Research by SDG

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) of the 2030 Agenda officially came into force on 1 January 2016 succeeding the UN Millennium Development Goals. How can we make sure that the SDG’s trigger the needed action from all stakeholders? That was the challenge which the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences (ATV) and the Danish Science Journalists Association jointly put to the panellists at a conference held at the Novozymes complex in Bagsværd on Friday, 8th of March 2019.

One stroll around pretty much any modern day fast fashion store, and the scale of production and waste that comes hand in hand with our shared love of having the new ‘look’, is apparent. From the vast amount of waste made purely ‘in-house’, to its international reach, the modern fast fashion industry poses a number of problems

How do the world’s most vulnerable inhabitants, living in refugee camps, areas of conflict, and developing countries engage with international legal practices, and economic markets? Emerging blockchain technologies are developing to improve upon the ‘legal-limbo’ that many of the world’s most vulnerable citizens find themselves in.

Corruption represents a major obstacle in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. The activity hampers economic growth and increases poverty, depriving the most marginalised groups of equitable access to vital services such as healthcare, education and water and sanitation. Development practitioners should now start to modernise their approach to preventing petty corruption from hindering their agendas and look towards new technologies.

Meet the Ecuadorian palm-expert who has dedicated almost twenty years of his career to specialize in this plant-family which is widely popular – for conservation and industrial purpose. Just in Ecuador there are 140 palm species – and this man knows to distinguish them all.

Once dry tropical forests in Ecuador were common ecosystems. Now there is only eight % left of this type of forest, which has had the bad luck to compete with the most invasive of all species: The humans. Meet the Ecuadorian scientist who has specialized in the dry tropical forests.

Danish support to research in Ecuador has contributed to document the mega biodiversity in the national park of YASUNI – the biggest in the country, the most famous – and also by far the most controversial national park – maybe even in the South American continent.

At Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE), a large university in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, one of the leading researchers, Hugo Navarrete, recalls the support by Danish colleagues during his early career in tropical biology.