Top 5 World Problems

If the top problems in the world had to be narrowed down to five, I would rank them like this:

1. Lack of Clean Water
• Rivers, like the Ganges and Yangtze, are very unsanitary.  This river is contaminated with feces, diseases, and other pollutants.  Without access to other water, this is what people have to use for bathing and drinking.
2. Hunger
• With 1/3 of the world obese, it seems ridiculous that 1/3 of the world is still starving. 
3. Disease
• With lack of food, access to clean drinking water, and education about disease transmission, the outbreak of AIDS, yellow fever, Ebola, and other diseases is concerning.
4. Human Rights Violations
•  There are more slaves now than there has ever been in the history of mankind, including sex slaves, labor slaves, and people who would be considered free, but kept in slave-like conditions.  Also women in many countries are restricted from opportunities such as education, freewill, and life.  In addition, the treatment of female babies in China is disturbing.
5. Population Growth



Crowded city in India

•  Population is growing at a rate that Earth won't be able to handle.  The fast growing population has resulted in urban sprawl, encroachment on animal habitats, sanitary issues, job availability, and poor transportation.

So the "solutions" to these problems ranked from most possible to implement to least would be:

1. Hunger
• Governments in poverty need to be helped and powerful countries need to stop taking advantage of underdeveloped countries. Increased access to education and productive farming practices.  Increased investments in GMOs would also help provide food to hungry people.
2. Human Rights Violations
• Important things to fix this problem would be to spread awareness, increase foreign aid efforts, increase peace efforts, and promote education for women and people in poverty.
3. Lack of Clean Water
• Education is a priority to prevent people from continuing to use this polluted water.
4. Disease
• Providing more education about the spread of diseases along more access to health care and sanitary efforts would help stop the spread of disease.
5. Population Growth
•  This is a tricky one to solve.  Of course you can always say education, but actually reducing population would require killing or limiting births which both aren't acceptable.

It was really hard to decide which problem was the worst. I chose lack of clean water because it leads to and worsens the other problems. Diseases are spread through the contaminated water that people bath in and drink from, so until the water problem is solved, disease probably won't be.

As for the solutions, I think hunger would be the most likely.  The couple solutions I listed above could work, and also instead of paying our farmers subsidies so they don't plant crops, we could continue paying them, but to plant crops that we could send to starving countries.
The population growth problem seems the hardest to fix without violating personal rights.