The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential was initiated in 1972 following a collaboration between two international non-profits, the Union of International Associations (UIA) and Mankind 2000. It is the result of an ambitious effort to collect and present information on the problems humanity is confronted with, as well as the challenges such problems pose to societies' values, development strategies and concept formation. 

The online version of the resource is currently undergoing significant transformation, and the publishing model is changing in exciting new ways. The main points are:

• Whilst the above NGOs remain equal copyright holders of the data, it is becoming possible for partners to re-publish any content on presentation sites under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA)
• Content of the database is being made centrally editable at edit.ewphp.org — to allow content changes on this site to propagate to any and all presentation sites

Please feel free to get in touch if you want to know more about the project, the ongoing transformation, or if you aspire to join the volunteer team as a database editor, presentation site developer or any other skill you feel might benefit the project! 

News

• March 2016: An initial version of an API that allows retrieval and licensed re-use of the data is ready at demo.ewphp.org. We are currently working with selected developers, and a first public implementation of the API is taking shape as well. News about launch of both will follow soon!
• June 2015: Read the paper and presentation "Loop Mining in the Encyclopedia of World Problems" prepared for the 17th International Futures Conference "Futures Studies Tackling Wicked Problems" in Turku, Finland, 11-12. June 2015 — www.futuresconference.fi/2015