3 min read It’s Time to Retire ‘This Isn’t Rocket Science’ - Try ‘This Isn’t a Wicked Sustainability Problem’ Instead Why wicked problems challenge our society and how transdisciplinary approaches could help. Today, when talking about sustainability challenges like climate change or biodiversity loss, we increasingly hear the term “wicked problem.” In this context, wicked has (unfortunately) nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz or Defying Gravity. What makes a problem wicked isn’t witchcraft or magic - it’s the tangled web of social, environmental, and scientific complexities that make such problems impossible to “solve” in a traditional sense. A fundamental challenge with wicked problems is that they are hard to define, have no clear solution, and may never be fully solved. Potential solutions aren’t true or false but rather better or worse. And every solution comes with consequences, as one wicked problem is usually a symptom of another (1). For example, pushing the energy tran...