World Solve

Artisanal mining, often for gold, frequently uses toxic mercury and lacks basic safety protections, harming both workers' health and nearby water systems. Making this widespread informal industry safer at scale remains an unresolved global challenge.

Known as Goldbach's Conjecture, this simple-sounding statement has been checked for enormous numbers without exception, but never formally proven true for all numbers. It remains one of the oldest unsolved problems in mathematics.

When automation replaces jobs, the resulting profits mostly go to business owners and shareholders, not the workers who lost their income. A fairer system for sharing these gains remains an unsolved economic and political question.

Most democratic input happens only at the ballot box, leaving years between elections where citizens have little formal say in major decisions. Better tools for ongoing public input could make governance more responsive.

Informal waste pickers in Philippines recover a substantial share of recyclable material but operate without legal recognition, safety equipment, or fair pricing from recycling buyers.

Women-led microenterprises in Philippines face disproportionate barriers to opening and maintaining formal savings accounts, limiting their capacity to reinvest and grow their businesses.

Achieving affordable and scalable solutions for safe sanitation in dense urban informal settlements at meaningful scale demands simultaneous progress in fundamental research, engineering integration and socio-technical systems that work for low- and middle-income settings. Existing efforts remain fragmented relative to the magnitude of the challenge.

Long-term anxiety and depression tied to job insecurity and informal labor in Chile are poorly quantified, making it difficult for policymakers to justify investment in preventive mental health infrastructure.

The majority of informal-sector workers in Papua New Guinea have no access to pension savings mechanisms, leaving them financially vulnerable in old age.

Informal minibus and paratransit systems in Germany carry the majority of urban commuters but operate without route optimization, safety standards, or integration with formal transit planning.

Remote communities in Nigeria are often the last to receive formal disaster response, making locally trained first-responder networks essential but currently under-resourced.

Informal settlements in Yemen largely rely on pit latrines with no formal desludging service, leading to overflow into waterways and elevated diarrheal disease rates among children.

Rapid urban growth in Indonesia has produced large informal settlements lacking basic infrastructure, and in-place upgrading approaches remain rare compared to displacement-driven redevelopment models.

Create conservation and restoration approaches that protect biodiversity while sustaining the people whose food, income, and culture depend on those ecosystems. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where existing solutions often assume stable institutions, high incomes, continuous connectivity, or centralized service delivery.

Develop practical data collection, modeling, public deliberation, and evaluation tools for decisions currently made with incomplete or inaccessible evidence. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where existing solutions often assume stable institutions, high incomes, continuous connectivity, or centralized service delivery.

Create safe, economically viable collection, sorting, repair, reuse, and material-recovery systems suited to decentralized local markets. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where existing solutions often assume stable institutions, high incomes, continuous connectivity, or centralized service delivery.

Develop enforceable, worker-centered protections for safety, pay, benefits, bargaining, and grievance resolution outside conventional employment. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where existing solutions often assume stable institutions, high incomes, continuous connectivity, or centralized service delivery.

Build affordable monitoring and response systems that identify local environmental threats before they become chronic public-health crises. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where existing solutions often assume stable institutions, high incomes, continuous connectivity, or centralized service delivery.

Create accountable methods for prioritizing limited water, housing, health, energy, and social-protection resources without reinforcing local inequality. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where existing solutions often assume stable institutions, high incomes, continuous connectivity, or centralized service delivery.

Develop local skills, spare-parts access, inspection methods, and financing so public infrastructure continues functioning after installation. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where existing solutions often assume stable institutions, high incomes, continuous connectivity, or centralized service delivery.