The scientific and technological community in the Sustainable Development Goal process

31 Dec, 2016

Originally published 2017 in Environmental Scientist 26 (3): 34-37

A functioning international science-policy interface will be essential for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or Goals). The science-policy interface is a process between scientists and policy makers that aims to exchange and develop knowledge in order to improve policy decisions, often in combination with efforts to increase the policy relevance of research. Since the 2012 United Nations (UN) Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) when the idea for the SDGs was first placed on the international agenda and their subsequent adoption in September 2015, it has been realised that the science policy interface is far from what it should be.

This article reviews the role of the science community, as represented in the UN system by the Scientific and Technological Major Group, during the UN Open Working Group (OWG) process. The latter was the main intergovernmental process for the development of the Goals between the Rio+20 and the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Summit.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In the early days of global sustainable development policies, the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment stated that science and technology must be applied to the identification, avoidance and control of environmental risks, and the solution of environmental problems for the common good of mankind, as well as that of scientific research; development must be promoted and the free flow of up-to-date scientific information and transfer of the experience must be supported ¹. In 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro repeated the call to states to cooperate to strengthen capacity building for sustainable development by: improving scientific understanding through exchanges of scientific and technological knowledge; making science more accessible; and contributing effectively to the decision-making processes concerning environment and development². A further twenty years later, Rio+20 repeated these calls and emphasised the need to strengthen the science-policy interface and for inclusive, evidence-based and transparent scientific assessments to be conducted.³

Rio+20 also agreed on a process to develop the SDGs through the UN OWG; the full involvement of relevant stakeholders and expertise from civil society, the scientific community and the UN had to be ensured. In the policy area of sustainable development, this meant a leading, though not exclusive role, for the UN Major Groups. The Major Group system was an outcome of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development. Nine sectors of society were identified as the main channels through which broad participation would be facilitated in activities relating to sustainable development. Like any other element in the intergovernmental negotiation process, UN Member States ultimately decide upon the modalities of participation which are coordinated by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs/ Division for Sustainable Development, in collaboration with the ‘Organizing Partners’. For the Scientific and Technological Major Group, the Organizing Partners are the International Council for Science (ICSU), the World Federation of Engineering Organisations, and the International Social Science Council (ISSC).

A MISSED CHANCE FOR SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTION?

With the need for and importance of science consistently included in all conference declarations since the initial 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, and through a formal role in the OWG process, the Scientific and Technological Major Group was in a good starting position to feed state-of-the-art scientific knowledge into the intergovernmental negotiations that shaped the SDGs.

Table 1. Number of formal interventions per Major Group in the Open Working Group process

A quick glance at some numbers in Table 1 indicates however, that this opportunity was unfortunately not fully utilised. The ten statements made by the Scientific and Technological Major Group were not spread out evenly over the thirteen different sessions. Instead, two were made at the fifth session (OWG5), four at OWG8, three at OWG11 and one statement at OWG12. The ten statements covered four of the thematic areas of the OWG: Sustained and Inclusive Growth; Energy; Oceans and Seas; and Forests and Biodiversity. Given the 26 thematic areas, this limitation is disappointing, not least because a scientific contribution was relevant and needed for all of the thematic areas. Furthermore, unlike most other Major Groups, the Scientific and Technological Major Group did not contribute to the compilation summaries created after some of the OWG sessions. The Goals were adopted as part of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Summit and convened as a high-level plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly. This Summit admittedly was a celebratory event and anything but an occasion to promote the role of science or bring to bear scientific knowledge into the policy process. Nevertheless, the complete absence of any statements on behalf of the scientific community or institution is noteworthy (see Table 2).

Table 2. Number of formal interventions per category of speakers at the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Summit

FROM STATEMENTS TO IMPACT

Obviously, the quantity of statements has no direct correlation with quality or impact. However, the number indicates a comparatively low level of active engagement by the science and technology community, though one could certainly argue that it is unfair to assess the efforts of the scientific community by the number of statements they submit. The same community was engaged intensively with the process through production of policy briefs, position papers, hosting of side-events, providing scientific advice to delegations and UN entities, and through other channels and bodies than the Major Group.

There are however two aspects that indirectly link quantity of statements to impact. The first link between quantity and impact is institutional. The whole Major Group system is flawed with design errors resulting in serious questions about its inclusiveness and accountability. But despite the structural problems with the Major Group system, which can neither be brushed aside nor be easily be resolved, it is the only formal mechanism for stakeholders’ input into the process; a mechanism which took stakeholders years of efforts, and some luck, to get established. And it is a mechanism that, despite its flaws, seems able to facilitate the inclusion of stakeholder interests in the intergovernmental processes⁴.

Beyond the Major Groups, an ‘acronym soup’ is being concocted with the likes of the Secretary General’s Scientific Advisory Board (UNSG SAB), the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and the various high-level advisory groups. The issues with all of these however, is that they have no formal role or rights in the intergovernmental negotiation process – the place that in the end matters most – and that their influence or even mere existence, depends on the grace of the Secretary General or the willingness of the UN system and Member States to listen to them. The willingness by Member States to listen to the Major Groups sometimes too comes under pressure from states with limited interest in the inclusion of stakeholders’ perspectives. The institutionalised embedding of the Major Groups in the process however, makes this formal mechanism quite resilient to political pressure. It is, or should be, therefore of crucial interest to all constituencies represented in the nine Major Groups to ensure that this mechanism, despite its flaws, is used and thereby maintained. The less activity in this mechanism, the more it will erode and potentially see its resilience crumble.

The second link between quantity and impact is procedural. In addition to being a contribution to an active Major Group system, a statement by the Scientific and Technological Major Group has two additional functions. First, it shows to the constituency that the Major Group is actually striving to represent its interest (and thereby increasing its legitimacy), and that scientists are willing to engage in its work or at least take note of and interest in the respective policy processes. Second, and more importantly, the statements (despite on average two minutes only) also indicate to the negotiators that the constituency has an interest in and wants to contribute to the agenda at hand. Regardless of how good and how well-tailored to the actual negotiations the statement is, a single two minute statement will not, as such, do much in terms of impact. A series of consistent, well-crafted and agenda-relevant statements at all opportunities will have greater impact. Providing statements at each session however also means building trust and recognition with the negotiators and other actors, and building institutional knowledge of the policy process within the Major Group.

One also needs to take into account that having a representative of a Major Group at a statement reading, usually means having at least that person, if not even a small delegation, present during the entire session and thus being available for follow-up conversations. Having established trust and recognition will make this work ‘in the corridors’ much more effective. From this perspective, the simple number of statements is a not only a solid proxy for the overall activity level of a Major Group, but also indirectly for its impact.

STRENGTHENING THE SCIENCE

A review from a scientific perspective of the targets for the SDGs undertaken by ISSC and ICSU (though not in their capacity as coordinating partners of the Major Group) concluded that out of 169 targets underpinning the 17 Goals, 49 (29 percent) are considered well developed, 91 targets (54 percent) could be strengthened by being more specific, and 29 (17 percent) require significant work5.

To be clear, the Goals were never intended to be a set of priorities derived from a rigorous scientific analysis, or to be formulated according to state-of-art scientific knowledge. This however, does not relieve the scientific community in general, and the Scientific and Technological Major Group in particular, from making the best efforts to feed scientific knowledge into their processes. There are many aspects of the science-policy interface regarding the SDGs that could and should be improved, many of them independent of the Major Group. There are also several aspects of the Major Group that could be improved⁶. But as the above reflections on the, at best, moderate activity levels of the Scientific and Technological Major Group in the OWG process show, there is one simple improvement which could be made without any significant change to the Major Group and one that would be independent of any external dynamics: attendance of and activity during the formal sessions.

While the OWG process has been completed, the annual High-Level Political Forum meetings on the Goals, as well as other intergovernmental meetings on sustainable development like the UN Environment Assembly, are opportunities par excellence for the Scientific and Technological Major Group to improve its impact simply by being there and active. Improved attendance and activity would require moderate additional resources, but also a slight change in mentality in the scientific community in understanding the political process would help. Scientific knowledge in some sense can be seen as a special commodity. However, scientific institutions like the Scientific and Technological Major Group are just actors amongst many others in the policy process. It is not enough to point out the value of the content that scientific actors can contribute; but also the delivery of that content has to be much more aligned with the ‘policy game’. Increased activity is just an incremental improvement that neither addresses underlying structural deficits, nor significantly and systemically advances or changes the role, quality, and impact of the scientific community in the science-policy interface for the implementation of the Goals.

However, with only 13 years remaining to achieve the Goals, this is not a long time in the scientific realm; we can no longer ignore the ‘low hanging fruit’.

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Maria Dahlman Ström, Henry Kröger, and Helen Sharp for their discussions on this topic and their research support.

REFERENCES

1. United Nations (1972) Report of the United Nations conference on the human environment. A/Conf.48/Rev.1. New York: United Nations.

2. United Nations (1992) Report of the United Nations conference on environment and development. A/Conf.151/26. New York: United Nations.

3. United Nations (2012) The future we want: Final document of the Rio+20 conference. A/RES/66/2. New York: United Nations.

4. Stakeholder Forum (2013) The nature of stakeholder engagement at Rio+20. London: Stakeholder Forum.

5. International Council for Science (ICSU) and International Social Science Council (ISSC) (2015) Review of targets for the Sustainable Development Goals: The science perspective. Paris: ICSU and ISSC.

6. Zondervan, R. (2015) Fine tuning the science and technology major group. SciDev.Net.

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