Background
This session will look at integrated technological solutions to the energy, food, water, and climate crises. These crises are strongly interconnected, with important trade-offs and synergies between them. It will also examine the current “polycrisis”, long foretold by sustainability science, and the emerging scientific and engineering work focused on this “nexus” of issues. Against this background, the session will explore cases of the most effective technology solutions in energy, food, water and climate that minimize major trade-offs and optimize synergies across other areas. These include solutions that may require sustainability gap financing because they may be less profitable in a narrow business sense but that have outsized, wider benefits across societies. The session will kick off with an overview presentation followed by specific case studies. A key output of the session may be the identification of high-impact and synergistic global actions to drive SDG progress.
Chaired by H.E. Mr. Thomas Woodroffe, United Kingdom Ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council
- Moderator:
- Mr. Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Professor em., Technical University of Vienna, Austria
- Panelists:
- Mr. Keywan Riahi, Director, Energy, Climate and Environment Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria
- Ms. Mónica Gutiérrez, Renewable Energy Engineer, Mott Macdonald; formerly Apü üya Wüin—The Guardian of Water, Colombia
- Mr. Rao Narasimha, Associate Professor, Yale School for the Environment, Yale University, USA
- Ms. Catarina Baptista, Junior Water Engineer, VITO WaterClimateHub, Belgium
- High-level government respondents:
- Mr. Shlomi Kofman, Vice President & Head of the International Collaborations Division, Innovation Authority, Israel
- Mr. Nobuo Fukuda, Chairperson, Carbon Recycling Fund Institute, Japan (video recording)
- Interactive discussion:
- Ms. Ismahane Elouafi, Chief Scientist, Food and Agriculture Organization
- Mr. Jean-Pierre Cayol, Programme Coordinator, Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, International Atomic Energy Agency
