A new white paper titled “From Knowledge to Solutions: Science, technology and Innovation in support of the UN SDGs” has been published in the open-science scholarly journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO). The paper brings together leading voices from europe’s biodiversity and data science communities to emphasize that protecting biodiversity is not just an environmental issue. It is essential for food security, public health, climate stability, and the global economy.
The authors make a call for a decisive shift from fragmented initiatives to a holistic, global approach to biodiversity research and policy. This was demonstrated during a workshop at the 79th United Nations General Assembly and the Science Summit (UNGA79). A key part of this conversion concerns the role of research infrastructures in connecting science, technology, and policy. These include vast biodiversity collections, genomic observatories, and ecosystem “digital twins” powered by supercomputers.
The paper is a result of collaboration between legal entities based in Europe and holding global interests, including biodiversity, ecology, and engineering communities. This effort was coordinated by the LifeWatch European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC).
With their combined expertise and thru European initiatives such as Research Infrastructures, e-Infrastructures, the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), Digital Twin projects, and academic publishers, these communities provide a basis for collaboration in strategically contributing to the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (K-M GBF) targets.
This is a crucial step towards preserving the planet for future generations.