12 Questions To ...

From your point of view, what are todays most pressing environ mental problems? An overarching pressing challenge is how to effectively tackle complex problems, many of which need urgent attention, including in environment, security, public health and education. Theres an imbalance in the two parallel research approaches needed. One approach is to drill down into such problems to understand pertinent aspects in great detail, and there is an impressive array of sophisticated reductionist methods for doing that. The other approach is to examine such problems as systems with many interconnected parts. In addition, context matters, value conflicts may be rife and not all unknowns can be dealt with. As researchers, we are much less well equipped for those kinds of investigations