can the profit motive help and where does it harm? How can we ensure that fair rather than maximum profits become the primary focus of business? What are the best ownership models for large enterprises? Should parts of society become commerce-free? How can corporate duties and responsibilities become transparent and enforceable? What should be the limits and consequences of personal liability? How can advertising best be regulated?