World Solve

Addressing weak support for breastfeeding is critical for achieving the 2030 Agenda. Current efforts fall short in scale, speed and equity, leaving the most vulnerable behind. Any viable solution must function in low-resource settings with limited specialists, transport, laboratory capacity and broadband. Proposals should specify quantifiable biological, social or environmental outcomes, openly discuss potential risks, and present a realistic pathway for long-term maintenance and local ownership beyond short research pilots.

Cars that self-relocate to the owner’s least preferred family member as a form of behavioural correction create unwanted social pressure and logistical disruption. The problem is designing vehicle autonomy that does not weaponise personal relationships.

Future cities may experience extreme heat precisely when electricity and water systems are least able to support cooling. The challenge is coordinating urban design, demand management, public health, and energy policy under compound stress. The solution must work with limited capital, intermittent services, and local maintenance capacity. The research opportunity is to define measurable success criteria, test the approach in realistic settings, identify failure modes, and create a pathway from prototype to accountable deployment.

Young people leave for cities or abroad, leaving ageing communities and underused infrastructure. Remote-work incentives and smart-village platforms can help revitalise rural areas.

Productivity, wage, and service gaps fuel political tension and migration. Spatial data platforms and targeted regional-investment models can support cohesion.

Vehicle emissions, crop burning, and industrial smoke create hazardous smog seasons in cities like Delhi and Jakarta. Low-cost air-purification tech and stricter enforceable emission-trading systems are needed.

Poor drainage and standing water in fast-growing cities create ideal breeding grounds, overwhelming health systems during outbreaks. AI-based outbreak prediction and community larvae-control apps could reduce case spikes.

Japan, South Korea, and China face rapidly rising elderly populations with too few caregivers and hospital beds. Robotics-assisted elder care and remote health monitoring startups are emerging solutions.

Weak treatment infrastructure and criminalization push addiction underground rather than toward recovery. Harm-reduction clinics and community rehabilitation programs need significant expansion.

Flooded paddy fields release significant greenhouse gases, yet few affordable low-emission farming techniques have reached smallholders. Alternate wetting-and-drying irrigation methods need wider extension support.

Inadequate cold storage and warehousing cause spoilage of fruits, vegetables, and grains before reaching markets. Modular solar cold-storage units are a scalable rural business opportunity.

Inheritance customs split land across generations, leaving average farm sizes shrinking below profitable thresholds. Cooperative farming models and land-pooling platforms could restore economies of scale.

Weak enforcement in contested and remote maritime zones allows unsustainable and unlicensed fishing to continue. Satellite-based vessel tracking and community-managed marine reserves could help restore stocks.

Aging farming populations struggle to find workers during planting and harvest seasons, especially in East Asia. Affordable small-scale farm automation and shared-equipment rental platforms could offset labor gaps.

Desert climates and dwindling aquifers make traditional farming unsustainable, forcing heavy food import dependency. Advances in desalinated-water irrigation and vertical farming could improve food self-sufficiency.

Poor drainage infrastructure and unplanned urban growth in flood-prone areas worsen the damage each year. Predictive flood-modeling tools and resilient housing design could reduce displacement.

Untreated factory effluent and sewage flow directly into major rivers, harming both ecosystems and communities that depend on them for drinking water. River-cleanup technology paired with stricter enforcement is needed.

Current desalination technology consumes large amounts of fossil-fuel energy, undermining sustainability goals. Solar-powered desalination research could make the process both cheaper and greener.

Remote and mountainous areas remain costly to connect to national grids, leaving villages without reliable power. Off-grid solar mini-grids tailored to difficult terrain could close this gap faster.

Poverty forces families to send children to work instead of school, particularly in informal manufacturing and agriculture sectors. Conditional cash-transfer programs tied to school attendance have proven effective at reducing this.