Resources

Recovering better from COVID-19 will depend on bold efforts to strengthen health systems, shore up social protections, protect economic opportunities, bolster multilateral collaboration, and enhance social cohesion. Science represents the world’s best chance for recovering better from the COVID-19 crisis. As societies face the difficult task of implementing recovery strategies with limited time and resources, they have a choice between business as usual and transformative changes. Transformation offers better prospects, but it will require ingenuity and research from the full range of disciplines. This UN Research Roadmap for the COVID-19 Recovery provides a framework for leveraging the power of science in support of a better socio-economic recovery and a more equitable, resilient and sustainable future.

The Roadmap outlines a set of 25 research priorities – five priorities for each of the five pillars of the UN’s socio-economic recovery framework – as well as numerous sub-priorities providing more comprehensive elaboration. Together, the priorities emphasize the need for research to advance gender equity, engage marginalized populations, ensure decent work, prevent a digital divide, tackle “One Health” intersectoral challenges, and inform global governance reforms.

By articulating research priorities that address the world’s interdependence, this Roadmap also provides a framework for understanding how research can help societies achieve a quadruple bottom line in terms of producing direct benefits from their COVID-19 recovery efforts while simultaneously stimulating equity, resilience and sustainability cobenefits. Creating such synergies and virtuous cycles will be important for accelerating progress towards the SDGs.  

Download the linked file to read.