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The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) is initiating an independent scientific report to be launched ahead of the international UN meeting “Stockholm+50: a healthy planet for the prosperity of all – our responsibility, our opportunity”. The report will lay out the scientific basis for the meeting and is funded by the Swedish Government.
The Stockholm+50 UN meeting will take place in Stockholm in June 2022. Photo: KavalenkavaVolha / Getty Images.
Stockholm+50 will take place on 2–3 June 2022 in Stockholm, Sweden to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the UN Conference on the Human Environment (the 1972 Stockholm Conference). It will seek to accelerate the implementation of commitments and delivery for sustainable development, including a sustainable recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
SEI is an international policy and research institute that was established to honour the legacy of the 1972 Stockholm Conference, the first world conference to place environment and development issues at the forefront of international concerns.
The report will synthesize the latest research to highlight societal needs and opportunities for sustainable development across developing, emerging and developed economies. To ensure a rigorous and impactful report, an international advisory panel is being established. The first meeting of the advisory panel will take place on 1 July 2021. Confirmed members are Ajay Mathur (Director General, ISA), Andrew Norton (Director, IIED), Céline Charveriat (Executive Director, IEEP), Charles Mwangi (Co-Chair, GEO-6 for Youth), Dominic Waughray (Managing Director, WEF), Elliot Harris (UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, UNDESA), Fatima Denton (Director, UNU-INRA), George Varughese (SEI Associate), Janez Potočnik (Co-Chair, IRP), Joanes Atela (Senior Research Fellow, ACTS), Johan Kuylenstierna (Chair, Swedish Climate Policy Council), Johan Rockström (Director, PIK), Margaret Chitiga-Mabugu (Professor, University of Pretoria), Melissa Leach (Director, IDS), Michael Lazarus (Senior Researcher, SEI US), Nicole Leotaud (Executive Director, CANARI), Niki Frantzeskaki (Professor, Swinburne University of Technology), Nitin Desai (Chair, TERI), Oksana Mont (Professor, Lund University), Pushpam Kumar (Chief Environmental Economist, UNEP), Sébastien Treyer (Executive Director, IDDRI), Shardul Agrawala (Head of the Environment and Economic Integration Division, OECD), Ulrika Modéer (Assistant Secretary-General, UNDP), Wang Yi (Vice president of CASISD) and Yasuo Takahashi (Executive Director, IGES).
With this report, we will offer an opportunity to reflect on the progress we have made in the last 50 years, but also consider where we have failed to live up to the Stockholm Declaration. The need to accelerate implementation of commitments could not be more urgent and we will seek to provide compelling evidence and ideas on how that can be done.
Åsa Persson, Research Director and Deputy Director of SEI.
The scope of the report will be set together with the advisory panel, with a view to support the purpose and vision of Stockholm+50 themes as they emerge and to be underpinned by the latest science and analysis. Tentatively, the report will look at whether – and how – societies can recover sustainably from crises like the Covid-19 pandemic, our relationship with nature and implementing and financing existing commitments. Equity, prosperity and the perspectives of youth are important cross-cutting issues.
The overall goal is to push the global sustainability transformation by adding value to existing analysis and identifying actions not clearly addressed in other international processes and forums.
“Together with our partners – and drawing on recent science – we will fill knowledge gaps and demonstrate that the outcomes of the Stockholm+50 report are evidence-based and rest on a diversity of perspectives”, said Nina Weitz, Research Fellow at SEI and project leader for the Stockholm+50 scientific report.
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