Climate Change, Wars and Insatiable Data Dredgers

The UZH Magazin addresses global challenges such as climate change. Picture: Worker on a rose farm in Abu Dhabi. (Photographer: Meinrad Schade) - The challenges facing the global community today are complex and manifold: climate crisis, war, poverty, inequality, digitalization, a new political world order. The new issue of the UZH Magazin analyzes some of the problems and points to possible solutions. UZH Communications Thirty years ago, US political scientist Francis Fukuyama formulated his theory of the end of history. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he predicted the final victory for democracy and liberalism. As we now know, the prophesized golden age of freedom and a free market economy didn't work out so well. Instead, we today face major existential challenges on an unprecedented scale. Problems such as climate change, poverty and inequality, digitalization and its consequences for society and the economy, attacks on democracy, and the aggressive neo-imperialism of totalitarian states like Russia and China will only be overcome if the global community comes together and cooperates. Successful children UZH economists have identified five major tasks for the future: designing a sustainable economic system, fighting poverty and inequality, managing the digital revolution, developing effective policies, and overcoming the crises of globalization. The Department of Economics' to-do list served as inspiration for the theme of this UZH Magazin. We talked to Zurich researchers about the challenges and asked what might be done. For example: what makes children in Africa or in Switzerland more successful in school?