Science for SDGS & Societies

This year, the United Nations High-Level Political Forum will focus on Sustainable Development Goals 6, 7, 9, 11, and 17. In this context, many countries will present their Voluntary National Reviews, sharing experiences, successes, challenges, and lessons learned in order to accelerate implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

Science plays a central role in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals, both at the local level and in a broader global context. Scientists in research and higher education contribute in multiple ways: they participate in expert groups that shape the conceptual foundations of international reporting, generate and analyze data used by the United Nations and other institutions, advise governments and collaborate with policymakers, develop innovative technologies for sustainable futures, and educate across disciplines and sectors within the normative framework of the SDGs.

The DWIH New York’s annual focus topic, Science for Society, raises an urgent and timely question: how can science be aligned more closely with the actual needs of society? At the heart of this conversation lies the principle of “actionable knowledge” – this is how we put it in transformative research. How to generate knowledge actionable is not only a question of accessibility to knowledge, but also of co-creation, collaboration, dialogue, responsibility, and impact.

This event will take actionable knowledge as a starting point and explore what this means in practice across different scientific fields. How do researchers engage with society in meaningful and reciprocal ways? How can science become more transformative, not only by deepening understanding of complex problems, but also by opening new fields of inquiry, addressing new audiences, collaborating with partners from the field and contributing to a real transformation of societies? What do current developments in political polarization and decreasing societal trust in democracy and science mean for transformative and transdisciplinary science?

The discussion will further examine how we can move beyond traditional institutional boundaries in order to foster sustainable transformation in line with the SDGs. At a moment when international actors from different institutions are gathered around the shared framework of the 2030 Agenda, the event invites participants to reflect on new forms of collaboration across disciplines, sectors, institutions, and cultures to contribute to more inclusive, responsive, and sustainable pathways for development.