(Editor’s Note: Ali joins us from the Carnegie Endowment and has prepared a three-post series on his suggestion for a Global Challenges Wikipedia, check out posts one and two.)

If it’s designed and implemented carefully, the GCW that I’m proposing would offer us insight into at least four high-level questions:

1. How can the global community allocate its resources more effectively?  It’s all too often the case that fundamental questions such as this one are either ignored or don’t receive their due attention in the rush to make “progress.”  We need to understand how people, technology, and money are being allocated.  This examination would allow us to take stock of where we are in the fight against global challenges and determine where we need to go.  
2. Which players are best suited to accomplishing a given task?  For example, is an NGO more equipped to engage in nation-building than a government?  On what variables, if any, does the answer depend?  Identifying players’ comparative advantages would lessen the extent to which they tread on each others’ turf and create deadweight loss.
3. What geopolitical patterns emerge?  Do certain problem-solving paradigms work better in certain countries or regions or in application to certain global challenges?  Intuition suggests that bilateral negotiations between developed and developing powers will be instrumental to slowing climate change, whereas grassroots, experiment-based initiatives will be instrumental to reversing global poverty.  The more extensive the GCW becomes, the more likely it is that it’ll be able to flesh out that intuition and, again, eliminate deadweight loss.
4. Can we predict where global challenges will go in the future?  Forecasting has long gotten a bad rap on the grounds that those who attempt it advance specious claims to sell books, get on TV, and, more broadly, gain attention.  I agree that one who forecasts to be fashionable doesn’t contribute much to our understanding.  I’d argue, however, that as time passes, engaging in long-term strategic thinking on the basis of objective evidence will only grow  more imperative.   

 
Alright.  Three blog posts about one idea might seem like overkill, but (if you can’t already tell) I’m excited.  If only by virtue of the fact that others are starting to embark on similar projects, I’m convinced that the GCW has extraordinary potential if we get the details right at the outset, work hard, and dream big. 

What do you think?  Please feel free to contact me at awyne@alum.mit.edu.  I look forward to hearing from you!