The Power of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering. [View all]

[NNadir]

I don't know why anyone else is a Democrat, but I know why I'm a Democrat, and it very much involves one of Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms," specifically the "freedom from want."

I regard human poverty as a driver of many the other intractable problems the world faces, but given that we are undergoing an environmental collapse on a global scale, addressing poverty is impossible without also addressing sustainability should be a nonstarter, since doing otherwise will simply shift the burden of poverty on to future generations.

This is a scientific and engineering challenge, an extreme challenge, but one that can be met.

I recognize that there is a very real poverty problem in the US, but to me, poverty beyond our borders is extremely exigent as well.

I personally believe that sustainability and meeting human development goals, the latter an activity that the UN has been organizing for quite some time, but I do think that everyone must think anew to do so, not just people on the right, but we on the left must also think anew.

I thus read with interest an editorial in the most recent issue of one of the scientific journals I regularly scan and read, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

The editorial is here, and may be open sourced: The Power of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering Research

An excerpt:

In 2015, the United Nations (UN) unveiled an ambitious plan, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aimed at providing guidelines, applicable universally to all nations, for equitable and responsible development, respectful of humans and ecosystems.(1) The SDGs plan sets a clear agenda to be achieved by 2030 (Agenda 2030), composed of 17 goals and 169 targets, that promotes economic growth, environmental protection, social inclusion, and human well-being.(2) This framework has been adopted by many governmental agencies, foundations, and companies in order to articulate specific actions in the broader context of sustainable development.(3,4) The global scientific community has also established connections to the SDGs, highlighting the central role that sustainable chemistry and engineering must play to realize them.(5,6) In particular, the SDGs are a powerful way to focus on how chemicals are used.(7) The central role and impact of advanced technologies on global well-being and sustainability are further recognized by the declaration of a United Nations International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development in 2022.(8)

The graphic from the paper:



I note, with hope, that three of the papers in the magnificent previous issue of this journal touched on the resource most critical to meeting these goals, uranium chemistry, and a third, on the recovery of elements from seawater, touched on it as well. A fourth certainly evokes, certainly for me, if not others, thinking about uranium chemistry, since it makes clear that a putative "cure" can be worse than the disease. It's this paper: Avoiding Regrettable Substitutions: Green Toxicology for Sustainable Chemistry (Alexandra Maertens, Emily Golden, and Thomas Hartung
ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 2021 9 (23), 7749-7758)

We are making a big mistake if do anything other than "going nuclear" against climate change, climate change being, in part, a function of poverty in ways that I personally can see clearly.