Technology Travelators for Sustainable Development
Goals
Sustainable Development (SD) will perhaps qualify as the most ‘Malleable’
word in English lexicon. Since the publication of 'Our common future' in 1984,
SD continues to occupy a non-negotiable position in almost all global
programmes. It is perceived as the metaphorical blind men describing an elephant. Over the past 3 decades; the
theme kept metamorphosing over Johannesburg, Kyoto and Millennium Assessment to
reach the present, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Despite increasing awareness of consequences of our consumption
pattern, we remain opulent and continue to slide down to increasingly more
unsustainable realm. Our present understanding teaches that the breaks to stop
the slide lie in our attitude and behaviour.
However, it is interesting to observe that as we slide down, we seem
to get more 'interconnected'. Whilst it is yet to be ascertained if there is any
relation in our interconnectedness
and sustainability, it provides an unexplored lever to augur ourselves towards
a sustainable trajectory. [http://envinfoiiitmk.blogspot.in/2017/07/from-intelligence-quotient-iq-to.html]. Willfully or otherwise,
we are getting increasingly entangled in the network. They have grown to
proportions big enough to influence individual human behaviour.
With the emergence of disruptive technologies and expansion in our ability
to reveal hidden patterns from data-mazes are transforming the way we address
challenges. However, advocacy of latent transformative potential of these
technologies are mostly speculative. But for few illustrative case studies,
there hardly exists any operational program(s) that leverage these technologies
for the benefit of the masses and the goodness of nature. Neither are there any
studies that dwell upon the prospects of frontier technologies to help us achieve
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Carefully prioritized, frontier
technologies can act as travelators that help us close the SDG gaps, safely.
