Don’t save ‘the world’ – embrace a pluriverse!

by Saurabh Arora and Andy Stirling The United Nations is 75 years old on 24 October 2020. It’s an unfortunate year to be reaching this milestone. Apart from global pandemic…

Democracy in the Anthropocene?

Planetary boundaries / Illustration from Global Change magazine STEPS Centre director Melissa Leach recently wrote in the Huffington Post: “When the cover of the Economist famously announced ‘Welcome to the…

The Belgrade Process on International Environmental Governance

The First meeting of the Consultative Group of Ministers or High-level Representatives on International Environmental Governance – ‘The Belgrade Process’ governed by UNEP

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body tasked with reviewing and assessing the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change.

“Our Common Future” UN Brundtland Commission Report

The first internationally commissioned document to declare issues of environmental concern and human development as an ‘interlocking crises’. Following from the UN Conference on the Human Environment, the report highlighted…

Background paper / Manifesting Utopia: History and Philosophy of UN Debates on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development

By Esha Shah This paper revisits a series of key moments in the last 50 years of UN debates on science and technology for sustainable development. It reflects on the…

UNCTAD established & UNCTAD-I Geneva

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) established; and first conference, UNCTAD-I, convened in Geneva

UN Vienna Conference on S&T for Development

The United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD) held in Vienna involved years of preparation, regional meetings and significant participation by NGOs, and resulted in several new commitments and institutions. The conference recognised the complexity of directing science and technology toward development goals, and followed growing tensions between the G77 and Group B on negotiating terms of trade, technology transfer, and the broader efforts toward a ‘New International Economic Order’ – highlighting concerns of equity in international relations.

UN First Development Decade

The UN General Assembly passed Resolution 1710 (XVI) to establish the 1960s as the United Nations Development Decade, which called on “Member States and their peoples [to] intensify their efforts to mobilize and to sustain support for the measures required on the part of both developed and developing countries to accelerate progress towards self-sustaining growth of the economy of the individual nations and their social advancement.”

UN Conference on S&T for the Benefit of the Less Developed Countries

The 1963 United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for the Benefit of Less Developed Countries, held in Geneva, involved some 1,665 delegates from 96 countries and 108 specialized agencies, with sessions devoted to science policy, education, and natural resources, among others, and was intended to address the economic gap between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries.