The first Memorandum of Understanding for the organization of IYBSSD 2022 was signed in Paris on Thursday 16th January 2020 by Jean-Paul Moatti, President and CEO of IRD, and Michel Spiro, President of IUPAP.
This signature took place after a lunch with some French science journalists, who had confronted transport difficulties in the French capital.
Michel Spiro presented the stakes of IYBSSD 2022 and the themes that will be addressed during this international year.
He also underlined the reasons for the choice of 2022. This year will indeed mark the centenary of several international scientific unions (in particular IUPAP and IMU). It will also mark the halfway point in the United Nations Agenda 2030, the international roadmap for sustainable development.
For the other party, Jean-Paul Moatti recalled the obvious importance of IRD’s participation in the organization of IYBSSD 2022. The activity of the more than 2,000 people currently working permanently at the IRD, and the 5,000 or so colleagues with whom they collaborate throughout the world, is today entirely focused on sustainable development.
Mentioning his participation in the group of 15 scientists from around the world who wrote the first SDGs scientific assessment report, presented in September 2019 to the UN Secretary General, he also stressed the importance of the emergence of a “sustainability science”, combining traditional disciplines to meet the challenges raised by Agenda 2030.
The MoU signed by the two partners specifies the structure of the IYBSSD organization, the mutual commitments of both parties (in terms of finance and human resources) and specifies that all information and content to be produced on the occasion of IYBSSD 2022 will be free of copyright (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license).
This MoU, the first one officially signed, is the model that is proposed to unions and other partners wishing to join the IYBSSD 2022 Steering Committee.
