All Recent FutureChallenges Posts

One of the most troubling things about democracy is that it is famously bad at addressing problems that will hit critical mass some day in the future – when current elected leaders will no longer be in office. Climate change is a case in point… read more  

Peter Burnell speaks to Jocelyne Sambira about the prospects for Cancun and the vulnerability of developing countries grappling with climate change. read more

The political order of liberal democracy is incapable of rising to the challenge of global environmental catastrophe. Australia’s experience under John Howard suggests that it is time to think radically and embrace a post-democratic approach, says David Shearman. read more  

Winston Churchill once noted, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” But have the pressing problems facing us today — looming peak oil, climate change, the still-strangled credit markets — given other forms of government an edge […]

The interrelationship between climate protection and political systems continues to gain more and more attention in the public arena. The Boell Foundation started a debate on it, based on a paper by Peter Burnell. read more  

Research suggests that trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, when specifically applied to “traditional” or indigenous knowledge, genetic material and plant and animal life, have a detrimental effect on biodiversity. The 2001 Doha Declaration suggested that the TRIPS Council look at the “patent-ability or non patent-ability of plant and animal […]