Global Problems, Global Problem Solving and the Global Collaborative

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The Global Collaborative is designed to help global civil society tackle complex, interrelated global problems more effectively.  It does so by providing its users, both visitors and those organizations who reside on the site, with an array of approaches and tools developed by leading thinkers and practitioners grappling with global problems.  The Global Collaborative also nurtures applications and extensions of these approaches and tools on the Global Collaborative itself.   The following pages give an overview of this rapidly emerging field.   Please send your comments and ideas to Richard Tanter.

What are global problems

What, we ask, are Global Problems? What makes them different than just complex, large scale problems? And what approaches do we have to take to solving them? How should global problems and global problem-solving be approached? What methods and tools and conceptual innovations are necessary? What comprehensive approaches have already been developed? What are the implications for policy of the analysis of global problems set out here?

This site presents

• Introductory material

• an introduction to the field of global problems by Nautilus Institute's Peter Hayes and Richard Tanter, and Critical Articles from this site.

• Understanding global problems

  • approaches to understanding global problems by the Nautilus Institute, partners, and other organisations.

• Global Problem Solving Forum

  • essays by leading theorists and practitioners commissioned by the Nautilus Institute to open up this new field.

• Solving global problems

• explorations of problem solving approaches.

• Applied global problem solving: frameworks and applications
  

• applications of global problem solving and exemplary approaches to global solutions.

• Tools for global problem solving

• strategic and technical tools that can contribute to the analysis and resolution of global problems.

• Global problems
  

• selections and listings of global problems and studies of specific global problems.

• Site map

The Global Collaborative and global problem solving

Global problem solving is the core of the Global Collaborative which is a platform for a diverse community of civil society organisations to share their best work on that subject. The Global Collaborative is both a web-based tool to enable member organisations to contribute to the wider process of global problem solving; and a community of member organisations cooperating for that purpose. Membership of the Collaborative is open to any organisation contributing to the solution or understanding of such problems through its research and policy analysis, or by the production and sharing of tools for global problem-solving.

The Global Collaborative is still under development.  When it is functionally complete, it will enable users to identify and activate weak, previously unexamined relationships between apparently unrelated data and organizations, including links between problems, proposed solutions, researchers, and practitioners.   Via this exploration, we hope that a critically urgent and now largely absent aspect of problem solving on a global scale will be recognized and acted upon.

The Nautilus Institute Global Problem Solving initiative is funded by the Ford Foundation. Nautilus also gratefully acknowledges the support of the MacArthur Foundation and RMIT University.

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Project coordinator: Richard Tanter
2 June 2008