Year in Review: What You Liked in 2017

As 2017 segues into 2018, the time has come to take a look at what stood out at UNRISD in the last 12 months. Here’s our review of what you liked best, based on numbers of downloads, retweets and views our outputs during 2017. Were these your favourites too, or would something else get your vote? Let us know in the Comments at the end of the article!

Reflecting the growing concern with climate change, intensified by frequent extreme weather events and changing political positions on the Paris Climate Accord, we saw continued need for our work on environmental issues: the climate change chapter of our Flagship Report Policy Innovations for Transformative Change garnered more views than the other topic-based chapters; and of the 6 videos summarizing three main messages of each chapter in three minutes, the one on climate change was most viewed. Our earlier work on the green economy and sustainable development has proved to have continued relevance in today's context, with two of the most viewed videos in 2017 coming from that project (the introductory video and Social Policies and Sustainable Development).

The Flagship Report, part of UNRISD’s contribution to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, proved its relevance with over 14,000 downloads over the last 12 months, showing how well this seminal research is feeding into the development community and its focus on fulfilling the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Migration is globally still a hot topic, with the UN working on a global compact for migration to be adopted at an intergovernmental conference in 2018, despite certain countercurrents. Our unique research connecting migration with social and solidarity economy (SSE) and human rights (being undertaken together with a consortium of universities coordinated by the University of Geneva) struck a chord with Twitter users to produce one of our tweets with the highest reach, not to mention an excellent turnout at the Official Side Event at the Human Rights Council in September where we introduced this project and began networking with interested stakeholders.

Our most downloaded single author paper in 2017 was How Can Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technology Play a Role in Building Social and Solidarity Finance? by Brett Scott. Written for an international workshop on social and solidarity finance held in May 2016, the success of the paper shows the relevance of UNRISD work aiming to generate greater insight into whether social and solidarity finance can significantly contribute to a more stable financial system that is conducive to sustainable development.