2020 #17
CDE POLICY BRIEF
International participants of summer school in Nanyuki, Kenya, take a break. Photo: Lilian J. Trechsel
KEY MESSAGES
Unlocking knowledge for sustainability: Partnership-based research and education The pandemic has made it abundantly clear: the gravest threats we face today transcend national boundaries, are inextricably linked, and demand joint, knowledge-based actions in response. Partnership- oriented university-level research and teaching have a crucial role to play here. CDE and its longstanding partners at home and abroad have refined effective, transformative approaches to help solve current sustainability crises and train the next generation of change agents. This policy brief outlines lessons from CDE’s long-term experience in tackling shared challenges and addressing inequalities through inclusive, globe-spanning research and education.
The research featured here is focused globally.
Borderless crises The new decade wasted no time in reminding us of the borderless challenges we face. Indeed, fires ignited the decade before continued to rage worldwide. In January 2020, smoke from blazing landscapes in drought-afflicted Australia travelled over 4,000 km, darkening the skies above New Zealand and endangering the health of distant neighbours.1 Travelling air pollution like this has threatened far-flung communities for years in countries like India and China – much of
it owing not to fires but to dirty, climate-warming industrial production of goods for global consumers. Meanwhile, in Brazil, tropical forests that should clean and replenish the world’s air continue to be wiped out at alarming rates, driven especially by global demand for meat, soybeans, and other “commodities”. And alongside these ecological crises, a social epidemic of inequality plagues countries everywhere. It, too, is globally entwined in both its causes, like
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• Overcoming 21 -century threats like climate change, species extinction, infectious disease outbreaks, and inequality will demand unprecedented levels of cooperation and sharing of knowledge. • Higher education and research for sustainable development is an ideal vehicle to bring people together towards a common purpose. It can foster urgently needed collaboration between different scientific and professional disciplines, public and private sectors, social strata, countries, and regions. • CDE has pioneered a transformative approach to tackling shared global challenges. It emphasizes North–South partnership, transdisciplinarity, knowledge co-production, and training of change agents – i.e. the next generation of leaders, experts, bridge builders, and engaged members of civil society. • High-income countries and donors should invest more in longterm partnership-based sustainability research and education, make published knowledge accessible to all, and help establish centres of advanced study and teaching in low-income countries.