Gobin appointed to UN science group for 2027 SDG report

Pro­fes­sor Ju­dith Gob­in has been ap­point­ed to a group of 15 sci­en­tists to pre­pare the Glob­al Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Re­port for 2027.

Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res made the ap­point­ment. The re­port is pro­duced every four years to in­form de­lib­er­a­tions at the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals Sum­mit at the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly.

Gob­in re­tired from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus in Au­gust 2024. She con­tin­ues work in ocean gov­er­nance at lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els.

She serves as Tech­ni­cal Ex­pert sup­port­ing de­vel­op­ment of a Caribbean Ocean Pol­i­cy Frame­work for CARI­COM. The work sup­ports Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States in align­ing na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties with glob­al ocean gov­er­nance com­mit­ments.

Her work in­cludes sup­port for in­sti­tu­tion­al, le­gal and tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty linked to im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Agree­ment on Ma­rine Bio­di­ver­si­ty Be­yond Na­tion­al Ju­ris­dic­tion.

Mem­ber states de­cid­ed in 2016 that the Glob­al Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Re­port would be pre­pared by an in­de­pen­dent group of sci­en­tists ap­point­ed by the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al. The group in­cludes 15 ex­perts from dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines and in­sti­tu­tions with ge­o­graph­ic and gen­der bal­ance.

The re­port sup­ports re­view of the 2030 Agen­da for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment and the 17 Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals.

Gob­in will con­tribute to the 2027 re­port, which is sched­uled for re­lease in Sep­tem­ber 2027. The re­port will be pre­sent­ed ahead of the High-lev­el Po­lit­i­cal Fo­rum on Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment un­der the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly.

The Unit­ed Na­tions has stat­ed that the re­port sup­ports as­sess­ment of progress and iden­ti­fies path­ways across so­cial, en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

Gob­in has worked in ma­rine sci­ence and ocean gov­er­nance in the Caribbean. Her work has in­clud­ed re­search, pol­i­cy sup­port and re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The Caribbean Ocean Pol­i­cy Frame­work un­der de­vel­op­ment by CARI­COM forms part of re­gion­al ef­forts to co­or­di­nate ocean gov­er­nance.

The Unit­ed Na­tions Agree­ment on Ma­rine Bio­di­ver­si­ty Be­yond Na­tion­al Ju­ris­dic­tion ad­dress­es con­ser­va­tion and use of ma­rine bio­di­ver­si­ty in ar­eas be­yond na­tion­al ju­ris­dic­tion.

The 2027 re­port will be the fi­nal Glob­al Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Re­port be­fore 2030.