Delivering on the ambitious agenda of the SDGs requires all nations, including Nepal, to commit more research and investment into new, emerging technological solutions to increasingly complex and interconnected development challenges.

We live in an age of technological abundance. Acceleration in innovation has brought unprecedented changes in virtually all spheres of life; it has multiplied productivity, reduced costs and improved accessibility across numerous sectors and fields. And it is precisely this crosscutting potential for positive change that has earned innovation a space amid the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs. While Goal 9 specifically refers to “Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure”, it is plain to see that leveraging the power of science, technology and sheer human resourcefulness is essential to achieve progress on all 17 Global Goals. And this isn’t something limited to the purview of developed countries: it applies as much, if not more, to the developing world, including Nepal.

Here, the National Planning Commission or the NPC, is the focal agency for overseeing the implementation of the SDGs, and it has approved the country’s roadmap for 2030, specifying 159 targets and 230 indicators that the country plans to achieve in that period: from cutting absolute poverty down to less than five percent, increasing the per capita income to USD 2,500, providing universal basic healthcare, ensuring every child attends school and raising the contribution of industry to GDP to 25 percent, among other targets.

But it has become clear that delivering on this ambitious agenda will call for a leap beyond the business-as-usual approach. There is indeed no option but to harness the emerging tools and methods offered by technology if we are to tackle the increasingly complex and interconnected nature of our present-day development challenges. Unfortunately, research and investment in the potential use of new technologies to advance the SDGs is still very much lacking in the country today and afforded relatively low priority overall.

“We simply cannot afford to remain so indifferent,” says Mahabir Pun, the chairman of the National Innovation Center, Nepal. “If we want progress and ensure prosperity for everyone in the country, we cannot expect that to happen without changing the way we work and embracing innovation.”

The NPC’s roadmap does hold some promise in this regard. It seeks to, for instance, raise research and development expenditure as a proportion of the country’s GDP from the present 0.3 percent to 1.5 percent. It further aims to increase the number of patents registered to 1,000 from 75 in 2015. In fact, Pun’s NIC provides full support in ensuring innovators and inventors are able to acquire patent rights, trademarks and intellectual property rights over their ideas.

“This is all part of the effort to create an environment where ideas and talent can flourish,” Pun says. He adds that the government should either do more to directly support innovators or at least help connect them to investors, not only so their products and services can contribute to the country’s socio-economic development, but also to help “put a stop to the persistent draining of the working force to foreign countries”.

Pun, who was awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2007 for his work in introducing wireless technological equipment to rural areas around Nepal, says it is also important to remember that innovation is not always about inventing something entirely new: “It’s as much about adapting existing technologies to meet the requirements of your particular context”.

This is reiterated by Sunaina Ghimire Pandey, the vice-chair of the Federation of Computer Association Nepal, who says that there are vast ways in which currently available information and communication technologies can be mobilized for the purpose of the SDGs in Nepal. “From bringing information and learning materials to students in classrooms around the country who would otherwise never have access to these, to the wonders of telemedicine where specialists in cities could help treat patients long distances away, there’s so much that could be done without reinventing the wheel,” she says. “The possibilities are practically endless.”