Why is Complexity Science valuable for reaching the goals of the UN 2030 Agenda?

Abstract

The goals and targets included in the 2030 Agenda compiled by the United Nations want to stimulate action in areas of critical importance for humanity and the Earth. These goals and targets regard everyone on Earth from both the health and economic and social perspectives. Reaching these goals means to deal with Complex Systems. Therefore, Complexity Science is undoubtedly valuable. However, it needs to extend its scope and focus on some specific objectives. This article proposes a development of Complexity Science that will bring benefits for achieving the United Nations' aims. It presents a list of the features shared by all the Complex Systems involved in the 2030 Agenda. It shows the reasons why there are certain limitations in the prediction of Complex Systems' behaviors. It highlights that such limitations raise ethical issues whenever new technologies interfere with the dynamics of Complex Systems, such as human beings and the environment. Finally, new methodological approaches and promising research lines to face Complexity Challenges included in the 2030 Agenda are put forward.

Keywords: Complex Systems; Computational Complexity; Emergence; Natural Computing; Networks; Out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics.

Fig. 1

Schematic representations of a solid (a), liquid (b), gas (c) phase, and a fluid with convective motion (d). The molecules (black dots) are the nodes of the networks and their intermolecular forces are the corresponding edges

Fig. 2

The solution of the TSP requires that, given a map with a certain number of cities, flights, and costs, the salesman finds the least-cost closed tour crossing each city just once

Fig. 3

Scheme showing that the challenges of this century, included in the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda, are Complexity Challenges because they regard Natural Complexity (NaC), Bioethical Complexity (BEC), Computational Complexity (CoC), and Descriptive Complexity (DeC)

Fig. 4

The description of any Complex System, such as a human being represented by the Vitruvian Man, requires to move from a multidisciplinary to an interdisciplinary approach based on Complexity Science. The final goal is to achieve a uniform and comprehensive transdisciplinary image of any Complex System

Fig. 5

List of the Natural Information Systems and the research lines that derive from their imitation in (a); list of the physicochemical laws that can be exploited to make computations in (b)