The Covid-19 pandemic has hindered the progress of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals and intensified inequities, fragilities, and unsustainable practices across the globe. While two billion people still lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities, essential healthcare services are out of reach for at least 50% of the world’s population. Sadly, these are just two in a long list of examples of how far we are from achieving the 2030 Agenda.

Breakthrough integrated sustainable technological solutions are essential to get the SDGs back on track. These solutions must facilitate social inclusion, be economically feasible and affordable, and respect the boundaries of nature and our planet.

The G-STIC Rio Opening Ceremony will highlight how G-STIC co-hosts and authorities are fostering technological solutions to recover from the pandemic while envisioning a future with the achievement of the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda.

The bioeconomy, or biobased economy, is a new model for industry and the economy that involves using renewable biological resources sustainably to produce food, energy and industrial goods. It also exploits the untapped potential stored within millions of tons of biological waste and residual materials. The transition from a fossil fuel-based to a biobased economy should reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, make the economy more sustainable, and contribute to climate and environmental protection. The bio-economy is lies at the heart of the European Green Deal, but is applicable anywhere in the world.

In September 2021, the World Bio-Economy Forum in Belém, Brazil, focused on the use of bioproducts as well as the regeneration of the Amazon and the socio-economic development of its indigenous people. As a follow up of the Belém event, there will be a special panel to discuss the socio-economic valorization of Amazonia bioproducts.

The panel will pay particular attention to social and economic development of the Amazon’s indigenous people and ecological conservation of its biodiversity.

The time to act is now. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed and amplified global inequalities, vulnerabilities, and unsustainable practices. While the world struggles with the after-effects of the pandemic, it still faces a triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Along with this potentially catastrophic scenario, human rights abuses continue to be a concern in many parts of the world. The alleged abuses resulting from the Russia-Ukraine war are another tragic example of this. The 2030 Agenda is more relevant than ever and there is even greater urgency for action.

Although these crises are a real threat, they also shed new light on the relevance of resilience, environmental sustainability, and inclusiveness. They represent an opportunity to press ‘reboot’ and reflect upon more equitable recovery plans. Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) can play a crucial role in ensuring a successful transition process and the achievement of the 2030 Agenda.

The G-STIC Rio High-Level Plenary Session will examine opportunities to use STI to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The speakers will also recommend public policies for harnessing STI to reach a more resilient, sustainable, inclusive, and nature-positive future. The discussion will focus on reimagining the future of science and innovation as a democratic, open, and public enterprise that can tackle multiple global challenges in parallel with the SDGs.

The emergence of EMBRAPII (Brazilian Company of Research and Industrial Innovation) in 2013, a strong financing system and  the presence of a number of specialized startups have been instrumental in driving innovation in Brazil’s bio-economy.

EMBRAPII plays a central role in creating synergies between technological research institutions and industrial companies. By sharing project risks with companies, it aims to stimulate the industrial sector to innovate more and with greater technological intensity to boost the strength and competitiveness of Brazil’s bio-economy in both the domestic and international markets.

This session features three of Brazil’s standout startups whose work in the use of nanotechnology and biodiversity have added significant value to, among others, the agroindustry, health, and food sectors.

We are currently living in the “trembling twenties,” facing enormous challenges such as climate change and loss of biodiversity. At the same time, we are witnessing the rapid evolution of digital technology. In this context, how can artists contribute to a more sustainable world?

The European project S+T+ARTS aims to bridge the gap between artists and researchers, working together to find innovative solutions to help make our world more sustainable and beautiful. Selected artworks of Christophe De Jaeger dealing with artificial intelligence, climate and culture will be presented.

The compelling Glacier Trilogy by Theresa Schubert focuses on glaciers and the melting of glaciers as starting points of fluvial systems. Glaciers hold an extreme importance not only as storages of water but also as a memory of the earth’s past and as indicators of climate change. Glacier ice archives millennia-old (an)organic information, such as microorganisms, pollen, and atmospheric dust, allowing scientists to acquire knowledge about ancient ecosystems and to predict future climate change.

Theresa Schubert developed an AI-based video that displays slowly emerging and dissolving synthetic mountain landscapes with glaciers. The work functions as a kind of machine dream of the future that tries to imagine what glaciers looked like in former times.

The project is based on found footage sourced in Italian archives, ranging from photographic images of Alpine glaciers dating from 1860 to handwritten field notes and sketches in notebooks dating back to 1920-1950 by Italian geologist Ardito Desio.

The collected data nourished different machine learning models, which transformed the material into a mesmerizing aesthetic collage, revealing the glaciers in a new poetic way. The sound composition consists of spoken noted from Ardito Desio and a multi-layered voice of an opera singer improvising to the seen imagery.

Earth observation and geospatial information have already proven to be of great value to society. They have been used for weather forecasting, disaster prevention and mitigation and environmental monitoring. They have proved invaluable in the context of responses to humanitarian emergencies, humanitarian response, land degradation, food security, and urban growth. All of these use cases have contributed directly or indirectly to the exploration of innovative and transformative paths to ensure the achievement of the SDGs.

There have been substantial investments in space infrastructure and satellite data tools in recent years that provide free, open, and comparable long series data streams. All these assets are available and could be readily deployed to make sure that there is a coherent and comprehensive Global Indicator Framework that could in turn be used as a monitoring and reporting system that is accessible to all nations.

During this deep dive session, we will focus on the role of satellite Earth observation and how its spatial and temporal coverage, combined with geospatial information, in situ observations and socioeconomic data can make the 2030 Agenda monitoring and reporting framework both technically and financially viable.