Marianne Schoerling, Head of Stakeholder Engagement at Geneva Macro Labs in Switzerland, joins us to discuss how blockchain can support reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Recognising that blockchain is not a panacea to all sustainable development challenges, it is though an important tool to consider when looking at its costs and benefits and potential impact to affect the well-being of communities around the world.

Marianne has a wide range of professional experience including working at the UN Environment Programme at with several NGOs.

 

What is blockchain?

Marianne has two answers to the question of what is blockchain. A contextual one and a technical one.

From a contextual perspective she would describe blockchain as a chronologically set of arranged digital blocks that will enable the decentralisation of trade. It will allow peer to peer transactions with a reduced need for intermediaries like companies or banks. It entails an entirely new set of preconditions and possibilities for participation and membership in societies and communities.

This is why blockchain can be seen as a social transforming technology because blockchain combines three different aspects:

* Decentralisation

* Cryptography for account authorisation and automatic execution

* New social pattern for companies, schools, universities, organisations and governments to participate within the societies they represent

From a technical perspective blockchain is a system that enables the addition of data to it without the ability to change or remove previous data within it. This is done through a consensus mechanism between distributed parties that do not necessarily need to trust each other. Proof of work being one of the most famous consensus mechanism.

 

The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

Marianne introduces the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a global framework designed to be like a roadmap for collective action towards a productive, vibrant and peaceful life for all on a healthy planet.

There are 17 United Nations Sustain Development Goals which range from poverty reduction to healthy lives and wellbeing for all, to economic growth and partnerships. They reflect the fact that actors from different levels from communities, to cities to national governments all have to collaborate to provide transparency and accountability of the 2030 agenda.

Progress to reaching those goals are tracked via 232 indicators and 169 targets via the UN’s SDG Tracker.

There are two goals that dominate our current time period because of their conditioning nature for sustainable development:

* SDG-3: Good health and well-being

* SDG-17: Partnerships for the goals

SDG 17 is the most fundamental goal as it’s a process focused goal as it promotes decentralised development, co-operation, and engagement of all stakeholders.

With just under 10 years left to reach the SGDs and in spite of commitments by nations there are massive global challenges that remain in particular with climate change, migration, technology and trade.