If there is one single time since human civilization emerged that the world stands firmly together to be a vanguard for our common habitat, I can confidently say that it is now.

To reach this point many thanks are due to the hard work of thousands of scientists and advocates for over three decades that culminated in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change adopted by 195 countries during the COP21, (The 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change). The Paris Agreement ensured an unprecedented level of convergence across the globe to act instantly and differently to save our planet.

It is absolutely thrilling to see the move from rhetoric to action, from the loose and at times haphazardous negotiations, to target bound commitments. The level of science, evidence and analysis done by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) over the years has raised the bar of future scientific work and research.

The climate agenda, which benefited from a broad consultation process, has now adopted a new premise by expanding its reach to other segments of stakeholders outside of laboratories and research sites. The concerned parties expanded from few stakeholders such as governments, multilaterals, and scientists in related fields to the wider circle of participants that now includes business, industry, academia, and services.

Building a less than 1.5-degree economy by 2050 with a strong aspiration of reducing the target number to zero degrees by the end of the century has been underpinned by other drastic and bold decisions such as carbon costing (with the anticipation of using this to subsidize the adoption of carbon friendly technologies), as well as decoupling growth and the use of fossil fuels from high carbon emission economies.

Obviously, these bold actions are extremely important in setting the stage and building trust and confidence among various and, at times, competing interests. The contribution of global consensuses such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 is increasingly important in build a transparent and accountable system by setting clear targets and action plans, especially in the context of Africa.

The climate change agenda is very much about the behavior of the actions of our everyday life at both national and local levels, but it is also about actions outside our demarcated borders where we have little control or contribution. Thus, it is needless to mention the difficulty in working on such cross-boundary issues without global frameworks that help re-define priorities beyond national interests.

The world has to work together in resolving this matter. We have to build a resilient system that will enable the pursuit of a healthy interface between the major factors of change while taking into consideration the need to increase socio-ecological services with other natural dynamics.

Thanks to the environment science and the continuous modelling work undergone, it is now possible to capture how each of these variables behaves and their impacts and spillovers.

It is with this understanding that we intend to strive to new initiatives and analyze the effects of the interactions between the different activities defined as goals in the SDGs.  In the absence of this information, the SDGs at best could be explained as technically feasible tasks. 

In order to justify it scientifically, we ought to prove whether these actions would lead us to build a prosperous and safe planet beyond 2030. In other words, we must produce adequate evidence if SDGs are to be met within the planetary boundaries. 

These analyses should define the development pathways, capturing costs for environment related inputs (water, carbon, biodiversity, security, etc.), and should look into issues of synergies, tradeoffs, and positive and negative spillovers.

The World in 2050 is a project dedicated to respond to this call by answering some of the above listed challenges and many more unknown factors. Scientists from the Global North and the Global South have come together to work on this, bringing their diverse and profound expertise, as well as building a platform to address these complicated and highly sensitive challenges.

The task is foreseen to require multiple year investments and uninterrupted work in order to be able to truly explore this with a long term lens.  Another crucial output will be to explore the different geo-political and ecological perspectives as part of building development pathways. 

This analysis among other things will ensure how the solution in a specific context will be perceived, adopted and modified to suit the circumstances with substantial equivalent values.

Once again Kigali is hosting scientists representing different fields from the various sub-region of Africa to dialogue with their professional allies and make what works for all.

The African Dialogue on The World In 2050 will be held on 28th to 29th August 2017 in Kigali, Rwanda and is co-organized by the Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa and the Stockholm Resilience Center.

The writer is Director General,

The Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa (SDGC/A).