'Rotten roots produce rotten fruits': Why deep changes are needed for Earth's biggest challenges

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-04-09 19:00

International

What does this mean?

Jump to: MultimediaAttachmentsExpert Reaction

A sustainable future depends on deep changes that strike at the roots of problems, rather than surface-level fixes, according to the 2025 Interconnected Disaster Risks report by the UN University. The report says many of today's solutions are not addressing the deep roots of a problem. It gives the example of spraying aerosols into the Earth's atmosphere to reflect sunlight back into space and lower global warming, which has been hailed as a solution to climate change, but is a superficial fix and fails to address the cause of warming in the first place. But the report does point to some examples of successful deep change, including Australia's Aboriginal Carbon Foundation, and the switch to USB-C cables for electronics to reduce e-waste.