The year 2023 is a critical year for the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – the mid-term review year. At present, global poverty alleviation is being hampered; climate change, water security, and food and energy crises are becoming increasingly grave; the world is facing significant uncertainty in three major areas of economy, society, and environment. UN Secretary-General Guterres noted that “we are moving farther away from our goals”. As a result, transformative action and solutions are urgently called for globally. The experience of the past few years has shown that as an integral part of the UN’s sustainable development promotion mechanism, science and technology play an imperative role and are highly rated. In particular, cutting-edge digital technologies, represented by big data, can enable multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary, and multi-scale monitoring and assessment of sustainable development indicators, helping us find appropriate solutions for sustainable development while fully understanding the current challenges we face.

Against this backdrop, the 3rd International Forum on Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (FBAS2023) will be held in Beijing, China from September 6th to 8th, 2023. The 1st and 2nd International Forums on Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals were held in 2021 and 2022, with themes of “Big Data for Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals” and “Digital Technology Empowers Global Sustainable Development”, respectively. More than 1,500 international experts and scholars delivered over 800 academic presentations and conducted exchanges. The forum has built a platform for cross-disciplinary and close cooperation and exchanges, considerably facilitating the sharing of big data methods, technologies, and applications for sustainable development.

With the theme of “Big Data Accelerating Implementation of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, this year’s forum invites a wide range of stakeholders in the field of big data for sustainable development from around the world. The forum will organize dialogues and exchanges concerning sustainable development goals such as zero hunger, clean water and sanitation, clean energy, sustainable cities and communities, climate action, life below water, life on land, and partnerships for the goals from the perspectives of scientific and technological development, regional innovation demonstration, and multi-party participation mechanisms. It aims to drive innovative methods, technology promotion, and demonstration applications of big data and digital technologies for sustainable development.

The world is collectively exploring innovative paths for transformative development to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Now, on behalf of the forum, I would like to sincerely invite experts, scholars, government administrators, entrepreneurs, engineers, and other stakeholders from around the world here to share the latest achievements of big data as a changer for achieving sustainable development goals and to engage in extensive exchanges and discuss our future cooperation. We hope everyone can propose strategies and play their part to advance the global development initiatives and promote the implementation of the second half of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, thus jointly contributing to achieving the SDG goals.