Protecting the planet and ensuring humankind’s survival will depend on our joint capacity to invent a future that reconciles economic performance with social and environmental issues. The convergence of these sometimes contradictory interests calls governance models and the conventional ‘development methods’ into question. It overturns the prevailing analytical frameworks and forces us to come up with radically different technologies, products and lifestyles.
Against this background of profound upheaval, research for, with and by countries in the Global South has one clear responsibility: helping to understand the phenomena at work, their interactions, their implications and the levers for transformation. Academic research can play a major role in analysis and interpretation, but also in establishing new development models and the related innovation processes.
Research, technology and innovation (mentioned in SDG 91 and 172) will be crucial in honing these new production methods and new ways of living together. Now, more than ever, academic research has to draw on innovation to help open up new avenues for sustainable development.
IRD is a driving force when it comes to managing the current changes, by:
It is vital that the findings of research are turned into solutions to achieve a sustainable future.
