Towards a sustainable future

Science and technology play an important role in addressing the SDGs, either via enhancing our knowledge about the mechanisms underlying certain goals, or offering tools that can be used directly. Scientists are increasing their participation in providing solutions as they seek to drive greater societal impact for their research. Measuring research contribution to SDGs is not easy though. The exercise of mapping scientific publications to the SDGs is just one way to quantify such contribution.

As the global leader in publishing research, CAS also has the largest number of scientific publications relevant to SDGs, which is growing fast. While it has broad research coverage, CAS primarily concentrates its contribution to the more science-related goals, notably those on climate change, energy and health. It makes a more limited contribution to goals that are social-science oriented, such as education, poverty alleviation, or social equality. In line with the global trend for interdisciplinary research, there might be new perspectives that scientists can bring to address these goals, which may present opportunities for CAS.

Even within the science realm, compared to its peers, CAS has room to grow its research output to better address some goals, such as good health. It has now made medical and health sciences a field that it aims to strengthen, by opening new facilities and launching targeted programmes. CAS is already leveraging its strengths in chemical sciences and engineering, which contribute strongly to the clean energy goal, for example. But these might be brought to bear on more SDGs, such as good health, climate change, or sustainable cities.

There is more to research than scientific papers. To aid the global SDGs push, CAS is also developing platforms to share data and to help monitor progress, such as its CASEarth programme. Such platforms also support relevant research tackling the global challenges with data, promote greater awareness of science’s role in addressing SDGs by sharing relevant research work, and encourage broader collaboration. The collaboration may involve multidisciplinary research teams, international teams, or partners from different sectors, being government bodies, corporates, or non-profits.

Of course, as the current analysis only looks at publication data, broader societal impacts may not be captured. CAS’s stated Priority Programmes include major research efforts that do not necessarily result in publications, but may create new technologies or key industrial facilities, bring public good, or serve sustainable development needs. These research results, more transferable to solutions to real-world problems, are important contributions to achieving the SDGs.

Achieving the SDGs is a global agenda. Collaborative research efforts, across institutions and among the scientific disciplines, will drive insights and innovations, to create a more sustainable future, for the benefit of all and for future generations.