IOCD turns 40 The future of the chemistry for sustainable development by Federico Rosei and Stephen A. Matlin
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he International Organization for Chemical Sciences in Development (IOCD) passes an important milestone in 2021, as 1 July marked the 40th anniversary of its launch at a meeting hosted by UNESCO in Paris in 1981. Registered in Belgium, IOCD was originally established as the first non-governmental organization to focus on the need to develop opportunities for chemists in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) to progress professionally and work on projects of relevance to the development of their countries and regions [1]. Driven by the passionate commitment and vision of its founding President, the Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg [2] and founding Executive Director, organic chemist Pierre Crabbé, IOCD’s early years were marked by the creation of Working Groups in areas such as agricultural and medicinal chemistry and chemistry education [3]. While IOCD’s governance passed into new hands with the appointment of Robert Maybury [4] as Executive Director following Crabbé’s untimely passing in 1987, and with Seaborg being succeeded by the Nobel Laureate Jean-Marie Lehn in 1992, the organization continued to grow and evolve its focus, advancing into areas of institutional and infrastructural capacity-building in fields such as natural products, biotic exploration, and environmental analytical chemistry [5]. On Maybury’s retirement in 2009, he was succeeded by the organic chemist Alain Krief, who during the following decade helped steer IOCD’s overhaul and transformation into an organization centred on the role of the chemical sciences in sustainable development [6]. A number of activities were phased out and new ones instituted, two notable examples being the creation in 2013 of a Working Group on Materials for Energy Conversion, Saving and Storage (MATECSS), co-led led by Federico Rosei and his colleague Mohamed Chaker based at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), Montreal and in 2014 the establishment of a group that was subsequently named Chemists for Sustainability (C4S), whose core members are Henning Hopf, Alain Krief, Stephen
Matlin, and Goverdhan Mehta. To a large extent, IOCD has evolved and is still evolving towards addressing several UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In parallel, Rosei and collaborators established at INRS a UNESCO Chair that has the same name as the working group, MATECSS, and is therefore completely aligned with IOCD and its objectives. Recognising that sustainable development creates a critical need for clean, affordable and environmentally friendly energy to be available across the world, including in LMICs, MATECSS set out with the aims of helping to expedite technology transfer and build capacity through engagement with local scientists, engineers, and students in LMICs; and to foster the development of low cost, adaptive technologies based on materials for energy conversion, saving, and storage that fit within the paradigm of local-scale energy systems and that use local resources. To this end, training courses, workshops, and places for PhD and postdoctoral researchers have been provided. In this sense, MATECSS focuses directly on three SDGs, Goal 4 (quality education), Goal 7 (affordable and clean energy) and Goaly 13 (climate action); and indirectly on others. The C4S group, which openly invites collaborators to bring additional perspectives to its work, has been serving advocacy and think-tank roles through written articles, lectures at various fora, and web materials related to its mission of promoting the engagement of chemistry in sustainable development [7]. Among notable achievements, a pair of C4S articles [8,9] in 2015-16 highlighted the importance of the chemical sciences in supporting the newly established SDGs and stressed that chemistry would need to make some deep-seated changes in order to optimize its contributions to the SDGs. The nature of these changes was encapsulated in the concept of “oneworld” chemistry, whose defining characteristics included the re-orientation of chemistry as a science for the benefit of society and the adoption of systems thinking and cross-disciplinarity in its approaches. The proposal that chemistry should embrace systems approaches has found particular resonance and led to a project (2017-2019) of the IUPAC Committee on Chemistry Education, also supported by IOCD and co-led by Peter Mahaffy and Stephen Matlin, on infusing systems thinking into chemistry education (STICE) [10]. This initiative was very productive, stimulating a growing body of literature and practice [11]. It has been succeeded by a new project [12], Systems Thinking in Chemistry for Sustainability: Toward 2030 and Beyond (STCS 2030+) in 2020-2023, co-sponsored by the IUPAC Committee on Chemistry Chemistry International
October-December 2021
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