🌍 Congress Statement & Scope

With only four years remaining before the 2030 deadline, the international community faces an unprecedented challenge: only 18% of the Sustainable Development Goals are currently on track, while planetary boundaries are being crossed at an accelerating pace. Temperatures have already exceeded the critical +1.55°C threshold, biodiversity is declining at historic rates, and more than 2.3 billion people remain in a state of food insecurity. The Agenda 2030 is at a turning point, and natural resources — water, energy, soil, forests, biodiversity, and minerals — lie at the very heart of this challenge.

These resources are not merely economic inputs; they are the foundational infrastructure of human well-being and the backbone of every transition pathway toward sustainability. Yet current policy frameworks remain largely siloed and growth-oriented, failing to demand the systemic transformations that science calls for. Bridging this gap requires a new generation of integrated knowledge, multi-level governance, and decisive collective action.

The 2nd International Congress SDBQL 2026 is convened at this critical juncture to advance exactly this agenda. Rooted in a systems-thinking approach, the congress explores the resource nexus — the deep interconnections between water, energy, food, land, and materials — as a unifying framework for reducing trade-offs between SDGs. It examines the transformative potential of green innovation and digitalization, from smart monitoring to artificial intelligence, in enabling more efficient and equitable resource use. It brings to the fore the emerging imperative of mineral security, essential to the energy transition and digital economy yet largely absent from current SDG targets. And it foregrounds questions of social justice and governance: who bears the costs of resource extraction, who benefits from natural wealth, and how inclusive institutions can shape fairer outcomes.

SDBQL 2026 is above all a transdisciplinary space for dialogue and co-construction — bringing together scientists, practitioners, policymakers, civil society, and the private sector to confront field realities with cutting-edge research, and to collectively build a shared vision for the decade ahead and beyond 2030. We warmly invite all actors of sustainable development to join us in Tlemcen, Algeria, from September 30 to October 2, 2026.

♻️ Towards a Regenerative System Design

Beyond sustainability as mere mitigation, a growing body of science and practice calls for a deeper paradigm shift: the transition from linear extractive economies to regenerative systems that restore the natural cycles they depend on. A regenerative system design is not simply about reducing harm — it is about engineering processes, value chains, and institutions that actively replenish ecological capital, rebuild soil fertility, restore watershed functions, and close material loops at every scale.

At its core, regenerative design draws on the principles of the circular economy — eliminating waste by keeping materials, nutrients, and energy in use for as long as possible — but goes further by embedding these principles within living systems logic. Where the circular economy asks "how do we recycle?", regenerative design asks "how do we restore?" This means designing agricultural systems that rebuild soil organic matter while producing food, developing urban metabolisms that recover water, energy, and nutrients from waste streams, and creating industrial ecosystems where the by-products of one process become the raw inputs of another.

Natural resources play a central role in this vision. Biomass, organic waste, wastewater, and mineral residues — traditionally treated as liabilities — become strategic assets within a regenerative framework. Biorefineries transform agricultural residues into bioenergy, biomaterials, and biochemicals. Constructed wetlands and nature-based solutions filter and recycle water while supporting biodiversity. Urban mining recovers critical minerals from electronic waste, reducing dependence on primary extraction and its social and environmental costs.

Integrating regenerative system design into the SDG framework offers a powerful pathway to simultaneously address resource scarcity, climate resilience, biodiversity loss, and social equity. It places innovation, territorial intelligence, and multi-stakeholder governance at the service of a genuinely restorative economy — one that does not merely sustain what remains, but actively rebuilds the natural and social foundations of long-term prosperity. SDBQL 2026 invites researchers and practitioners to share experiences, tools, and visions that advance this transformative agenda.