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 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.

International leaders, scientists, and policymakers will present the lessons they learned about recovering from the pandemic and how to prepare for future outbreaks. They will debate the fundamental steps that must be taken to build preparedness and resilience and ensure equity and inclusiveness in the face of future healthcare crises. This includes financial planning, international cooperation, decision-making, and investments in research and development. They will discuss the following questions:

• What are the key lessons from these three years of Covid-19?
• What issues must be prioritized and addressed in pandemic recovery plans?
• How to establish a pandemic recovery plan in a world fraught with inequality?
• How to establish an inclusive global preparedness plan that enables low- and middle-income countries to provide the necessary investments in their health systems and production?
• Which national policies should be implemented to build resilience for future health emergencies?
• In face of a failed multilateralism system, how to rebuild trust and incentives between countries for more effective international cooperation and a coordinated preparedness plan?
• What role can disinformation play in global health crises and how to fight disinformation?

The World Health Organization Joint Monitoring Programme estimates that more than 700 million people, primarily from the most vulnerable and poor communities, still lack basic access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.1 (universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water) and SDG 6.2 (access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene) were created precisely to help tackle this daunting problem.

The main bottleneck in the provision of WASH is the large capital investment needed for infrastructure, operations, and maintenance, which is why transparent financing and governance practices must go hand-in-hand in such projects. Subsidization and tariffication are two strategies currently used by some developing countries where, despite the reluctance to pay, there are clear social benefits. Ideally, effective policy making concerning WASH should be coordinated with local knowledge, especially in rural and remote areas where decentralized systems are often the only feasible solution.

Better integration of research and innovation in this field and governance decision-making remains a challenge but valuable information can be gained by sharing the lessons learned from other examples of WASH projects around the world. During this session, the panel of experts will discuss ways to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water (SDG 6.1) and access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all (SDG 6.2). They will look at the possibilities to provide a platform for youth representatives to highlight the human right to access WASH and propose strategies for international cooperation and partnerships to accelerate the realization of SDG 6.

Human-induced climate change is a consequence of more than a century of net GHG emissions from unsustainable energy use, land use, lifestyle, and patterns of consumption and production. Without urgent, effective, and equitable mitigation actions, climate change will increasingly threaten the health and livelihoods of people, ecosystems, and biodiversity around the globe. There are both synergies and trade-offs between climate action and the pursuit of other SDGs.

Carbon neutrality largely depends on technological transformations in the energy sector. The growth of renewable capacity is forecast to accelerate in the next five years, accounting for almost 95% of the increase in global power capacity through 2026. Globally, renewable electricity generation is forecast to increase by over 60% between 2020 and 2026, reaching more than 4800GW.

This session will present insights on global carbon neutrality, including the main technology pathways to achieve efficiency and carbon neutrality targets and the challenges that have to be overcome. The speakers will also use their expertise to suggest three key actionable areas for technology innovation upscaling for sustainable energy.