María de las Mercedes Menéndez, UNU-MERIT PhD fellow and a member of our UNESCO Chair team, will be speaking in a session on Wednesday 13 November at the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Policy Week happening in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic this week (12-15 November 2024).
This event has been designed for government authorities of the Dominican Republic and is an initiative that seeks to promote dialogue, scientific cooperation and the exchange of knowledge between academic communities and policy makers and strategic actors in the field of STI at the regional level. This event is based on the need to reflect on the complex challenges in terms of inclusive growth, industrialization, sustainability and productive development that Latin America and the Caribbean face in the face of the double transition of their productive systems: the green and the digital, as well as the opportunities that can be derived from diplomacy and scientific cooperation between our countries. In the context of a global risk society, characterized by the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the geopolitical upheavals arising from regional conflicts, complex national political tensions, as well as the risks of climate change, biodiversity loss and their effects on value and supply chains, we ask ourselves, how can Latin American STI systems (national, regional or sectoral) respond to such challenges? A starting point for the discussion of the STI Week in Santo Domingo is the eponymous Declaration of LALICS-2017, which allows us to situate ourselves and project the perspectives of STI towards the year 2030 in Latin America and the Caribbean. The proposal includes a series of seminars and workshops spread over five business days, covering different aspects and key actors of the innovation ecosystem in the Dominican Republic and the Latin American region.
The session on 13 November - organised by UNU-MERIT's UNESCO Chair and the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) - will be aimed at policymakers and government representatives. The focus of the seminar will be the analysis of the challenges of industrial policy in Latin America and the Caribbean from the perspective of the relevance of STI capabilities. In addition, this event will address the implications of the double transition, green and digital, for the region.
