Message from Ms Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of World Science Day for Peace and Development 10 November 2012
World Science Day for Peace and Development is an opportunity for us to confirm the potential of the sciences to build a better world. It is through human intelligence, scientific research and innovation that we will be able find tomorrow the answers to the challenges that today seem insurmountable. Science is our best asset for supporting inclusive and equitable development, and for building global sustainability at a time of uncertainty, and faced with the biophysical limits of the planet.
In order to succeed, we must train today the
researchers of tomorrow in greater numbers. We must also place science
at the service of all, while observing the fundamental rights of the
individual. Above all, we must open a new chapter in scientific
integration. Innovation and social transformation depend on our
capacity to combine disciplines and create synergies among all sciences,
natural, human and social, including local and indigenous knowledge.
The complexity of issues today goes beyond the
framework of any single discipline. The economic, environmental and
social challenges of sustainable development are interconnected. This
was the message of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development held earlier this year, in Rio de Janeiro. It was also
the message of the report of the High-Level Panel on Global
Sustainability: Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth
Choosing. Although modern science has been able to prosper on the
principle of specialization, it is now time to build more cooperative,
better integrated approaches that can combine the progress made by each
science in its own field. Sustainability will come through
multidisciplinarity. It DG/ME/ID/2012/026 – page 2also requires an
improved interface between the sciences, policy and society, so that
each may enrich and reinforce each other.
That is the theme of the World
Day this year, “Science for Global Sustainability Interconnectedness,
Collaboration, Transformation”.
UNESCO has made transdisciplinarity the cornerstone
of its work for sustainability, in its international science programmes
and in its work on education for sustainable development. Ten years
after the first World Science Day, UNESCO remains determined to support
international reflection on a science of global sustainability, notably
through the Scientific Advisory Board of the United Nations
SecretaryGeneral. It is in this spirit that I call today on governments,
civil society, public and private actors, well beyond scientific
circles, to mobilize so as to release the full potential of all sciences
for development and peace, which are inseparable and essential for the
future that we want.Irina Bokova
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