At the Fourth International Forum on Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (FBAS 2024) in Beijing, China, a transformative declaration was made by representatives from nations, organizations, and stakeholders, alongside 700 participants.
The Beijing Declaration on Partnership for Accelerating Sustainable Development through Digital Technologies underscores a collective commitment to leveraging digital innovations for sustainable progress. This partnership aims to enhance global collaboration by developing open digital infrastructure, co-developing AI tools, and initiating big science programs aligned with the International Decade of Science for Sustainable Development. It highlights the need for strengthening capacity building, validating sustainability through space technologies, and enhancing stakeholder engagement across sectors.
By advocating for the universality of science and integrating Big Earth Data, the declaration emphasizes the critical role of digital technologies in bridging data gaps, advancing research methodologies, and fostering inclusive global efforts toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The declaration calls for an accelerated global effort to harness these tools and frameworks to overcome sustainability challenges and drive meaningful progress towards the 2030 Agenda.
Professor Huadong Guo, ISC Fellow, member of the Global Commission on Science Missions for Sustainablity and inugural winner of the ISC’s Science for Sustainability Award, has given his opening address at the 4th International Forum on Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals, held in Beijing in September 2024:
The UN 2030 Agenda is currently midway through its implementation phase, however, recent global scale reviews have highlighted the need to improve pace of efforts to ensure the Sustainability Goals are achieved. With the UN’s Summit of the Future to be held this year in 2024, there is a strong consensus and desire to reinforce UN as well as other governance structure and renew commitments to advance SDGs by 2030.
At this crucial juncture, world faces escalating challenges, from persistent poverty and hunger to the alarming repercussions of climate change, creating enormous challenges that need to be addressed to implement Sustainable Development. In 2023, the United Nations pointed out that out of nearly 140 assessable Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), half of them had moderate or severe deviations from expectations, with over 30% of the targets showing no progress or even regressing compared to the 2015 benchmark. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the world to unite and take transformative actions and to develop multilateral solutions to address the complex, interconnected, and dynamic challenges.
Big data as backbone of the rapidly advancing and transforming digital landscape emerges as a valuable resource, offering macroscopic, dynamic, and objective monitoring capabilities of complex and interconnect processes. In recent years, big data has showcased its potential to drive progress across the SDGs, facilitating multidimensional analysis, identifying key barriers to sustainable development, fostering innovative solutions and clarifying the direction for future development.
We are excited to convene the 4th International Forum on Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (FBAS 2024) in Beijing, China, from September 6 to 8, 2024, to foster collaboration and consensus in leveraging big data for sustainable development. The forum will organize dialogue and exchange activities under the theme of “Future 7 Years: Big Data Driving Transformative Actions to Achieve SDGs”. Throughout the forum, we will explore sustainable development goals including zero hunger, clean water and sanitation, clean energy, sustainable cities and communities, climate action, life below water, life on land, and collaborative partnerships focused on advancing towards SDGs. The agenda includes in-depth discussions on the latest big data and AI technologies, comprehensive solutions, application demonstrations, and regional sustainable development experiences.
On behalf of the FBAS 2024, and during this critical moment in time when all parties in the world need to regain confidence and explore opportunities, I extend our heartfelt invitation to experts, professionals, practitioners and scholars from around the globe—representing science, engineering, education, management, enterprises, and social organizations to converge in Beijing and share with us latest achievements and practical insights in the realm of big data for sustainable development, fostering collaboration and charting the course for the “second half” of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”
CODATA and the IRDR were ISC Affiliated Bodies Category 4 Members present at the Forum, and ISC Patron and co-Chair of the Global Commission on Science Missions for Sustainability, Irina Bokova was a guest speaker.
Science Missions for Sustainability, along with the Global Commission on Science Missions for Sustainability is the ISC’s game-changing collective action that will shap the future of science and humanity. The recent call to pilot missions attracted 250 expressions of interest. A selection committee will determine the next steps to bring this idea into reality.
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