In an era of global turmoil, 5 remarkable lives offer light at the end of the tunnel

What’s the biggest issue underlying the biggest problems today? Migration, climate change, political turmoil, authoritarianism trampling on democracy, war and security risks — the world has no end of threats these days. But what lies behind today’s headline worries?

At the root of our current challenges is a more fundamental problem: people in North America and Europe still often cling to misguided ideas or unfounded biases about the 85% of our planet’s total population who live in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

This is a problem we can fix.

We can educate ourselves and our children. We can use our powerful technology, building on the internet and more, to get smarter about the wider world beyond our own little bailiwick.

For example, solving migration issues will require a deeper understanding of why so many people are so desperate to migrate — and what would work, really, to make it more attractive for them not to move. To slow climate change, we cannot ignore what is happening in the 95% of the Earth’s land area that is not Europe and the United States. To stem political turmoil, authoritarianism and conflict, we cannot be oblivious to what people will believe when they want a decent life but are denied it.

The residents of the 25 richest countries are now a tiny sliver of all of humanity. The 15% will shrink to just 10% within a generation. The other 90% — more than 7 billion people currently living on less than $20 a day — will be striving to reach the prosperity enjoyed now in the wealthier parts of the world. Accommodating those aspirations will be impossible without foundational changes that relieve the overtaxing of the planet’s resources and alter how political, economic and social power is shared. The wake-up call implicit in these trends has yet to be heard.

Fortunately there is a possible path out of this dark picture that could lead to a much brighter future. Our species has come back from the brink before. At some point in prehistory — some archeologists think it was 75,000 years ago, others have a different date — our homo sapiens ancestors declined to a mere 15,000 individuals, battered by ice-age conditions. At numerous other subsequent moments, the Malthusian vice of burgeoning population growth vs. limited food supply drove us to near-starvation poverty. But here we are today — 8 billion strong — with an average living standard much higher than ever imagined centuries ago. True, the bottom billion still are terribly deprived. But even with that caveat, homo sapiens is much better off now than in most of our existence.

Our irrepressible inventiveness — innovating our way out of impasse — has been our salvation. And we are not done yet.

If the research and development work presently underway on newer ways to generate and use the energy we need is successful (Bill Gates is staking big money on promising breakthroughs, for example), the cost and harmful effects of meeting our energy needs will plummet to manageable levels that will spur our economies and heal our climate. If quantum-leap advances in how we produce and distribute food are fruitful (growing food from test tubes is the latest of many options moving into trials now, for instance), significant additional cost savings and reduced environmental damage will be feasible. If the latest projections of world population growth come true (demographers see strong evidence in support), there will be a decline, hesitant at first and then headlong, in the number of us Earthlings, starting before the end of this century.

The road to better times will not be easy. Many of the innovations that can save us will take decades to scale. How will we get through the near term to reach the long term, without destroying ourselves first? In that dangerous phase, how will we solve the twin problems of too many underskilled people seeking too few routine jobs, and too few highly skilled people for the needs of our crucial innovation engine? How will we give enough meaning to jobs — and lives — to beat back the despair and wounded self-esteem that ushers in the false promises of populism and authoritarianism?

Our best hope, like the gift that “hung on the lid” when Pandora unboxed all the world’s horrors, is to find and raise up transcendent leaders who can guide us through the tough periods. Which brings us back to where this note started. Addressing these problems and misunderstandings that underlie our headline worries today will require inspired leadership, something we arguably are in short supply of presently.

Therein lies a point that will be good news to some: The rich countries are not the only places where good leaders can be found.

They crop up elsewhere too, even in the most challenged circumstances, despite the persistence of prevalent misconceptions that other parts of the world must be inferior to our own.

I tell the stories of five leaders and influencers — two from Africa, one from Asia, and two from Latin America — in Reformers in International Development: Five Remarkable Lives, recently published by Routledge. These are men and women people with vision and incredible talent, facing difficult political environments, taking risks, reaching high, living their stellar values and stumbling into mistakes but, in the end, making a significantly positive difference.

If our species is going to find its way to the better future beyond the next 50 years of highest risk, then we will need first-rate leaders from the 90%, not just the conventional dominant figures for the wealthiest 10%. The five outstanding examples profiled in Reformers nourish hope that we still have a chance to make our way to a better future, even if developments in the rich countries will be halting and unreliable. The five show how leaders and influencers whom we at first imagine must be very unlike us are in fact not so different after all. They stir us to beat back the “us vs. them” in our thinking and welcome in more “we’re all just one ‘us’ on this planet.”

Reformers is available on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble and elsewhere. If you take a look, I would enjoy hearing where your thoughts take you.