Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development

Encourages Member States to strengthen and foster investment in research and development for environmentally sound technologies and to promote the involvement of the business and financial sectors in the development of those technologies, and invites the international community to support those efforts;

Encourages all stakeholders in an effort to prepare for existing and future opportunities and challenges presented by technological change, including the fourth industrial revolution, among others, to explore ways and means of conducting inclusive national, regional and international technology assessment and foresight exercises on existing, new and emerging technologies to help to evaluate their development potential and mitigate possible negative effects and risks;

Encourages Member States, individually and collectively, to support policies that increase financial inclusion, including through making use of financial technology, with a view to deepening and diversifying the sources of financing and of direct investments towards science, technology and innovations that address the Sustainable Development Goals;¹¹

Also encourages Member States to promote local innovation capabilities for inclusive and sustainable economic development by bringing together local scientific, vocational and engineering knowledge, mobilizing resources from multiple channels, improving information and communications technology and supporting infrastructure development;

Further encourages Member States to promote digital inclusion and literacy and to consider incorporating digital competencies into the education system, with a special focus on encouraging girls and enhancing digital skills and competences development, including through investment in digital qualification, specialization in digital technologies, digital infrastructure, public policies and institutional development and multi-stakeholder and international collaboration;

Encourages enhanced capacity-building support for developing countries in order to generate the use of high-quality, timely and reliable disaggregated data, and also encourages international cooperation, including through technical and financial support, to strengthen the capacity of national statistical systems;

Also encourages existing arrangements and the further promotion of international, regional, subregional and interregional joint multi-stakeholder research and development projects, as well as training programmes and university-to-university collaborations where feasible, by mobilizing scientific and research development resources, facilities and equipment;

Calls upon Member States and the United Nations development system, and encourages other stakeholders, as appropriate, to continue to initiate, implement and support measures to improve the level of participation of scientists and engineers from developing countries in international collaborative research, science, technology and innovation projects;

Also calls upon Member States and the United Nations development system, and encourages other stakeholders, as appropriate, to continue to strengthen their support for the different science, technology and innovation partnerships with developing countries in primary, secondary and higher education, vocational education and continuing education; business opportunities for the private sector; science, technology and innovation infrastructure; and science, technology and innovation advice for developing countries;

Requests the Commission on Science and Technology for Development to continue to assist the Economic and Social Council as the focal point in the system-wide follow-up to the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society5 and to continue its science, technology and innovation activities;

Encourages the Commission on Science and Technology for Development to discuss and explore innovative financing models, such as impact investment, as a means of attracting new stakeholders, innovators and sources of investment capital for science, technology, engineering and innovation-based solutions, in collaboration with other organizations, where appropriate;

Encourages the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, in collaboration with relevant partners, such as the World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the United Nations University, to continue to undertake science, technology and innovation policy reviews, with a view to assisting developing countries, upon request, in identifying the measures needed to integrate science, technology and innovation policies into their national development strategies and ensuring that they are supportive of national development agendas, as appropriate, and in this regard takes note of the new science, technology and innovation policy review framework developed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development;

Invites the Commission on Science and Technology for Development and the Technology Facilitation Mechanism to strengthen synergies and mutually reinforce their work on science, technology and innovation, and invites the Secretariat to coordinate the dates of their meetings in order to avoid overlap and to ensure coherence and coordination between both entities;

Encourages the World Intellectual Property Organization to continue to undertake technical support activities, including helping countries to design, develop and implement national intellectual property and innovation strategies aligned with their development strategies;

Calls upon the United Nations funds and programmes and the specialized agencies, at the request of Member States, to support, as appropriate, technical and scientific cooperation and North-South, South-South, triangular, regional and international cooperation on access to science, technology, innovation and knowledge-sharing, on mutually agreed terms;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its seventy-sixth session a report on the implementation of the present resolution and recommendations for future follow-up, including lessons learned in integrating science, technology and innovation policies into national development strategies as well as concrete recommendations in supporting the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and decides to include in the provisional agenda of its seventy-sixth session, under the item entitled “Globalization and interdependence”, the sub-item entitled “Science, technology and innovation for sustainable development”.