Humanity is now facing challenges unparalleled in its history. The most urgent of these are global in nature, such as climate change, ever decreasing biodiversity, increasing migration and overpopulation. These global challenges call for global solutions, and these solutions will require co-operation on a scale unprecedented in human history. In a globalized world, the sources of many of these challenges are multidimensional, increasingly complex and span national borders. For this reason, finding solutions to these unprecedented challenges requires new ways of thinking.
Without peace it will not be possible to achieve levels of trust, cooperation and inclusiveness necessary to solve these challenges, let alone empower the international institutions and organizations necessary to help address them. Therefore, peace is the essential prerequisite for the survival of humanity as we know it in the 21st century. Without an understanding of the factors that create and sustain peaceful societies it will not be possible to develop the programs, create policies or understand the resources required to build peaceful and resilient societies.