Paper short abstract:

This paper argues the need to transform ways in which ‘science’ is pursued by the Scientific Administrative Organizations—institutions tasked with providing ‘scientific advice’ to government decision-makers/ policy planners—to facilitate climate change adaptation and climate action (SDG13).

Paper long abstract:

The struggle to conceptualize climate change adaptation for the policy process has been acknowledged for a long time, especially in developing countries, where adaptation is the primary policy response to address climate change. This struggle manifests itself in terms of challenges faced in mobilizing climate action (SDG 13). Recent literature argues for the need to rethink adaptation as an issue of growing knowledge divided between the scientifically calibrated assessment of weather and locally situated everyday experience of it on the ground (Ogra, 2022). However, addressing this knowledge divide in the policy space requires an evolved science-society relationship than the one which has previously existed and has informed the formation of Scientific Administrative Organizations (SAO). Here SAOs refer to the scientific institutions under the government’s patronage structured to cater to the needs of the government policy decision-making process. This paper introduces a framework for administering the knowledge production process in the SAOs to help better design adaptation action strategies on the ground. The framework is designed using the feminist science studies concept of situated knowledge which argues the need to situate/contextualize science (Haraway, 1988). The proposed framework uses this concept in the specific case of SAOs.

Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist studies, 14(3), 575-599.

Ogra, A. (2022). Situating climate change narrative for conceptualizing adaptation strategies: a case study of coffee growers in South India. Regional Environmental Change, 22(2), 72.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the inequity in access to affordable healthcare in LMICs by examining the impact of pharmaceutical value chains on industrial capability development and public health security challenges in African countries.

Paper long abstract:

World Health Organization (WHO) suggests local production of quality medicines as one of the ways to ensure reliable access to affordable medicines (WHO, 2011). However, due to intense competition from global suppliers, there is a growing concern about ‘hollowing out’ local production capabilities in African countries. In this regard, it is imperative to take cognisance of the implications of growing reliance on the supply of generics, biosimilars, and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) from suppliers of a few countries – primarily Indian and Chinese – on the public health security in African countries and indigenous learning curve (Ekeigwe, 2019). At the same time, there is an increasing consensus to create policy pathways to support local pharmaceutical manufacturing to ensure health security (Chaudhuri, 2016). Against this backdrop, this paper explores the dynamics of the global value chain framework and local production, focusing on opportunities and challenges to manufacturing and access to oncology medicines in African countries. It assesses the role of the global value chain in the development, manufacturing and access to affordable anticancer drugs in LMICs. Using multiple data sources, our research explores the oncology value chain in the pharmaceutical industry and investigates its implication for access to oncology medicines for the local population in African countries. Our findings suggest an urgent need for setting up appropriate governance structures to make global value chains deliver just and equitable outcomes for local populations of countries that are receiving the end of value chains.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will use a capability approach and economic theories of regulation to explore how Kenyan digital credit products affect borrower agencies. Kenya is famous for its progress in digital development, yet the impact of regulation on borrowers' agencies remains underresearched.

Paper long abstract:

Using a comparative case study of two digital credit products: Fuliza and Tala, this paper will explore how borrower agency in Kenya's growing digital lending space is constrained or expanded by regulatory decisions. This analysis will operationalise a capability approach, and economic theories of regulation, and build on themes from the 2007 financial crisis and the financial inclusion revolution in Africa, particularly Kenya. The paper aims to show that access to resources like digital credit is necessary but insufficient for increasing borrower agency, and digital financial inclusion may further exclude borrowers by putting them in debt. Second, consumer protection laws are essential to protect borrowers' agency and should be used to prevent predatory lending at high-interest rates to low-income borrowers who cannot sustain that credit. Third, lenders may affect borrower agencies differently based on the extent of regulatory capture and consumer protection involved in the regulatory process. Regulation should thus be uniformly enforced on all lenders to prevent differing outcomes between larger and smaller lenders. Additionally, regulators should address data and infrastructural monopolies that give some lenders more control over borrowers' agency than others. Overall, this analysis is crucial as the current Kenyan government rolls out a digital credit product aimed at increasing entrepreneurship among youth, without addressing the growing debt crisis that digital credit could cause among borrowers unable to repay.

Paper short abstract:

Today, scientific projects are to be international, inter- and trans-disciplinary. How does this work in practice? This paper examines the geoscience-practice interface based on the Tsunami_Risk project, which aims to integrate non-seismically induced tsunamis into the Indonesian warning system.

Paper long abstract:

The United Nations ranked reconnecting science and policy as 4th out of 21 challenges for sustainability in the 21st century – a priority which seems to have been taken up by the geoscientific community behind the 2017 Cape Town statement on Geoethics. But what about the practical implementation of conducting international, interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary geoscientic research? This paper examines the science-practice interface based on the case of Tsunami_Risk, a German-Indonesian research project which started in 2021 and aims to integrate non-seismically induced tsunamis into the Indonesian warning system (InaTEWS). Following the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami which caused more than 167,000 victims in Indonesia alone, Indonesian and German geoscientists were instrumental in developing the InaTEWS successfully operating since 2008. In 2018 however, tsunamis triggered by the Anak Krakatau volcanic eruption and by a coastal landslide in Palu caused hundreds of deaths. This was predictable and the Anak Krakatau scenario had indeed been described in a 2013 academic paper: The InaTEWS produces warnings based on seismic sensors only, reflecting a strict division between the Indonesian agencies that focus on seismology, volcanology, geology and oceanography only. Building on 30 qualitative interviews and two science-policy workshops with German and Indonesian scientists and practitioners, the paper details the successes and challenges encountered by those currently pushing for non-seismically induced tsunamis to be included in the InaTEWS. Politics and alliance building play as much a role as scientific and technological progress.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper we compare the research that is related to the SDGs with the rest of the published research. We measure potentially their potential impacts. Are there specific characteristics that make some research more likely to be SDG-related and that funders should target?

Paper long abstract:

We ask the following questions. Are there specific characteristics that make some research more likely to be SDG-related and that funders should target? Are there characteristics of SDG-related research that makes it more likely to be used in industry or policy reports? Does SDG-related research also appear in "excellent” publications using standard bibliometric measures?

Research related to social challenge SDGs, is more used in policy, potentially more impactful in society, and is the most multidisciplinary. Despite this, and despite being of at least as high quality as the average publication in WoS, it attracts less funding than average, and does not benefit from the same level of collaborations across countries. Research related to social functions and technical solutions SDGs is the most focused on basic sciences and technology applications, and the closest to industry. However, it does not attract much public or policy interest. Research related to natural environment and health SDGs is highly used in policy and society, attracts the most funding, and is most likely to be co-authored internationally and to be open access. SDG-related research, on average, is published in top cited journals as the WoS average

Taken together, the results indicate a need for greater public funding for research that focuses on the complex social determinants of sustainability, to complement, rather than follow, private funding