"We are not on track" to meet the UN's goals for sustainable development by 2030, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday at a high-level forum on science, technology, and innovation, per the New York Times.
Of the 140 targets laid out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, only about 12 percent are moving forward, and 30 percent of them "show no movement or have regressed," he said.
"We need to do the heavy lifting" to meet the goals, Lachezara Stoeva, president of the UN Economic and Social Council, told the Science, Technology, and Innovation Forum.
She said the forum is an opportunity to boost evidence-based policymaking, anchored in science, for designing and implementing to implement the goals.
The forum was opened by UNAIDS Special Ambassador for Adolescents and HIV Quarraisha Abdool Karim, who noted that global health, social systems, and economies are surprisingly fragile, but also that community-based technology and data-sharing are fundamental drivers of resilience.
He called for moving "from fragile to agile" in the scientific sphere, noting that the pandemic affected some 500 million lives, with an estimated 15 million excess deaths by 2030 with some gains threatened by reversal.
(The
A customized collection of grant news from foundations and the federal government from around the Web.
The 2014 Social Enterprise Awards, now on is 2nd year, has revealed its finalists, which include “businesses that turn household waste into wages, employ the disadvantaged through the baking of artisan breads, or transform the purchasing power of toilet paper into life-saving sanitation.”