Why a guide about SDGs for science academies?
The science academies and their networks did not wait for the initiative of IYBSSD 2022 to be concerned by SDGs. Indeed, as soon as the Agenda 2030 had been adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, the InterAcademy Partnership gathered a committee to write a guide to help their members academies to implement the SDGs in their own country. It has been published at the end of 2017.
We can only encourage every scientists to download and read this guide.
But as one of the aims of IYBSSD is to focus on what is already done by scientists and their organizations regarding the SDGs (but could pass under the radar in the day-to-day activity), we will give a little help.
During six weeks, every Wednesday, beginning today, we will give an overview of the content of this guide.
We begin of course with the introduction, the first sentences of which we could have copied and pasted on the homepage of this website:
Science is vital for supporting a wide range of global policy objectives, many of them included in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) endorsed by the UN in 2015. Many scientists throughout the world are already involved in the implementation of these global goals, in various capacities; but there is both need and opportunity for many more to engage.
And to give you some motivation to come back next weekfor more details, here is what they say about the purposes of the guide.
This short guide is a product of an InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) project (2016-2019) on global policymaking. The project is framed around the global science community’s contribution to the SDGs, with particular focus on the academies. It engages IAP member academies, national young academies and the Global Young Academy with three core pillars: mobilisation, capacity building and collaboration.
The purpose of the guide is threefold:
- to raise awareness of the SDGs amongst the global science community and its leaders, in particular, members of national academies;
- to improve their understanding of how the SDGs are being implemented;
- to encourage scientists and academies to support the SDGs more effectively.
The guide is not intended as an exhaustive list of all networks, institutions and programmes supporting the SDGs; rather as a stimulus for academies to have conversations internally, with each other and with other stakeholders, including policymakers, and as a “call to action” for academies to get involved.
We of course intend that IYBSSD 2022 will be an important stage for these discussions, and also for action by the academies.
