Kick-off: Global Commission on Science Missions for Sustainability with Johan Rockström

Pressing the reset button to speed up achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - that is the stated aim of the new ‘Global Commission on Science Missions for Sustainability’. With just nine years left to achieve the 2030 Agenda with its 17SDGs, all countries and actors need to intensify efforts and realign their priorities and resources towards longer-term and more acelerated action.

Key tasks of the Commission include co-designing and mobilizing support, aiming for a global fund of $US100m per year for mission-oriented science as part of a decade of action. It is part of the International Science Council (ISC), a non-governmental organization with over 200 international scientific unions and associations, headed by Peter Gluckman.

The Commission is backed up by the recent ISC report titled ‘Unleashing Science,’  that calls for an ambitious approach – a concerted effort to produce actionable knowledge through a set number of Sustainability Science Missions in the critical areas of food, energy and climate, health and wellbeing, water, and urban areas. Delivering these missions will require a common pool of science funding and a support system that allows scientists to work on these key issues without distractions and to produce urgent usable knowledge to achieve real policy outcomes. It will also require bold and strategic action from governments, policymakers, science funders, scientists, philanthropy, the private sector, and civil society.

The Commission is made up of more than twenty committed experts, from former ministers and financiers to research leaders and film makers, and aims to build actionable mission-led pathways in the face of existential risks to humanity. It is co-chaired by Irina Bokova, former Bulgarian Foreign Minister and Director General of UNESCO, and Helen Clark, former Prime Minster of New Zealand and previous administrator of the United Nations Development Programme.