US$74 million new investments in SDG evidence to be announced
US$74 million of new investments in evidence to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals will be announced on Saturday by two major research funders, the Wellcome Trust, and UK Research and Innovation, at an event sponsored by the Malawi and UK governments, the Global SDG Synthesis Coalition and the International Network for Governmental Science Advice.
The money will not be used to fund new research. It will be used to bring together all the existing evidence on what works, including previously untapped evaluative evidence and make it useful to decision makers across the world, to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
The United Nations alone has 25,000 independent evaluations of its work that will feed into this project, with 1,000 new evaluations being completed every year. It will also incorporate academic research, and research and evaluation undertaken by governments and others.
The funding will support evidence synthesis for the SDGs, the scientific process where teams of experts find all the evidence relevant to a question, check it for quality, and summarize it in one report.
It will also support new AI techniques that can help human researchers and decision-makers make sense of the tens of thousands of new academic papers that are produced every single day, and make evidence synthesis faster, more relevant and more cost-effective.
This new announcement means that Wellcome and the UKRI will become the first major external funders to provide large-scale backing for the Global SDG Synthesis Coalition. The coalition is a unique collaboration across 45 entities of the United Nations and 60 member states, working together with civil society that launched in 2022. Co-chaired by the independent evaluation offices of UNDP and UNICEF, it aims to bring together everything the world knows to help accelerate delivery of the SDGs, and so impact billions of people’s lives.
At the Summit of the Future, world leaders will agree a Pact for the Future that says: “Advances in knowledge, science, technology, and innovation could deliver a breakthrough to a better and more sustainable future for all.” These new investments are designed to ensure that advances in knowledge do lead to better futures for all.
John-Arne Røttingen, CEO of the Wellcome Trust, said: “Global collaboration in ensuring best evidence gets in the hands of decision-makers will move us faster towards achieving the SDGs and solving the urgent health challenges facing everyone.”
Lord Patrick Vallance, Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation, UK Government said: “This opportunity will catalyse a step-change in AI-driven evidence synthesis, transforming how government leaders can access accurate, up-to-date, and accessible summaries of evidence bases in key policy areas. Collaborating with the UN-led SDG Synthesis Coalition keeps global coordination at the heart of our vision for this programme, building on existing efforts to support international development, for public good.”
Bob Rae, President of the UN Economic and Social Council and Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York, said “We are now halfway through the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, and we still need to get more than 80% of the Sustainable Development Goals back on track. This will require an extraordinary and collective effort but our history shows us that this effort is possible.”
Andrea Cook, Executive Director, United Nations Sustainable Development Group System-Wide Evaluation Office said: “The Pact for the Future calls for a path to a brighter future for all of humanity. These transformative investments will help provide the map to get us there.”