The matrix itself came out of a report I read from the UK organisation SustainAbility. The "issues" in the matrix all (or at least most of them) appeared as a list at the end of one of their reports. The problem was that the list was not organised in any way.

It seemed to me, however, that certain topics naturally clustered together, so I started to organise it into these clusters: the meta-topics just fell out naturally. It has to be said that some issues fit more naturally into their clusters than others, but in general I think it works.

The result is really a 1.5 dimension matrix, in that the X and Y axes are essentially the same.

P.S. People may also wonder about the rationale for filling the boxes (or not) on the matrix. For example, the subject of "ozone depletion" only gets one meta-topic in-fill, even though it affects a range of issues.

There's a pretty simple answer to this. The research was carried out to demonstrate to the companies sponsoring it, why certain topics are much higher profile than others. In order to validate "meta-topic" relevance therefore, it wasn't enough to say that ozone depletion impacts a meta-topic. We had to have evidence that it raised concerns for NGOs and other activists working in that field. So where you see an in-filled box there is a corresponding activist group who has campaigned on an issue affected by that topic.

I find this matrix interesting and thought provoking, but puzzling. Even with the explanation offered, I don't understand how the boxes were filled in – for example, how could poverty and famine not be correlated with globalization? I suppose at bottom though, my problem with it is that I don't think that separating out and ranking these issues and topics is appropriate.

I understand that this was developed for companies, who surely have different interests in this sort of thing than I do. But in the context of the question "what is important," I think it's essential to recognize that so many important issues are interrelated. I mean, it's true that climate change and nukes could destroy the planet and kill us all, but that in itself doesn't make them more important than other issues, and in any case we'll never solve them by treating them as isolated problems. Racism, misogyny, poverty, oppression of workers, pollution, deforestation, weapons, war, globalized trade, distribution of resources, debt, patenting, agriculture, and so many other issues are intrinsically linked. In view of this, I think it's futile to try to determine what the most important issue is. Instead, we should recognize the importance of the diverse types and areas of work being tackled by people around the world, and try to see how we can best understand and integrate each other's efforts.

On a lighter note, I think it's funny that pornography made the list as a human/animal rights issue. Does that refer to everyone's right to pornography, or what??

Christy is right, of course. It is impossible to separate issues like globalisation and human rights. Everything is inexorably intertwined. Indeed, the "network effects" of this interconnectedness was one of the primary things we were studying in the research program which that slide comes from. To that extent it suffers from being taken out of context.

Way back at the beginning of this discussion we were talking about prioritisation. There are so many issues calling for our attention that it's sometimes difficult to decide on the relative merits of each. Is hunger a more or less pressing issue than environmental despoilment? Of course we would argue that this is a facile question. There is no way to measure the one against the other.

Nevertheless we have limited time, funds, and energy at our disposal. We have to decide what is important to us. Individually and collectively.

I offered the slide as a starting point, not as the definitive answer. Also (it should be said) that it's not MY attempt at an answer. These issues are the ones chosen by governments, NGOs and communities for the focus of their efforts. It's been some time since I updated it, so the topology may have changed by now, but (to go into a little more detail here) a box only got a tick if it was attracting attention. If, for example, an explicitly environmentally focused NGO had run a campaign against GM foods (as they demonstrably have) the GM foods box got filled in under the environmental meta-topic. So it's not my opinion on what's important — it's reflective of what, in general, those working in the field are focusing on.

I would expect the mapping to be incomplete, because it was compiled by a small team of researchers (6 at its peak) who contributed news, info and data during a year long study, which fed into the database which informed the matrix.

Maybe there's another point here. Those boxes which are not filled in are indicators of gaps where attention is not currently being focused.

Anyway, Christy, thanks for the comments.

Finally (and I'm sorry to sound as if I have no sense of humour here — Rob will tell you that I do have one somewhere!) pornography is deemed by some of the groups we were studying (and I would agree on the whole) to be an infringement of human, and in some cases animal rights. Child pornography is a specific example. It refers to an infringement of the human rights of the subjects of the pornography by its makers.