IRDR partners analyse priorities for SDGs

IRDR co-sponsors and partners such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences and International Council for Science recently co-authored an article in Nature entitled, “Five priorities for the UN Sustainable Development Goals”. In the article, the authors laid out five priorities for how the scientific community should participate in this process, based on the findings of a scientific review of the draft SDGs conducted by the International Council for Science.

In the article, Yonglong Lu, professor at the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China and his  colleagues say, “Restructure data-gathering and evaluation networks to address climate change, energy, food, health and water provision.”

IRDR had been advocating, all along the process that led to the recent intergovernmental agreement on the Sendai Framework for Action on DRR, that DRR activities must be seen as spearheading concrete measures to achieve SDG’s, see http://www.irdrinternational.org/3rdwcdrr/.

Consequently, IRDR is currently working with ICSU and other partners on making sure indicator building and assessment work in both domains are compatible in such a way that science-based assessment can be better used.

Last 23- 24 April, 2015, IRDR’s Shuaib Lwasa  joined a high level panel on “Measuring Sustainable Development” at UN Plaza in New York City to debate the implementation of the evolving Post-2015 Development Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

IRDR’s Mark Pelling had earlier pointed out key areas of convergence between DRR and SDG’s.

Download the article: “Five priorities for the UN Sustainable Development Goals”