2nd Consultation Report. Bouncing Forward Sustainably: Pathways to a post-COVID World. Governance for Sustainability

COVID-19 has once again brought the role of governments, and their ability to cooperate and coordinate their actions into the spotlight. It has however also highlighted significant gaps in various areas including the science policy interface; the ability of institutional mechanisms to deal with crises; in the preparedness of global and national science communities and government systems; and in access to reliable, verifiable data to inform decision making. The consultative meetings around this topic draw on lessons learned and experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic to identify effective policy tools and mechanisms that would also give due credence to issues of poverty alleviation, justice, inequalities, and the environment. The goal is to suggest pathways for more robustand responsive governance systems for an uncertain future. This report gives a summary over the discussions in the second consultative meeting that took place online, on July 27, 2020

Report on First Consultative Science Platform. Bouncing Forward Sustainably: Pathways to a post-COVID World. Governance for Sustainability

COVID-19 has once again brought the role of governments, and their ability to cooperate and coordinate their actions into the spotlight. It has however also highlighted significant gaps in various areas including the science policy interface; the ability of institutional mechanisms to deal with crises; in the preparedness of global and national science communities and government systems; and in access to reliable, verifiable data to inform decision making. The consultative meetings around this topic draw on lessons learned and experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic to identify effective policy tools and mechanisms that would also give due credence to issues of poverty alleviation, justice, inequalities, and the environment. The goal is to suggest pathways for more robustand responsive governance systems for an uncertain future. This report gives a summary over the discussions in the first consultative meeting that took place online, on June 10, 2020

3rd Consultation Report. Bouncing Forward Sustainably: Pathways to a post-COVID World. Governance for Sustainability

COVID-19 has once again brought the role of governments, and their ability to cooperate and coordinate their actions into the spotlight. It has however also highlighted significant gaps in various areas including the science-policy interface; the ability of institutional mechanisms to deal with crises; in the preparedness of global and national science communities and government systems; and in access to reliable, verifiable data to inform decision making. The consultative meetings around this topic draw on lessons learned and experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic to identify effective policy tools and mechanisms that would also give due credence to issues of poverty alleviation, justice, inequalities, and the environment. The goal is to suggest pathways for more robust and responsive governance systems for an uncertain future. This report gives a summary over the discussions in the third consultative meeting that took place online, on September 1, 2020. Building on overall approach and the 1st and 2nd consultations, the IIASA-ISC team engaged with the experts to identify a set of policy options at global and national systems governance levels. The first consultation focused on drawing lessons from how COVID-19 has been governed at different levels of governance, the second consultation focused on identifying options and opportunities for enhancing governance in support of realizing sustainability objectives. The third consultation further narrowed in on the options and opportunities suggested and harvested policy perspectives with a view to identifying their feasibility and steps needed for successfully translating recommendations and options into to action

Bouncing Forward Sustainably: Pathways to a post-COVID World. Governance for Sustainability

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis is generating massive adverse socio-economic impacts for societies around the globe and brings many issues of relevance for ongoing sustainability transformations into the spotlight. One such issue is the role of governance for sustainability, for which COVID-19 provides encouraging as well as challenging lessons. In this background note, we draw first, tentative lessons on how COVID-19 management has been governed across levels of governance, focusing on identifying opportunities for enhancing governance for sustainability including for tackling climate change

Linear spectropolarimetry of 35 Type Ia supernovae with VLT/FORS: an analysis of the Si ii line polarization

Spectropolarimetry enables us to measure the geometry and chemical structure of the ejecta in supernova explosions, which is fundamental for the understanding of their explosion mechanism(s) and progenitor systems. We collected archival data of 35 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), observed with Focal Reducer and Low-Dispersion Spectrograph (FORS) on the Very Large Telescope at 127 epochs in total. We examined the polarization of the Si II λ6355 Å line (⁠pSiII⁠) as a function of time, which is seen to peak at a range of various polarization degrees and epochs relative to maximum brightness. We reproduced the Δm15−pSiII relationship identified in a previous study, and show that subluminous and transitional objects display polarization values below the Δm15−pSiII relationship for normal SNe Ia. We found a statistically significant linear relationship between the polarization of the Si II λ6355 Å line before maximum brightness and the Si II line velocity and suggest that this, along with the Δm15−pSiII relationship, may be explained in the context of a delayed-detonation model. In contrast, we compared our observations to numerical predictions in the Δm15−vSiII plane and found a dichotomy in the polarization properties between Chandrasekhar and sub-Chandrasekhar mass explosions, which supports the possibility of two distinct explosion mechanisms. A subsample of SNe displays evolution of loops in the q–u plane that suggests a more complex Si structure with depth. This insight, which could not be gleaned from total flux spectra, presents a new constraint on explosion models. Finally, we compared our statistical sample of the Si II polarization to quantitative predictions of the polarization levels for the double-detonation, delayed-detonation, and violent-merger models

Boosting systemic risk governance: Perspectives and insights from understanding national systems approaches for dealing with disaster and climate risk. Contributing Paper.

This contributing paper reviews the governance of systemic risk with the aim to identify opportunities and enabling factors for improving governance by managing what are increasingly interdependent risks with the potential for cascading impacts. The researchers use insights from the joint International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis-International Science Council (IIASA-ISC) “Building pathways to sustainability in a post-COVID world” initiative and forensic reviews of disasters, the Post-Event Review Capability (PERC), to illustrate how sub-national and national systems have governed systemic risks. More specifically, we explore risk governance successes and failures with the goal of developing insights on how to bolster systemic risk governance in policy and practice. The study indicates that the governance of systemic risks tends is still siloed in spite of the clear need for cross-sectoral and multi-level initiatives. The examples provided from the PERCs and the IIASA-ISC initiative illustrate how single-focus risk governance limits opportunities for building resilience and effectively addressing the systemic nature of risks. They also highlight clear opportunities for shifting towards more systemic risk governance, one where risk is co-managed across institutional boundaries and risk reduction methods are founded on effective and inclusive communication

Mapping interactions between the sustainable development goals: lessons learned and ways forward

Pursuing integrated research and decision-making to advance action on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) fundamentally depends on understanding interactions between the SDGs, both negative ones (“trade-offs”) and positive ones (“co-benefits”). This quest, triggered by the 2030 Agenda, has however pointed to a gap in current research and policy analysis regarding how to think systematically about interactions across the SDGs. This paper synthesizes experiences and insights from the application of a new conceptual framework for mapping and assessing SDG interactions using a defined typology and characterization approach. Drawing on results from a major international research study applied to the SDGs on health, energy and the ocean, it analyses how interactions depend on key factors such as geographical context, resource endowments, time horizon and governance. The paper discusses the future potential, barriers and opportunities for applying the approach in scientific research, in policy making and in bridging the two through a global SDG Interactions Knowledge Platform as a key mechanism for assembling, systematizing and aggregating knowledge on interactions

SPLOT : a Snapshot survey for polarised light in optical transients

We present SPLOT, a small scale pilot survey to test the potential of snapshot (single epoch) linear imaging polarimetry as a supplementary tool to traditional transient follow-up. Transients exist in a vast volume of observational parameter space and polarimetry has the potential to highlight sources of scienti c interest and add value to near real-time transient survey streams. We observed a sample of 50 randomly selected optical transients with the EFOSC2 and SofI instruments, on the 3.6m New Technology Telescope (NTT) to test the feasibility of the survey. Our sample contained a number of interesting individual sources: a variety of supernovae, X-ray binaries, a tidal disruption event, blazar outbursts, and, by design, numerous transients of unknown nature. We discuss the results, both for the individual sources and the survey in detail. We provide an overview on the success and limitations of SPLOT and also describe a novel calibration method for removing instrumental polarisation e ects from Nasymth-mounted telescopes. We nd that a SPLOT-like survey would be a bene t to the large scale future transient survey streams such as LSST. The polarimetric measurements have added scienti c value to a signi cant number of the sources and, most importantly, has shown the potential to highlight unclassi ed transient sources of scienti c interest for further study

How policymakers and other leaders can build a more sustainable post-COVID-19 ‘normal’

The UN 2030 Agenda’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the COVID-19 pandemic share two important characteristics. They are global challenges that if not met, pose risks to all citizens. Furthermore, responses need to be system-level, rather than sectoral. COVID-19 has illuminated three complementary, compelling actions that can address these challenges—work across silos; visibly use science in policy; and harness simultaneous global interruption to habits. This commentary describes these using worked examples and suggests actions for policymakers and other leaders. Acknowledging that the full SDG agenda is of much broader multidimensional scope than the COVID-19 pandemic, the SDG examples focus on environmental sustainability

UV Spectropolarimetry with Polstar: Massive Star Binary Colliding Winds

The winds of massive stars are important for their direct impact on the interstellar medium, and for their influence on the final state of a star prior to it exploding as a supernova. However, the dynamics of these winds is understood primarily via their illumination from a single central source. The Doppler shift seen in resonance lines is a useful tool for inferring these dynamics, but the mapping from that Doppler shift to the radial distance from the source is ambiguous. Binary systems can reduce this ambiguity by providing a second light source at a known radius in the wind, seen from orbitally modulated directions. From the nature of the collision between the winds, a massive companion also provides unique additional information about wind momentum fluxes. Since massive stars are strong ultraviolet (UV) sources, and UV resonance line opacity in the wind is strong, UV instruments with a high resolution spectroscopic capability are essential for extracting this dynamical information. Polarimetric capability also helps to further resolve ambiguities in aspects of the wind geometry that are not axisymmetric about the line of sight, because of its unique access to scattering direction information. We review how the proposed MIDEX-scale mission Polstar can use UV spectropolarimetric observations to critically constrain the physics of colliding winds, and hence radiatively-driven winds in general. We propose a sample of 20 binary targets, capitalizing on this unique combination of illumination by companion starlight, and collision with a companion wind, to probe wind attributes over a range in wind strengths. Of particular interest is the hypothesis that the radial distribution of the wind acceleration is altered significantly, when the radiative transfer within the winds becomes optically thick to resonance scattering in multiple overlapping UV lines.Comment: 26 pages, 12 figures, Review in a topical collection series of Astrophysics and Space Sciences on the proposed Polstar satellite. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2111.1155