Why do we need to know about progress if we are concerned about the world’s large problems?

Why have we made it our mission to publish the “research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems”?

At the heart of it is a simple truth. When we look around us, it is clear that the world faces many very large problems: 

This is a list of terrifying problems. And as we don’t hear much that would tell us otherwise, it is easy to be convinced that we can’t do anything about them. Even in the extensive 24/7 news cycles we hear little that suggests it would be possible to make progress against these problems. The same is true for our education — questions like how to end hunger, child mortality, or deforestation are rarely part of the curriculum. 

As a consequence it is not surprising that many have the view that it is impossible to change the world for the better. For many large problems the majority in fact believes that they are getting worse.1

This however, is not the case. We know that it is possible to make progress against these large problems, because we have already done so. Thanks to the efforts of people around the world we have achieved progress against these problems  over the course of the last generation. Each of the big problems listed above was much worse in the past.

Leave a Comment