Editor's desk: In celebration of glass—and camels

In 2015, the member states of the United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals to “provide a global blueprint for dignity, peace, and prosperity for people and the planet, now and in the future.” While this vision is lofty and broad, the 17 individual goals are more concrete and address the most urgent crises the planet faces, including species decimation, gender inequality, inadequate healthcare, poverty, access to clean water, climate change, unsustainable industrialization, and more.

The sustainable development goals also coincide well with the UN’s long- established “International Years,” which have drawn attention to topics of global importance since 1959. Many recent International Years support the sustainable development goals in incontrovertible ways, such as the 2021 International Year of Peace and Trust, and the 2020 International Year of the Nurse and Midwife. Others, like the upcoming 2024 International Year of Camelids, are less obvious.

Camelids are a family of animals that includes camels, alpacas, and llamas. I confess, I snickered a bit at the thought that camels and llamas might be a key solution to the world’s most pressing concerns. However, the draft proposal for a UN International Year in their honor notes that “camelids constitute the main means of subsistence for millions of poor families who live in the most hostile ecosystems on the planet, and that they contribute to the fight against hunger, the eradication of extreme poverty, the empowerment of women, and the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems.” I am duly chastened.

2022 is the International Year of Glass. For those of us working in the photonics industry, where glass is essential to many photonics technologies, the importance of glass to the Sustainable Development Goals seems obvious: Fiber optics bring vital communications to developing nations, potentially increasing access to education. Solar panels produce clean, renewable energy, and lessen dependence on fossil fuels. Rugged, nearly unbreakable glass is used for mobile phone displays, which bring information and connectivity to remote corners of the globe. And glass optical components are essential to almost everyone working in optics and photonics.

But, again, we are a community of entrepreneurs, professionals, and scholars obsessed with light science. If you ask a woman in a remote village of the Andes whether glass or llamas are more important to her future prosperity, she might very well say llamas.

The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals are large-scale and urgent. Achieving them will require input from and collaboration with the world’s most disenfranchised people, and focused cooperation from policymakers, scientists, artists, engineers, and educators. International Years that focus on glass, light, camels, pulses, soil, midwives, the periodic table, plant health, and many other seemingly disparate topics reinforce that we must take a multifaceted approach to meet our collective goal of a safe, equitable, and sustainable planet.

Gwen Weerts, Photonics Focus Editor-in-chief