Åsa Persson (SEI) - Making the Global Sustainable Development Report 2023 (GSDR23): "Times of Crisis, Times of Change: Science for Accelerating Transformations to Sustainable Development”

How does one go about in producing a synthesis of the most relevant and important knowledge on global sustainable development as the environmental crisis escalate and agreed upon targets like limiting global warming to 1.5 c degrees seem increasingly out of reach? In this research seminar organized by the Environmental Humanities Lab in co-operation with the research project the Mediated Planet: Claiming Data for Environmental SDGs, we will get an inside view of this process from Åsa Persson who is on of the 15 authors of GSDR23. The presentation of the key messages of the report and the process of preparing it will be followed by a critical in-depth discussion with the seminar participants of the historical, political, social and philosophical dimensions of producing high level expert knowledge in response to anthropogenic environmental change. Questions that this discussion will adress include, what is the right balance, or proper integration, of science, policy and politics in the context of sustainable development? Can we ever achieve the SDGs and what does global goal-setting mean for different actors? To what extent can questions of global justice and equity be integrated to scientific assessments about the global environment? From where does a report like GSDR23 speak and to whom? What could a post-2030 sustainable development look like? Suggested background reading in addition to the report itself is: Maud Borie, Martin Mahony, Noam Obermeister, Mike Hulme,

Knowing like a global expert organization: Comparative insights from the IPCC and IPBES,Global Environmental Change, Volume 68, 2021.

Full 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report.

Short commentary in Nature.