The United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (Unesco) presented the Declaration of Innovation for Sustainable Development, “a global policy for a cross-cutting issue: innovation for the benefit of societies,” said Nuria Sanz today, director of the agency in Mexico.
Guanajuato, Cultural Heritage of Humanity, became the first state of Mexico and the world to receive the Declaration.
Governor Miguel Márquez and the Unesco representative signed the document yesterday, which includes 18 principles of a public policy for an innovation focused on sustainable development.
Among its most relevant points, it establishes that innovation is for all and for all, and since it can generate well-being it needs to be strengthened by promoting the participation of the population as a whole.
“It is the basis for other countries, these principles have a global character,” Márquez told Efe.
He stressed that “the democratic value of innovation is not only for the countries of the first world, innovation must be for all countries and all human beings and rural and urban societies, public and private schools.”
He added that “innovation should be the center, origin and destination for sustainability in the coming decades”.
“This corresponds to us all, what we do in a local entity will have a global impact,” he said.
Guanajuato declared 2017 as “Year of Innovation” and for 12 months held monthly forums and a high level international forum in which more than 300 national and international experts in economics, environment, intellectual property, education, public policy and social sciences shared suggestions to implement the Sustainable Development Goals through innovation.
They met, systematized and analyzed these recommendations and good practices to design the “Declaration of Innovation for Sustainable Development”.
The representative of Unesco in Mexico told Efe that “science is a common good and must fulfill the purpose of having a social good”.
The outstanding researcher Arturo Lara López, Secretary of Innovation, Science and Higher Education of Guanajuato, declared that this promotion in scientific and technological innovation will allow to achieve “a more democratic, fairer, freer and more progressive society”.
In an interview with Efe, Dr. Lara considered that “a historic stage” is lived by converting these statements into public policies to promote innovation through analysis and reflection.
“It is a great honor to have been the first state to have a declaration in the area of subnational governments and also to recognize the global phenomenon that currently occurs: a great enthusiasm for innovation among young people,” he said.
Guanajuato has the largest number of patent applications under 18 years nationwide.
For his part, Governor Márquez emphasized that “innovation belongs to all of us and is an invitation to be done in all local entities at the global level”.
“We believe that it is something of a huge scope and that it can find application anywhere that wants to make technological and scientific innovation a clear objective of their collective life,” Sanz concluded in turn. efe
