Research For Sustainable Development: the discussions focused on the specific role that the basic research could play in addressing sustainability challenges. What are the obstacles to the development of transdisciplinary approaches to support knowledge co-production between scientists and non-academic actors on sustainability, with a focus on how research funders and performers can better support the transfer of knowledge into implementation.
Making Research Itself Sustainable: during this panel discussions the attendees addressed topics related to the good practices available of research funders and performers and the options to encourage more sustainable research practices that can show positive results/developments.They also reflected on how their research evaluation systems support sustainable research practices, paying attention on the challenges arisen where more sustainable research practices have been tried out.
- Making Sure Sustainability Science Matters: on the last day of the meeting the discussions focused on the promising models for building trust and mutual understanding between researchers, policy makers and societal actors. How to include members of society in the dialogue between researchers and policy actors and what ethical considerations need to be made when involving non-academic stakeholders.
Conclusions:
- International and interdisciplinary R&I collaborations are key factors to tackle global challenges, building on existing networks and good practices;
- Importance of incentivising research on sustainability through a flexible approach;
- Building capacity for researchers and research organisations to make research itself sustainable;
- Outcomes and impacts of policies and practices need to be evaluated to make sure we are in the right direction;
- Relevance of identifying the needs for new skills among the research community to properly tackle complex sustainability issues;
- Reinforcing dialogue between researchers and policy makers will ensure that all types of research lead to ambitious, evidence-based policies;
- Citizen engagement in science should be encouraged and supported, while tackling the issue of lack of trust and easy-to-interpret, accessible data.
The valuable conclusions of the meeting will be the European contributions to the next GRC Annual Meeting that will take place in 2024.Similar meetings took place in the four other GRC regions: Americas, Asia–Pacific, Middle East/North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
The event was co-hosted by Science Europe and The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, and Innovation Funding of Romania (UEFISCDI).