The International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development (IYBSSD) has its Closing Ceremony on the 15th December with a major outcome: The proclamation of the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development (2024-2033), by the United Nations General Assembly. HFSP has been contributing for the IYBSSD for the last year, particularly with the High-Level Summit and International Scientific Symposium “Fundamental Life Science Meets Climate, Environment, and Sustainability", and HFSPO Secretary-General, Pavel Kabat, is the chair of the session “Why was this International Year important in different parts of the world?” on the Closing Ceremony.
For the past 50 years, climate change and threats to our environment have been top-of-mind subjects for the public, policymakers, businesses, and scientists worldwide. The focus was on tracking and measuring just how much change was occurring to ascertain whether human society could adapt to and survive this transformation. From these investigations we now know that so much change is occurring that many of the core assumptions we hold about living systems on planet Earth are themselves altering greatly.
This is why the U.N. International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development (IYBSSD) has been so important, and why the International Human Frontier Science Program (HFSPO) supported the resolution wholeheartedly. In conjunction with this initiative, HFSPO organized and held a three-day High-Level Summit and International Scientific Symposium with ministers, science funders, scientists, and others entitled “Fundamental Life Science Meets Climate, Environment, and Sustainability. The historic event took place in June of 2023 in Paris, France, and attracted more than a thousand attendees in-person and online.
Global leaders and keynote speakers redirected our attention to a new perspective that has the potential to greatly expand our working knowledge of planet Earth. Sessions revealed that conducting investigations in basic sciences from a systemic point of view gives us a more complete picture of how our world operates, how major transformations in one part of the system can yield dynamics that our previous world view didn’t necessarily take into account. For example, the interface between ocean and atmosphere contributes to global change in the carbon cycle; radically altering land-based temperatures have the potential to alter how our ocean currents function and affect our climate system; and how climate may not be our downfall, but biodiversity loss may well be the crucial point of loss.
Events associated with IYBSSD have refocused our attention on better understanding basic science and our new knowledge provides a much more secure foundation for planning for a sustainable future and making well-informed decisions. Given how important this new way of seeing the world is for humanity, it is with great pleasure that HFSPO agrees with the U.N. decision in September to extend IYBSSD for the next ten years. From 2024-2033, we can look forward to the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development.