Mapping the UNESCO Recommendations on Science and Scientific Researchers to the UN Sustainable Development Goals

This Report aligns the 2017 UNESCO Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers (RSSR) with the 17 United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Science and technology-based strategies are central to the realization of the SDGs and many of the 169 SDG targets. However, as history shows, the use of science and new technologies for development and social change is rarely without problems. Challenges can include unintended societal implications, possible adverse effects on the environment and ecosystems, as well as new risks for human health and well-being. Moreover, scientific research and development take place in a context of global inequalities, different political and regulatory systems, cultural values, and often precarious employment. These factors can lead to labour exploitation, disregard of the needs of local communities, including indigenous groups, unequal forms of benefit sharing, ethics dumping, and other problems.

The RSSR has a crucial role to play in addressing and preventing these challenges, including in the context of the SDGs. As we will show in this Deliverable, the integration of the RSSR into science- based efforts to achieve the SDGs offers new ways and perspectives that can help to improve the implementation of the SDGs, and to make the realisation of the SDGs more responsible, ethically robust, and aligned with the needs of communities and the environment. 

The aims of this Deliverable are as follows:

• To provide new perspectives, ideas and approaches that can help to improve the implementation of the SDGs by integrating the RSSR into science-based strategies to the SDGs, to make these more achievable, socially focused, environmentally conscious and ethically robust.

• Develop a set of recommendations, that provide ideas on how aspects of the RSSR can be integrated at the level of (i) national and international policy (making), (ii) future research and innovation projects (in industry and academia), as well as (iii) education and training of researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders.

To achieve these aims, the Report asks three questions:

• What is the significance and possible role of the RSSR in relation to the SDGs?
• How can the RSSR help to improve SDG implementation?
• How can (specific aspects of) the RSSR be integrated into efforts to achieve the SDGs?

The report is based on contributions from six team that have coded and analysed the RSSR, and then mapped identified themes to the SDGs. The teams explored the following dimensions: (1) Ethics and Ethical Governance of Research and Innovation; (2) Gender Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; (3) Open Science and Open Access and Data; (4) Public and Multistakeholder Engagement; (5) Education, STEM and sustainable research careers; and (6) Human Rights.