Reflection from 4th International Conference on Sustainable Development

On September 21-23, 2016, an annual conference on sustainable development was held by the Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) and Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) at Columbia University, New York, United States. The big theme of the conference was to emphasize the importance of the United Nation (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The conference was opened by the Prime Minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness, who gave speech underlining the challenge of health and education development in Jamaica.

I had an opportunity to talk to Prof. Irwin Redlener who is the Director at National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. He suggested RDI to join the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). The platform helps to mobilize scientific and technological expertise globally to promote practical problem solving for sustainable development. Future RDI research proposal, may consider the SDG goals since those become references for many people who work in this arena.

On the second day of the conference, the selected research papers and poster were presented in parallel sessions. The selected papers were predominantly a number of research papers in disaster risk reduction and renewable energy issues. This was quite interesting by considering the fact that the wide range of the topics in this conference were seventeen (based on the UN SDG). This also means that RDI is on the right track in term of selecting emerging topics in sustainable development research. (08/10)