Digital technologies have already played vital roles in maintaining a functioning society by enabling remote working, facilitating contactless business transactions and automating corporate processes during the pandemic.
The Group of 20 is an intergovernmental forum for addressing issues on the global economy, financial stability, climate change mitigation and sustainable development. The collective collaboration from industrialized nations and nations with emerging economies plays an important role in ensuring the achievement of inclusive economic development and sustainable development.
Managing cross-sectoral and transnational interests with coordinated aims, strategies and instruments is essential to developing more comprehensive solutions in executing the G20 agenda. The collaboration of actors in different sectors may stimulate processes of policy and organizational learning, leading to better policy design and more efficient implementation.
Currently, Indonesia’s G20 presidency focuses on three main areas: global health architecture, a sustainable energy transition and digital transformation. Indonesia highlights the importance of concrete and holistic actions among nations to stimulate economic growth and sustainable development across the globe. Science and technological development play a significant role in achieving these three goals.
The first agenda item shows how the COVID-19 pandemic is negatively affecting global economic growth, slowing down business activities, reducing production and increasing unemployment and income uncertainty. Less investment, job losses and disrupted national and global trade and supply chains have caused many governments collaborate and take necessary actions to enable a robust global recovery.
The responses to COVID-19 have also prompted a strong drive to reduce unequal access to, and quality of, public education and health facilities supported by government policies to increase the country’s resilience. These mitigating actions are required at the national and international levels.
Thus, strengthening knowledge sharing and collaboration among stakeholders in international contexts, such as the G20 forum, is needed to tackle the pandemic. The responses of many scientists and technologists during this pandemic have successfully facilitated progress in many areas, such as effective vaccines to prevent further spreading of the pandemic and medical devices needed by many patients affected by COVID-19.
Global coordination and cooperation are required to mitigate the spread of the pandemic and diminish its impact on economic and social stability. Moreover, this first agenda item highlights the importance of strengthening the post-COVID-19 global health architecture, including the need for inclusive vaccine development and distribution and mobilization of global health financing.
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