Lawrence Berkeley National Lab—along with USAID’s Global Development Lab, The Lemelson Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, Dalberg Global Development Advisors, The Good Company and OMG—has put together a list of challenges primed for Makers to solve. They call these “Top 50 Game-Changing Technologies for Defeating Global Poverty.” These are summarized in a 20-page list, and then fully explored in the full 600-page report. They shared this list “because the problems we all seek to address require urgent action,” and they invite the problem-solvers of the world (you, dear readers!) to “begin the conversation.”
The top challenge?
The single most needed breakthrough is a cost-effective, energy-efficient method for desalinating water. “Water will be the defining problem of the next 50 years,” [Shashi] Buluswar [director of LIGTT, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies] said. “It’s probably the single most important thing that needs to be solved.”
The researchers analyzed each on its “Difficulty of deployment”: (Simple / Feasible / Complex / Challenging/ Extremely Challenging) vs. “Likely time to market” (from “Potential quick wins” to “The most difficult challenges: very complex technologies and daunting deployment hurdles.”) In another matrix, they arrange the challenges by commercial potential, in terms of how attractive these would be for industrialized and emerging markets. They are also categorized into nine areas:
- Global health
- Food security and agricultural development
- Education
- Human rights
- Gender equity
- Water
- Access to electricity
- Digital inclusion
- Resilience against climate change and environmental damage
Take a look at how you can help save the world—especially the bolded items that have Makers’ names written all over them! (But really, I could have bolded the whole list.)
Add a comment below if there’s a challenge you would have added to this list that you don’t see!
- Energy-efficient desalination
- Vaccine for HIV/AIDS.
- Vaccine for Malaria.
- Vaccine for TB.
- Smart electronic textbooks
- Biometric ID systems
- Affordable smartphones
- New generation of homes for the poor
- New fertilizer production systems
- Utility-in-a-box for solar mini-grids
- Short-course TB treatment
- Microbicides for HIV / HPV
- Long-lasting antiretroviral for HIV
- PrEP antiretrovirals for HIV prevention
- Complete cure for malaria
- Long-lasting chemical mosquito repellent
- Non-chemical spatial mosquito repellent/attractant
- Clinic-in-a-box
- Oxygen concentrator
- Automated multiplex immunoassays
- Point-of-care nucleic acid diagnostics
- Fully integrated diagnostic panels
- Off-grid vaccine refrigerator
- Thermo-stabilizing mechanism for vaccines
- Nutrient-dense infant weaning foods
- Off-grid refrigerator for households and farmers
- Low-cost refrigerated vehicle
- Precision agriculture systems for irrigation and fertilizer
- Low-cost shallow water drilling system
- Solar-powered irrigation pumps
- Herbicides for weeds
- Low-cost tilling machine
- Alternative to liquid nitrogen for preserving animal semen
- High-nutrient animal fodder
- Portable toolkit of extension workers and veterinarians
- Spatial on-farm pest repellent
- New seed varieties tolerant to drought and heat
- Wearable cameras
- Low-cost aerial vehicles for imagery
- DNA-based rape kit
- Wireless broadband technologies
- IoT for low-income populations
- Sustainable aquaculture systems
- Affordable homes resilient to extreme climate events
- Retrofit filter for vehicle exhaust
- Distributed sensors for environmental toxins
- Low-cost PV minigrid installation
- New generation of low-cost, energy efficient appliances
- New bulk storage technologies
- Mini-grid management solutions
- Low-cost family transport
12 thoughts on “50+ Global Issues Makers Can Solve”
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Half of the world is deforesting their land for firewood to cook on and there is not a single suggestion to make cooking and fires more efficient. Smoke in kitchens is crippling and killing people daily.
The primary problem which isn’t addressed here is convincing enough people that we have too many people for the environment. In places where women are better educated and everyone has more opportunity the population growth slows. It is disappointing to see an article saying ‘Well, in so and so a year when we have 10 billion people we can feed them insects or whatever’, while obviously if the population keeps going up anyway that’s not much more than a signpost on the way to a huge disaster.
Hi Simply, I agree that they could have put more focus on this challenge, but perhaps it is addressed in #50?
“Access to electricity is fundamental to every aspect of human development. More than 1 billion people, concentrated mostly in rural Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, lack electricity. The problem is expected to worsen in sub-Saharan Africa as population growth outpaces the increase in electrification. Even as
efforts to improve electrification continue, it is important to recognize that it is not electricity itself that changes lives, but rather, what people are able to do with electricity. Recent years have seen an increase in proliferation of ‘pre-electrification’ appliances like solar-powered lights and mobile phone chargers. While this has some benefits, low income households need a number of other appliances such as refrigerators, televisions (or other ICT devices), fans, and tools for improving workplace productivity to improve their overall quality of life. In that context, there are 2 major problems: appliances currently on the market are too expensive for low income populations, and even if they were affordable, the electricity they consume costs much more than the ‘energy budget’ of these users…..” [the report goes on….]
I also feel like I have heard that there have been solutions developed for exactly the problem you describe, and that there were unforeseen consequences and/or hurdles (of course!) to the alternate fuel cooking stove that was developed. I’m sure you could probably tell us more about that, since you seem knowledgeable in this area.
@Simplythefactsmam One of our members at Staten Island Makerspace (www.makerspace.nyc), Lorin Symington from GoSol (www.GoSol.org) just built a solar cooker that addresses the need for non-wood burning, no fossil fuel, low-tech cooking. Check them out! It is a great project and are excited to be a part of it. Last week in 20 degree weather we were getting 600 degree temps on a fry pan, while making grilled cheese sandwiches and hot chocolate!
Love it! (And it’s way bigger than I imagined it’d be!)
The bigger the more powerful! Once the core technique is mastered, the concentrators can scale up or down depending on the use-case. GoSol.org is crowdfunding to freely publish construction guides to empower people around the world to build their own access to solar thermal energy! We’d love to collaborate with Makezine.com to get the word out. I’m @Lorington on twitter if you want to get in touch!
Hi guys! Yeah, we got some great heat out of that solar cooker didn’t we? http://www.GoSol.org is now running their #FreeTheSun crowdfunding campaign! It’s a great campaign and one of our goals is to create an online platform for collaborative solar concentrator development. Makers and Hackers from around the world can interact and problem solve and see their designs/mods implemented around the world, making an impact on climate change and energy poverty! Check out the campaign video @ http://www.gosol.org/FreeTheSun and spread the word!
Reblogged this on Maker+Klas and commented:
Ik schreef het al eerder, Makeronderwijs is niet alleen leuk en interessant, het kan ook leiden tot oplossingen van wereldwijde problemen. De generatue die nu opgroeit zal alle creativiteit en vernuft nodig hebben om het hoofd te bieden aan klimaatverandering, zeespiegelstijging, honger, watertekort en vermindering van de biodiversiteit. Dit stuk op de blog van Makezine noemt een aantal problemen, waarvoor Makers een oplossing kunnen vinden.
textbooks (:)) how bout the work at http://www.learningequality.org ?
#23 (off grid refridgerator <$1000 for vaccine): Sundanzer has been making those for years. Pretty sure many of the other items on this wishlist already exist as well.
Elephant in the room: these are challenges given the corporate control of the world. So, for example, we can’t just say revoke the Coca-Cola corporate charter for destroying water supplies around the world. We have to solve these problems _despite_ corporate control.
Anyway:
Vinay Gupta already did
#6 (Cheap ID/State in a Box, http://guptaoption.com/cheapid/)
#8 (http://hexayurt.com)
Nader Khalili already solved
#44 (superadobe http://calearth.org)
#47 Several companies handle this
#48 see hexayurt infrastructure pack
#50 the grid is the problem (see http://stacktivism.com)
these are not problems these are solutions. When you start with a solution in mind and not a problem you could be closing your thoughts to better/cheaper/simple solutions or worst … you could be solving the wrong problem …