Dario Piselli

A discussion on science-policy interfaces with Sir Robert Watson

I am honoured to announce that on May 29th, starting from 8am EDT, I will moderate a webinar with Professor Sir Robert (Bob) Watson CMG FRS on the role of science-policy interfaces in the areas of biodiversity and climate change.

An atmospheric chemist by formation, Sir Bob Watson is rightly recognised as one of the most influential environmental scientists of the last few decades and is perhaps the world’s leading expert on the role of scientific assessments in environmental decision-making, having chaired both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Over the years, he has also led a range of other iconic initiatives, including the UNEP’s Global Biodiversity Assessment, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and several international scientific assessments of stratospheric ozone depletion. Throughout this time, he has held key positions at institutions including the UK Department of Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the World Bank, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House.

For his outstanding achievements, Sir Bob Watson was knighted in 2003 and has later received international awards and prizes including the Asahi Glass Blue Planet Prize and the UN Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation.

The webinar is hosted by SDSN Youth, the global youth initiative of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, and is part of the SDSN Youth Live! Webinar Series. I would like to thank the organisers for the prestigious opportunity that they offered me, and I look forward to chairing the discussion with Sir Bob Watson on May 29th.

The event will be livestreamed on SDSN Youth’s Facebook page.

Until May 26th, it will be possible to send questions for Sir Bob Watson at this link.

Opinion on the Global Policy journal’s website: global health governance in the age of COVID-19

At the beginning of last year, the Global Policy journal published a research article on ‘Gridlock, Innovation and Resilience in Global Health Governance‘, that I had co-authored with Ilona Kickbusch, Michaela Told, Kyle McNally and the late David Held. One of the arguments of the study was that our era of growing health risks and socio-economic insecurities could easily lead to a crisis that would threaten to upend decades of progress in global health.

Today, the same journal hosts an opinion piece in which Ilona Kickbusch and myself reflect on the ‘legacy’ of that research in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our key takes are the following:

the international response to COVID-19 highlights a number of negative dynamics that were already present in the global health system, from rising geopolitical rivalries to the risk of excessive fragmentation in governance instruments;
at the same time, COVID-19 is a window of opportunity to break open existing bottlenecks and strengthen multilateralism in global health and beyond.

You can read the opinion piece at this link.

New publication discusses interface of resource inequality and global economic governance

A new, open access article I co-authored with Yixian Sun and Defne Gonenc is out in online first view for the journal International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics.

The article, which will eventually be part of a Special Issue harnessing the first decade of Earth System Governance (ESG) scholarship on issues of access and allocation, reviews the ESG literature to understand what we have learned (and what we still don’t know) about the impacts of the global economic system on resource inequality. In particular, the review shows that while ESG scholarship has begun to highlight the dynamics of unfair access and allocation deriving from the global economic system (e.g. direct impacts of trade and investment on environmental inequality and socioeconomic opportunities, indirect equity implications of environmentally motivated restrictions in international trade and investment regimes), critical questions remain about the identity of vulnerable groups and the potential pathways for more equitable sharing of benefits and burdens.

You can read the article here.

To cite the article: Gonenc, D., Piselli, D. & Sun, Y. The global economic system and access and allocation in earth system governance. Int Environ Agreements (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-020-09472-w

New book chapter in ‘Achieving the SDGs through sustainable food systems’

It is now possible to buy the edited volume ‘Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Through Sustainable Food Systems‘, published by Springer Nature and edited by Riccardo Valentini, John Sievenpiper, Marta Antonelli and Katarzyna Dembska. Through an interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach, this book tries to offer a comprehensive analysis of the main challenges in delivering sustainable food systems that can contribute to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development across all regions and along the entire food chain. It is a truly unique endeavour, bringing studies of innovation and agri-food technology together with policy perspectives, discussions of the role of advocacy, and much more.

The volume contains a chapter authored by me together with Siamak Sam Loni, Kayla Colyard and Sienna Nordquist (all fellow members of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network). The chapter analyzes the interplay between existing youth-led contributions to implement Sustainable Development Goal 2 (‘No Hunger’) and the challenges imposed upon young people by unsustainable agricultural practices and food systems. On the one hand, the chapter examines the negative impacts that unsustainable food systems have on rural youth, including in terms of rural outmigration, youth unemployment and rural poverty. On the other, it focuses on young people’s actual contributions to sustainable food system transformations, as well as on the importance of addressing the barriers facing young farmers and entrepreneurs in their countries and communities.

New book chapter: EU biodiversity law and its health impacts

In recent years, and with growing intensity since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the concept of environmental health has emerged as a fundamental prism through which to analyse the complex interplay between global health and environmental law. Environmental risks, ranging from soil, water and air pollution to waste management and land use change, are now estimated to contribute to one quarter of the global disease burden, amounting to at least 13 million deaths per year according to assessments conducted by the World Health Organization (1).

Debates proliferate in multilateral fora ranging from the World Health Assembly to the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, covering aspects including the environmental determinants of health, the social-ecological dynamics of infectious disease emergence, and the direct and indirect health benefits arising from the fight against environmental degradation. As a consequence, the need to harness synergies between these two areas of global policy-making also becomes more urgent.

For this reason, I was especially happy to join Prof Riccardo Pavoni as a co-author for a chapter in the upcoming volume ‘Environmental Health in International and EU Law‘, edited by Prof Stefania Negri. The chapter particularly deals with the health impacts of current European legislation in the field of biodiversity, and the possibility for a more effective integration of human health and well-being within its provisions. It addresses the progressive incorporation of health considerations in the Habitats and Birds directives and in the Invasive Alien Species regulation, the use of health-related arguments in the biodiversity jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the linkage between environment and health in the application of the precautionary principle.

The volume, which will be published by Routledge in its ‘Routledge-Giappichelli Studies in Law‘ series at the end of the year, is now available for pre-order at this link.

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(1) The WHO estimate is based on the following assessments: Prüss-Üstün A, Corvalán C. Preventing disease through healthy environments: towards an estimate of the environmental burden of disease. Geneva: World Health Organization 2006; and Prüss-Üstün A, Wolf J, Cornavalán CF, Bos R, Neira MP. Preventing disease through healthy environments: a global assessment of the burden of disease from environmental risks. Geneva: World Health Organization: 2016.

Editor of the 2019 Youth Solutions Report

For the third (and unfortunately last) time, I had the privilege of serving as the editor of the 2019 Youth Solutions Report, the flagship publication of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network‘s global youth initiative (SDSN Youth).

The Report, which identifies 50 innovations that are accelerating global progress on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has been released today, at the 74th UNGA High-Level Side Event on Social Business, Youth and Technology.

This year, the selected solutions have been chosen by an advisory panel of 24 leading experts across all SDG sectors and geographical regions, among a pool of applicants that included over 4,300 submissions from 174 countries. Winning projects were particularly focused on introducing innovative approaches to lifting vulnerable communities in developing countries out of poverty, with solutions targeting areas such as digital health and education, financial inclusion, innovation in agricultural practices, sustainable livelihoods, and circular economy.

Like its 2017 and 2018 predecessors, this year’s Youth Solutions Report provides the selected initiatives with a powerful platform to secure funding, build capacity, communicate experiences, and scale efforts. In addition, the new edition includes an in-depth analysis of the role of youth-led innovation in achieving the specific SDGs that have been reviewed at the July session of the 2019 High-Level Political Forum, focusing on the role of young people in improving access to quality education, promoting decent work for all, reducing inequality, combating climate change, promoting peaceful societies, and supporting a renewed global partnership for sustainable development.

One key aspect of the Report consists of its discussion of cross-cutting challenges to youth-led innovation and the importance of seeing young people as a fundamental component of the broader innovation systems that are required to implement the 2030 Agenda.

To read the Report, visit http://www.youthsolutions.report/2019report.