Linking Knowledge to Action for Sustainable Development in India

Abstract

"Sustainable development is driven by knowledge because progress of society towards sustainability is a knowledge-intensive enterprise. Investing in creation, communication and linking knowledge to field and policy action is therefore necessary for ecological, economic and social well-being. While India ranks very high in terms of number of research papers published annually, when it comes to linking that knowledge to action for bringing human development it ranks very poorly. "The Human Development Index (HDI) for India is 0.611, which gives India a rank of 126th out of 177 countries. Drawing on the pioneering efforts on linking knowledge to action, here we argue that in order to reduce poverty and bring sustainable human development a concerted effort is required to design and implement strategies for connecting science to decision making across scales and sectors in India. We present a potential strategy for connecting science to decision-making. Good research is required to produce knowledge and a robust knowledge supply-chain is essential to link knowledge to policy and field action. We call upon the scientists to employ strategies for co-production of knowledge, and for people to engage in capacity building programs to employ co-synthesis of knowledge useful to solve the field problems. Practitioners and policy makers on their part are expected to link that knowledge to both field and policy to design and implement interventions for sustainable development."