Team:NOVA LxPortugal/Sustainability
Sustainable Development Goals
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a call to action to develop a global partnership in order to eradicate poverty and inequalities, improve education and health and increase economic growth without sacrificing the necessary measures to deal with climate change1.
One of our team’s goals is to contribute to a more sustainable environment, forest and pine wood market. In our project, we expect not only to help local industries and conservation programs, but also to contribute to a more sustainable and eco-friendly future all around the globe. Since the SDGs are a call to action promoting prosperity while protecting the planet, we decided to do our part to help build strategies for economic growth while safeguarding the environment.
Our team’s project can contribute to the following goals presented as SDGs:
Economic growth (goal 8): our project aims to reduce the economic burden of Pine Wilt Disease, decreasing monetary losses by creating a sustainable solution.
Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (goal 9): we envision a bridge between synthetic biology and the forest industry in Portugal. We hope this collaboration will enhance and encourage investment in the different areas of science and technology to solve this industry’s problems.
Sustainable consumption and production (goal 12): Our team aims to decrease the cutting of the pine trees affected by Pine Wilt Disease by providing a more sustainable solution.
Climate action (goal 13): our project aims to protect Pinus pinaster, an important arboreal species in the Portuguese territory, not only due to the complex ecosystem that it forms with the surrounding organisms, but also to their ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thus reducing air pollution.
Life on Land (goal 15): our project goals also include the protection of our country’s biodiversity and ecosystem by promoting the protection and sustainable management of our forest.
Partnerships for the goals (goal 17): Pine Wilt Disease affects pine trees in several countries of Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Although the first phase our project focuses on thePortuguese forest, our goal is to create a global solution for this disease. In the future, we expect to involve in our project the stakeholders of the most affected countries by this disease, testing our engineered strain in other pine species.
References
- United Nations. Sustainable Development Goals. https://sdgs.un.org/goals (2020).
