COVID-19We will overcome the COVID-19 pandemic only through effective collaboration and communication among scientists, experts, innovators and policymakers. Real-time sharing of experiences and insights will be critical in strengthening the science-policy-society interface, and contribute towards the solutions we need. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) is presenting here updates and analysis from experts belonging to the 10-Member Group to support the Technology Facilitation Mechanism and the Independent Group of Scientists for the Global Sustainable Development Report, and other thought leaders affiliated with the UN.
The views expressed here are the personal views of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the United Nations or its Member States
The COVID-19 crisis has shone a harsh spotlight on a range of development challenges, and the choices the world makes now in its path to recovery will shape the trajectory of sustainable development for years to come.
An Oxford University scholar has called upon the Group of 20 (G20) countries to be the “anchor in a storm” for the COVID-19 pandemic, which she described as a “wake-up call for collaboration.”
In the Pacific we aspire to endurance and sustainability. But progress is difficult to sustain when we face multiple threats that reverse decades of development gains in a matter of hours or days.
Faced with criticisms, French authorities claim that their policy towards the pandemic has been evidence-based—they appointed an advisory board of 11 scientists to help manage the crisis.
840 million people – predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa – are living without access to electricity. Reliable, affordable electricity is needed to keep people connected at home and to run life-saving equipment in hospitals.
In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, a Chinese Academy of Sciences program known as Big Earth Data Science Engineering (CASEarth) began efforts to organize data and information towards curbing the outbreak. CASEarth coordinated a national effort to develop a global big data platform for coronavirus (http://nmdc.cn/nCov/en).
For our peoples, health, life and Good Living are a complex interdependent whole that is part of interconnected relational networks, of human communities, social relations and relations with Mother Earth. This proposal raises the need for Intercultural and Inter-scientific Dialogue, in order to face the COVID-19 pandemic.
A global and multilateral response is needed that attacks the virus and puts the global economy back on a path to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris climate agreement.
Open science and collaboration have played an important role when combatting the Covid-19. A vaccine would be a major advancement in research, but from the perspective of sustainable development, other issues need to be tackled as well. This calls upon interdisciplinary research and sustainability science, writes Eeva Furman in her Ratkaisuja blog
This crisis is a moment of reckoning. We need to rethink the way globalization, lean stocks and just-in-time management principles were making us all vulnerable to a shock in any part of the stretched-out supply chain.
The International Science Council has launched the COVID-19 Global Science Portal in response to this rapidly changing global emergency.
While covid-19 is a global crisis, the strategies for tacking it may vary significantly from country to country. Amanda Glassman, together with Kalipson Chalkidou and Richard Sullivan, reflect on the challenges and options for low-income countries in this 2 April 2020 blog.
