The world faces ever more complex, transboundary challenges. Science offers a key to untangling their roots and finding solutions. At this event, expert and high-level speakers will reflect on the role of science in national and international political processes.

In a world affected by pandemics, global warming, environmental destruction and socio-economic transformation, the demand for evidence in policy is sky-high. As noted in a memo released by President Joe Biden ‘scientific and technological information, data, and evidence are central to the development and iterative improvement of sound policies.’ And the US message is echoed internationally.  According to the 2021 report of the UN Secretary General ‘all policy and budgetary decisions [of the UN] should be backed by science and expertise’. However, as of 2024, most of the representative forums of global governance (the UN General Assembly, Security Council, the European Union) lack a standing, institutionalised, and well-resourced mechanism for scientific inputs. Indeed, a study on the role of scientific evidence in the UN General Assembly, ‘science has very little representation within the current institutional arrangements of the UNGA’. As the necessity for international cooperation in the face of increasing complex transboundary challenges intensifies, the lack of institutionalised evidence processes needs redress. International policy makers need formalised mechanisms for expert inputs and exchange.

Promoting the use of evidence in international policymaking is by no means easy. As highlighted in extensive academic debate, there is little consensus on almost every stage of the evidence to policy process (Parkhurst 2017, Stone 2019). In such a context it is hard for policymakers and experts to make suggestions on how to engage with one another, how to tailor their policy questions and make relevant their research, how to work within each other’s institutional contexts, and to each other’s timescales. Challenges are definitional (what kinds of evidence count?), institutional (what kinds of evidence to policy mechanisms work?) and scalar (how do we translate our knowledge of national policy processes to the international realm?).

This event will reflect on the findings of a recent research project, led by public policy scholars and experts from the UK and  Sub-Saharan Africa, which aimed to gather insights from textual analysis and country-case studies to inspire and inform procedural changes at the international level. A key component of the project was to elaborate a series of detailed case studies from previously understudied Sub-Saharan African countries (including Benin, South Sudan, Tanzania and South Africa) to better understand localised meanings of evidence and local experiences of evidence-to-policy institutionalisation. Combining this evidence with systematic review the group devised policy recommendations on how evidence can be better institutionalized in international policy processes, with specific attention to the UN General Assembly.

This STI Forum virtual side event will be hosted by a consortium of world-leading research institutions including the University of Bristol, On Think Tanks, the African Center for Equitable Development, Samahi Research, the African Centre for Cities, the North-South Institute and the International Science Council.

Date and Time:

Thursday 9th May at 13.15-14.45 EST / 17.15-18.45 GMT.

Register at this link