Post on 22-Jan-2023
Realising the The World We Want and Ensuring A Future For All: Science and
Technology Collaboration for Enhanced South-South and Triangular Cooperation
Professor Rasigan Maharajh, PhD
Parallel Session II (b): Science Technology and Innovation
3rd Delhi Conference on South-South and Triangular Cooperation
24 August 2017, New Delhi.
Outline
• Introduction: • Combined, Uneven, & Common
• Climate Change Risks
• Climate Change Economic Impacts
• Emergent Science
• Uniting the Nations (Agenda 2030 & the Sustainable Development Goals
• Conclusions
Emergent new Science
“Under under elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations rice, wheat, barley, and potato protein contents decreased by 7.6%, 7.8%, 14.1%, and 6.4%, respectively. Consequently, 18 countries may lose >5% of their dietary protein, including India (5.3%). By 2050, assuming today’s diets and levels of income inequality, an additional 1.6% or 148.4 million of the world’s population may be placed at risk of protein deficiency because of eCO2. In India, an additional 53 million people may become at risk”
Source: Medek et al. 2017
Trends in Population lacking Access to
Electricity, 2000–2014)
Source: WB. 2017
Uniting the Nations: Agenda 2030 & the SDGs
• The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development puts forward a broad and ambitious agenda for global action on sustainable development.
• “Science plays an important role for sustainable development from informing the formulation of evidence-based targets and indicators, to assessing progress, testing solutions, and identifying emerging risks and opportunities” (ICSU: 2015)
• The ambitious nature of the 2030 Agenda requires fundamental changes in the ways in which energy, food, water, housing, welfare, mobility and other goods and services are delivered, distributed and consumed. (UN, 2017).
• The SDGs consist of 17 goals and 159 corresponding targets
• Innovation, understood as new forms of social practice and organization, as well as new or improved technological products and processes, is not only an explicit focus of Goal 9 (build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation) but also a key enabler of most, if not all, of the Goals.
• Advancing from Quantitative Changes to Qualitative Transformation
Pre-Conclusions
• What Does This Mean For You? • If you are a scientist, you have a responsibility to participate in the world beyond your
own laboratory.
• If you are a practitioner of international relations, you have a responsibility to ground your work in the sometimes hard realities of scientific fact.
• And finally, it means that we should sustain the robust ecosystem of National Labs, universities, and private sector research and development that makes the United States a world leader in technology innovation.
• That’s how we ensure the availability of the expertise needed to support accomplishments like the JCPOA, the Montreal Protocol, or the Paris Agreement.
• And ultimately, that’s how we will meet the big challenges for humanity over the coming century — with science, with technology, and with diplomacy.
Professor Ernest Moniz. 2016. Remarks by USA Secretary of Energy at The Institute for Politics at Harvard University on 14th April.
Conclusions: Science, Society, and Sustainability
Science and Technology emerges from the societies within which they are embedded and are therefore Nationally determined
Our contemporary World-Systems are the macro-sociological, historical, and derived from the international political economy (Core, Semi-periphery, and Periphery)
Our current conjuncture is characterised by global contradictions, conflicts, and crises that have domestic and regional impacts
• Radically revised New Perspectives are required to realise the World that we Want (UN) • Steady-State? De-Growth? A-Growth?
• Redressing Knowledge Asymmetries (Decolonising Curricula, Epistemologies, and Axiology)
• Enhance linkages between Research, Science, Technology, and Innovation (Praxis)
• Democratise Science and Technology through Socially-engaged Scholarship, Accessible Knowledge and Technologies, and Open Innovation Platforms
References • Lisowska, Beata. 2016. The Sustainable Development Goals: Joining-up New Standards in a Disconnected World, Joined-up Data Standards Project, Discussion Paper No.
1, 10 February.
• ICSU. 2015. Review of the Sustainable Development Goals: The Science Perspective, International Council for Science: Paris.
• Maharajh, Rasigan. 2016. Regulating the New Commons and Related Global Public Goods: A Vision from the Perspective of the BRICS, Position Paper for the 8th BRICS Academic Forum, Goa [forthcoming].
• Maharajh, Rasigan. 2015a. Being Well in the Early 21st Century: Contemporary Dynamics in the Political Economy of Health, Chapter 1 in Jose Eduardo Cassiolato, and Maria Clara C. Soares [editors] Health Innovation Systems, Equity and Development, E-Papers, Rio de Janeiro; pp. 59 – 86.
• Maharajh, Rasigan. 2015b. Betwixt Now and Then: Travails in the Interregnum, Chapter 7 in Sérgio Eduardo Moreira Lima [editor] Global Governance: Crossed Perceptions, Fundação Alexandre de Gusmão, Brasília; pp. 357 – 394.
• Maharajh, Rasigan. 2015c. The Metabolic Rift, Anachronistic Institutions and the Anthropocene, in Helene Finidori [editor] Systemic Change, SPANDA Journal: International Journal of the Spanda Foundation, 6 (1), The Hague; pp. 1-10.
• Medek, Danielle E. Joel Schwartz, and Samuel S. Myers. 2017. Estimated Effects of Future Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations on Protein Intake and the Risk of Protein Deficiency by Country and Region, Environmental Health Perspectives, DOI:10.1289/EHP41
• Moniz, Ernest. 2016. Remarks by Secretary of Energy at The Institute for Politics at Harvard University on 14th April.
• Steffen, Will; Katherine Richardson; Johan Rockström; Sarah E. Cornell; Ingo Fetzer; Elena M. Bennett; Reinette Biggs; Stephen R. Carpenter; Wim de Vries; Cynthia A. de Wit; Carl Folke; Dieter Gerten; Jens Heinke; Georgina M. Mace; Linn M. Persson; Veerabhadran Ramanathan; Belinda Reyers; and Sverker Sörlin (2015) Planetary Boundaries: Guiding Human Development on a Changing Planet, Science, 247 (6223), pp. 1259855-1 - 1259855-10.
• UN. 2014. The World We Want: Agenda 2030, United Nations General Assembly, New York.
• UN. 2016. World Economic and Social Survey 2016, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York.
• UN. 2017. New Innovation Approaches to Support the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals: Report of the Secretary-General, Twentieth Session of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development, Geneva, 8–12 May.
• WB. 2017. State of Electricity Access Report, Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme, The World Bank Group, Washington DC.