In a virtual ceremony held this Wednesday (1), representatives of the HIDS Founding Advisory Board signed the Agreement for the Creation of International Hub for Sustainable Development.
About HIDS - HIDS recovers part of the premises in force in the creation of the science and technology hub in Campinas, but goes beyond the objective of leveraging the region's vocation for science and technology. Its purpose is to create a model district of sustainable and smart urban development in the form of a living laboratory. Its mission is to contribute to the process of sustainable development, combining national and international efforts to produce knowledge, innovative technologies and education for future generations, mitigating and overcoming the social, economic and environmental weaknesses of contemporary society.
The Hub's planning area involves the campuses of Unicamp (including Fazenda Argentina, with 1,4 million m2, adjacent to the University campus, in the District of Barão Geraldo), PUC-Campinas and Facamp, and also the entire territory of Ciatec II – High Technology Hub with 8,8 million square meters, totaling 11,3 million m2. The Ciatec II region is identified as Strategic Development Hub in the city of Campinas, where cutting-edge companies and research institutions are present, such as CNPEM, CPQD, Instituto Eldorado and Cargill's Latin America Innovation Center.
Founding Advisory Board – The creation of HIDS requires planning based on a participatory approach. Seeking to meet this premise, the HIDS Founding Advisory Council was created, a consultative body to which all decisions on HIDS will be submitted for discussion and knowledge, with the aim of contributing to the definition of activities that can integrate HIDS and guide its planning. and the construction of its governance.
In addition to the deans of Unicamp, Marcelo Knobel, and PUC-Campinas, Germano Rigacci Junior, present were the secretary of economic development of the State of São Paulo, Patricia Ellen, the secretary of economic development of the City of Campinas, Alexandra Caprioli, the director of Facamp, Rodrigo Sabbatini, the director of CNPEM, José Roque da Silva, the director of the ELDORADO Institute, Roberto Soboll, the president of CPQD, Sebastião Sahão Junior, the general head of Embrapa, Silvia Massruha, the vice-president of TRB Pharma, Paulo Dallari, the director of innovation at CPFL, Renato Povia and Pedro Cláudio da Silva, financial director of Sanasa.
The Agreement is an umbrella agreement (without investments and financial costs) between the 14 institutions that form the HIDS Advisory Board, which may include bilateral, trilateral or multilateral agreements between them. During the ceremony, the rector of Unicamp, Marcelo Knobel, signed the document that represents the official birth of HIDS and its Founding Advisory Council. “From this moment on, HIDS can begin promoting the development and improvement of various activities among its current members, seeking to identify and explore synergies between them. In this sense, the agreement for the establishment of HIDS is essential for us to begin this exploration and to continue the work on its proposal”, stated Knobel. “This is a fundamental milestone for us to establish the foundations that will allow this virtuous and long-term project to be implemented by future managements that follow in each of the institutions that make up HIDS”, said professor Marco Aurelio Pinheiro Lima, director of DEPI and HIDS coordinator at Unicamp.
HIDS is being designed to act as a complex of living laboratories, with the intention of becoming an international model of a smart and sustainable district. To put this idea into practice, it will be essential to mobilize the other institutions of the HIDS Advisory Council in order to create partnerships and synergies, as well as attract other partners interested in developing technologies in the approach to living laboratories. "O The Agreement for the Creation of the International Hub for Sustainable Development is fundamental to this”, added Lima.
A living laboratory is based on a concept of open innovation, co-creation, integrating research and innovation processes within a context of public-private partnerships and operating in “real-life” environments/territories and communities. This approach allows evaluating the performance of a product/technology based on its potential adoption by users in a given territory and making projections for its adoption in global terms.
In this sense, HIDS can serve as a testing ground for technologies and/or products that help meet the UN's 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), with strong potential for specific orders from governments at different levels. Some examples of applications that are already being built are: water, energy, food cycle, biodiversity, security without walls, health and well-being, sustainability assessment, human rights, zero waste, among others, mediated by a management platform of data. Based on partnerships between HIDS institutions, these living laboratories can be put into practice now and will be taken into account when preparing the HIDS master plan.
The professor at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urbanism at Unicamp and coordinator of the HIDS physical-spatial project, Gabriela Celani, also highlighted the importance of consulting stakeholders and people who circulate in this territory in order to establish a participatory process in the planning of occupation of that territory. Furthermore, the project has a working group entirely dedicated to the study of heritage. Coordinated by professor at the Unicamp Biology Institute, Wesley Rodrigues Silva, its objective is to establish a reference base for biodiversity and ecosystem services in the territory. “The concept of sustainability that guides the design of HIDS is based on the knowledge and management of its environmental and cultural heritage. This knowledge is fundamental for HIDS to achieve its objectives and for the word sustainability to become commonplace and, although it forms the name of the project, it is not part of a marketing discourse”, she said.
Agreement with the IDB – In March of this year, a technical cooperation agreement was signed between the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the City of Campinas and Unicamp. Under the terms of this agreement, the Bank will invest a total amount of US$ 1 million, non-refundable, to develop an innovative and bold master plan, integrating public and private initiatives for the HIDS region. The secretary of economic development, Alexandra Caprioli, highlighted the need for City Hall engagement in all project planning groups. “I am committed to expanding this participation with City Hall, beyond my Secretariat and the Planning Secretariat”, she stated. Representing the governor of São Paulo, João Doria, the state's secretary of economic development, Patricia Ellen, recalled the importance of seeking long-term project financing models. “In fact, the moment we are in represents, at the same time, a challenge and an opportunity, to seek financing for the project in the long term. A challenge, due to the crisis we are facing, and an opportunity, due to Brazil's absence on the fundraising agenda. I think it's worth an effort to discuss with potential funders, such as international funds, for example. We make our institutional efforts in this sense available to the project, remembering the State of São Paulo’s commitments to sustainable economic development and the Paris Agreement,” she declared.
