UNESCO science report: the race against time for smarter development

This seventh edition in the series arrives at a crucial juncture, as countries approach the halfway mark for delivering on their Sustainable Development Goals. The report finds that sustainability science is not yet mainstream in academic publishing at the global level and that it is developing countries which are publishing most, proportionately, on related topics. This trend, combined with greater government support for start-ups and small businesses in many countries, suggests that the current knowledge gap could narrow in the coming years, as long as the challenge of chronic underfunding can be overcome: four out of five countries still spend less than 1% of GDP on research and development.