10 Biggest Issues In the World and The Companies Working on Solving Them

Published on December 3, 2022 at 3:23 pm by Habib Ur Rehman in Lists, News

In this article, we take a look at the 10 biggest issues in the world and the companies working on solving them.

The world is currently going through several crises, most of which are exacerbating each other. On November 15, 2022, the world population hit 8 billion people. All other things constant, it is expected to reach 10 billion people in 2050, according to UN forecasts.

Growing population means more resource consumption. As economic growth around the world leads to rising living standards, consumption is expected to skyrocket. The UN International Resources Panel estimates that resource-use per person in 2050 will be 75% higher than it is today.

Even in the present day, humanity is consuming resources 1.8 times faster than Earth’s biocapacity can regenerate, according to Overshoot Today. The ecological footprint of an average American is 8.1 Global Hectares (gha) per person, while Earth’s biocapacity is only 1.6 gha per person. If everyone consumed like the average American, we would need 5 Earths.

A landmark MIT study done in 1972 accounted for interacting variables such as natural resources, population growth rate, food production/supply, industrial output, and pollution, in a system-dynamics computer model and showed that our default business-as-usual trajectory leads to overshoot and global system collapse somewhere in the mid-21st century. The data from 38 years since the study confirmed its findings in another study done in 2020.

These are stark problems and have created demand for technological solutions, which is where the free market comes in to respond. Many established, as well as startup companies are attempting to solve these problems.

For instance, climate change has resulted in the emergence of the carbon-capture industry (because we’re also destroying the natural carbon sinks, forests) made up of companies attempting to develop efficient and scalable carbon-capture technologies. Notable among these are Aker Carbon Capture ASA (OSLO:ACC.OL) and Carbfix. While some companies are actively trying to solve climate change, others like Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) are doing so passively, by adopting climate-friendly policies.

Now that we understand the background, let’s move on to the list of 10 biggest issues in the world and the companies working on solving them.

Photo by OCG Saving The Ocean on Unsplash

Our Methodology

For our list of the 10 biggest issues in the world and the companies working on solving them, we’ve consulted the UN’s Global-Issues list, and selected the ones that are the most globally consequential. For companies trying to solve them, we’ve used data from various forward-focused media organizations like The Verge, Tech Crunch, Gizmodo and Mashable.

10. Gender Equality

Gender disparity is still among the biggest issues in the world in 21st century, especially in the global south. Most of it results from the gender roles assigned to both biological sexes, where women get the worse end of the bargain.

According to data from UNICEF, girls aged 10-14 are twice as likely to spend an average of 21 hours per week on household tasks than boys of the same age worldwide.

The world is also missing out on the full potential of one-half of its population. The ILO report on gender gap in employment shows women represent only 47% of the workforce around the world while men make up 72% of it as of 2022.

Many large market-cap companies like Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) are taking the initiative in gender inclusion and hiring more and more women for gender equity.

An AI startup, called Pipeline, has also been one of the companies working on solving the issue. It has been making headlines for developing algorithms that help HR departments avoid hiring patterns which are systematically biased against intersectional female gender.

9. Misinformation

Misinformation is one of the most pressing problems of the 21st century. It is having a corrosive effect on democracies and institutional trust, not only in the developing world but in the developed world as well, and leading to a rise in populism.

Misinformation is also central to the present-day disdain for expertise. Its most recent example in the US was the response to the pandemic from some sections of the society.

A significant number of people believed that pandemic lockdowns and vaccination were an excuse for “globalists” to take control of the society and microchip people for surveillance. A survey conducted by YouGov in collaboration with The Economist showed that one in five Americans held this belief.

Misinformation spreads much faster through digital and social media platforms, which is why many digital technology companies like Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), ByteDance and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) have introduced various methods to detect and remove misinformation from their products’ platforms.

8. Wealth Inequality

Wealth inequality between countries, and between individuals within countries are among the biggest issues in the world. In terms of wealth inequality between individuals, the richest global 1% own 46% of the global wealth according to Inequality.org.

For perspective, in 2018, it only took 26 billionaires to hold as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the entire world. High income inequality has been found to be linked with increased risk of economic instability and financial crises. Further, in developed nations, life expectancy and levels of physical health are often lower due to income inequality.

Many startups have started to emerge that are working on solving the problem. One such startup is Pioneer. Its solution to wealth inequality is entrepreneurship. It hosts a sizable online competition every month where people present their projects like startups, books and research projects.

These projects can be digitally voted for, by other members, adding points for advancement. Projects with highest points are evaluated at the end of the month and a dozen or so are selected for funding, backed by Marc Andreessen.

7. Health

Global health is in crisis, especially in the developing world, due to lack of proper medical resources, hygiene and socio-political issues. Apart from these two factors, many diseases have been wreaking havoc without a cure. Cancer, for instance, takes 1 out of 6 lives in the world every year, according to Webmd.com.

In parts of the world like Africa, the threat of another viral outbreak is ever present. The two recent outbreaks, of Ebola Virus and Zika Virus, occurred in 2013 and 2015, respectively, contributing to a 63% increase in zoonotic diseases on the continent from 2012-2022, according to WHO.

The Covid-19 outbreak, which has claimed nearly 7 million lives as of 2022, also showed the world how unprepared it is to deal with outbreaks of airborne viruses, despite their statistical inevitability.

Many companies are working to tackle the rising threat of global health crises. These include Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK), Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) and Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO). Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) is known for developing Ervebo, the vaccine for Ebola Virus that contained its spread. Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) is known for its contribution to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the first vaccine to roll out for Covid-19.

6. Poverty

Extreme poverty is one of the biggest humanitarian issues in the world. According to World Vision, around 9.2% of the global population lives in extreme poverty, and make less than $1.90 a day.

A number of startup companies have emerged as of late to alleviate suffering caused by poverty. One such startup is Unhoused.org. It is a London-based retailer that sells items like clothes, dental kits, and other consumer products. For every product it sells, it donates the same to an organization helping the homeless community.

Another startup, known as Wagestream, lets the workers of companies which are subscribed to it, tap into their incomes at any time of the month so they can accommodate their ongoing needs. The company has received significant investment from people like Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN).

Companies like Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) have also significantly contributed to tackling extreme poverty. Google has contributed $50 million to the global education project and $50 million to the economic opportunity initiative in the battle against extreme poverty.

5. Pollution

Pollution here refers to land pollution, water pollution, as well as air pollution. It has been a byproduct of industrialization and consumerism. There’s an estimated 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean water which includes both micro and macro pieces.

Three notable companies trying to remove plastic from ocean water include The Ocean Cleanup, 4Ocean and The Ocean Conservancy. The Ocean Cleanup, for instance, is developing solutions to concentrate ocean plastic waste at scale at artificial coastlines to effectively remove vast swathes of trash.

Industrial waste has also resulted in land and air pollution, leading to acid rains, Ozone depletion as well as substantial loss in soil’s organic matter. One of the big tech giants that is trying to play its part in solving air pollution is Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), which is using Google Street View cars to collect data on Nitrogen Dioxide to monitor air quality.

4. Food Insecurity

Food insecurity is a critical emerging problem that is expected to rapidly worsen over the course of three decades.

As the world population grows with the momentum it has right now, to the projected figure of 10 billion in 2050, it is expected to increase food demand by 59% to 98% by 2050, so the global crop production needs to double to make up for it but it’s only growing at roughly half that rate (non-compounding).

On top of that, the UN estimates suggest that 40% of all agricultural land is already degraded, with 90% of topsoil at risk by 2050. Food insecurity is a disaster in the making that is already showing its effects. According to WHO, 80 million people in East Africa are already food-insecure. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has acted as a force-multiplier in this regard, by cutting off roughly a quarter of the world’s wheat supply.

However, many startup companies have emerged that address this coming disaster. Companies like Grubbly Farms, All Things Bugs and Might Cricket are promoting insects as dietary staples, with insects being touted as the food of the future, as they’re abundant, environmentally friendly and highly economical.

Then there’s companies like Corteva, Inc. (NYSE:CTVA), researching and developing novel crop production technologies to assist farmers increase crop yield and reduce output variability from season to season regardless of weather.

3. Deforestation and Biodiversity Loss

The planetary ecosystem is a self-sustaining complex system. Small changes in a complex system often lead to unforeseeable effects, which, in the case of human-caused biodiversity loss, could risk humanity’s survival as a species as well.

Experts now believe the planet is going through the sixth mass extinction, caused in large part by human activity. A significant portion of this biodiversity loss is occurring due to deforestation.

Other than sustaining biodiversity, forests also act as natural carbon sinks and are critical in the fight against climate change. About 31% of the world is covered in forests, which absorb roughly 2.6 billion of CO2 every year. On the other hand, the world loses roughly 6 million hectares of forest cover each year on average due to deforestation.

Many for-profit and non-profit companies are at the forefront in solving deforestation. One of these include Cultivo, a California-based FinTech startup that intends to unlock $1 billion in investment for 3.5 million hectares of forest restoration over the next five years.

In the non-profit domain, the most prominent one is Gain Forest, a company that uses AI to monitor satellite and field data to monitor sustainable use of land. It rewards forest communities with donations when restoration milestones are achieved.

2. Resource Depletion

The overall resource depletion is another ongoing crisis that is dire in nature. A finite planet only has so much before it is exhausted. Resource extraction rate has more than tripled since the year 1970. At the current rate, it is expected to double by 2060. The process of resource extraction is also responsible for half the global carbon emissions and for over 90% of water stress according to Global Resources Outlook, 2019.

With the population level set to rise to 10 billion in 2050, the demand for energy resources is projected to grow by 50% by that time according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence of US government.

The need for steel and copper is also projected to grow by 90% and 80% respectively by 2050. The demand for many other resources is expected to double by the mid-21st century. In the present day, we’re consuming resources 1.8 times faster than Earth’s regeneration capacity.

One of the ways Earth can be unburdened from unsustainable resource extraction and the accompanying emissions, biodiversity loss and water stress, is to take the mining to asteroids, many of which are rich in minerals and other resources.

In this respect, SpaceX and Blue Origin are the forefront space companies trying to unlock space at economies of scale.

1. Climate Change

Climate Change is, by all measures, the most pressing issue in the world and many companies are trying to tackle it through different approaches. Global emissions have to reach net-zero by 2050 to limit global-temperature-increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Currently, the planet is already 1.1°C warmer than it was around the late 1800s, and we’re already seeing its dire effects. Longer summer seasons are resulting in extensive breeding periods for locusts which threaten food security.

The intensity and number of extreme weather events are increasing all across the world and especially in the global south. The sea levels are rising due to melting ice caps and the oceans are getting warmer and more acidic. A billion crabs have “disappeared” in the Bering Sea and experts believe climate change is to blame.

Most companies that are trying to solve climate change have taken two primary approaches – developing sustainable-energy technologies and carbon capture.

In terms of sustainable-energy technologies, Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is the frontier company that has mainstreamed electric vehicle adoption.

Tesla also builds and installs solar energy systems for personal and commercial residences through its arm, Tesla Solar. First Solar is another company developing solar energy solutions for Americans. On the carbon-capture front, prominent companies are Aker Carbon Capture and Carbon Engineering.

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