Towards a Science, Policy, and Society Trinity for the 203 Agenda

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In a Guest Article at IISD.org on 6 August, CoR-EU Members Louis Meuleman and Ingeborg Niestroy argued for broadening the science-policy debate on sustainable development by including society as the third dimension. Not a new insight but it's still not happening!

The 2025 UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development rightly focused on improving scientific evidence and science-policy relations for more effective and coherent implementation of the whole 2030 Agenda. However, the traditional science-policy concept excludes societal stakeholders, and hence misses out on non-scientific knowledge and innovative solutions as well as on identifying societal questions. A side event at the 2025 HLPF hosted by Stakeholder Forum (SF), including SF’s new Chair Louis Meuleman and SF Fellow Ingeborg Niestroy - both also members of the Club of Rome EU-Chapter, identified problems and solutions and called for tri-polar peer learning among science, policy, and society. 2025. https://sdg.iisd.org/commentary/guest-articles/science-policy-and-society-a-trinity-that-can-accelerate-the-2030-agenda/

On 2nd June 2026, The Club of Rome EU Chapter held a very positive Annual General Meeting, which was followed by an inspiring keynote speech by Luc Bas, Director of the Belgian Cerac - Climate Risk Assessment Center. Luc informed us about the results of the Belgian Climate Risk Assessment (BCRA), which describes the 28 main risks related to climate change and to ecosystems degradation in Belgium.