Addressing societal challenges through research

Last year, SFI partnered with Irish Aid, the government’s official international development aid programme, on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Challenge which focused on solving health issues in the developing world countries where Irish Aid works.

The SDGs are a call to action for all countries, in partnership, to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address a range of global challenges including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice.

The SDG Challenge 2022 was launched last month and focuses on SDG 13: Climate Action. The challenge explicitly highlights the interconnected issues of biodiversity loss and environmental degradation by calling out SDG 14: Life below water and SDG 15: Life on land.

“It’s a privilege to work with Irish Aid,” says SFI science for society director Dr Ruth Freeman. “A lot of research is about solving problems. That’s what excites and motivates researchers. In the SDG Challenge, we are looking at specific challenges and how solutions may have science and technology at their heart. When we look at the problems facing countries around the world it is often those in the global south that are feeling most severe impact of climate change. The first call last year was focused on health, and we already have teams working on it.”

These projects include the development of a technology-enabled care pathway that will empower community health workers in Uganda to deliver first-line primary care for low back pain; a project to reduce childhood mortality in Malawi through improved diagnosis of pneumonia; providing access to clean water using sustainable solar technologies in South Africa; rapid detection of sepsis to reduce neonatal and maternal mortality in resource-limited environments in Uganda; the investigation of potential treatments for vision loss and retinal diseases in South Africa; and using data science to scale surgical training in Malawi.

Another innovative project, this time in Vietnam, involves the use of floating treatment wetlands, which are a nature-based solution, to remove pollutants and pathogens from polluted surface water.

The aim of the SDG Challenges is to get researchers from Ireland and the countries where Irish Aid works to come together to form teams which will identify problems and propose research projects which will deliver solutions to them, Freeman explains.

Innovative solutions may include the development of novel technologies, repurposing existing technologies, and addressing barriers to the deployment of existing solutions. Teams are also encouraged to consider novel approaches to enable decision and policymaking, such as for planning, measurement, monitoring and evaluation, as well as meaningful inclusion of local communities in these processes, particularly women and youth. In addition, applicants are asked to consider specific barriers related to deployment and scalability, as well as to the cost, sustainability and access to infrastructure in the partner country

The SDG Challenge is run in three phases: concept, seed and prize award. Following application review, successful teams are awarded funding of up to €50,000 over six months to undertake team building, scoping, and concept validation activities during the initial phase. They then undergo a rigorous review before receiving additional funding of up to €250,000 in the 12-month Seed Phase to further validate and prototype their proposed solutions. Finalists then compete to be awarded follow-on funding within the challenge prize fund of €1 million.

The collaborative, transnational and interdisciplinary nature of the research teams is critically important, according to Freeman. “The floating wetlands project highlights the important knowledge that comes from having all parties involved. The team is using nature to clean water. This is an example of how community-based knowledge can help research. This is an example of how bringing multiple perspectives to the table can lead to better outcomes.”

Those perspectives can also lead to the identification of problems which might not be so obvious to people in the developed world. “For example, if I stopped someone in the street and asked them what they thought the main health challenges in Uganda are they might mention infectious diseases, but they are unlikely to say lower back pain. However, it is a very real issue for many people there who are engaged in very hard manual labour. Teams must also include a societal champion who is there to ensure that the projects have a real-world impact.”

The closing date for the SDG Challenge 2022 is September 22nd. “Climate change is on everyone’s lips at the moment as a big concern but there is more and more realisation that there is a series of parallel crises. Biodiversity loss probably needs to be given equal importance. We need to recognise our co-dependence with other species. The other crisis is pollution. We have operated for hundreds of years by dumping our waste into the environment. These things will come back to bite us. We are seeing the impact of pollution everywhere and it is a huge issue in the countries where Irish Aid works. A lot of consumption in the developed world is based on production elsewhere and that produces pollution. We hope to see some really innovative solutions.”