Earth Day, 22 April 2022, this year has the theme ‘Invest in our Planet’: IOCD envisions a world in which the chemical sciences invest their energy and ingenuity to play an optimal role in improving the quality of life and wellbeing for people everywhere and ensuring a sustainable future for the planet. Current activities by IOCD scientists include:

• Materials for Energy Conversion, Saving and Storage (MATECSS)
• Chemists for Sustainability
• Chemistry Education
• Promoting the Chemical Sciences for Development

Chemistry and resilience: The IOCD group Chemists for Sustainability (C4S) has published an article in which chemistry’s roles in resilience (the capacity to withstand shock without permanent deformation or rupture, or to tend to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change) are explored for the first time. The roles are framed by chemistry’s contributions to the sustainability of people and planet, examined via the human security framework’s four material aspects of food, health, economic and environmental security. As the science of transformation of matter, chemistry is deeply involved in these material aspects and in their interfacing with human security’s three societal and governance aspects of personal, community and political security. Ultimately, strengthening resilience requires making choices about the present use of resources as a hedge against future hazards and adverse events, with these choices being co-determined by technical capacities and social and political will.

Vivian Wing-Wah YAM is IOCD’s new President: She is Philip Wong Wilson Wong Professor in Chemistry and Energy and Interim Dean of Science at the University of Hong Kong, China. Her work in inorganic/organometallic syntheses, supramolecular chemistry, photophysics and photochemistry, and metal-based molecular functional materials has been recognised by many awards and prizes and she is a Laureate of the UNESCO-L’Oréal Award for Women in Science. Professor Yam was elected as IOCD’s third President in the December 2021 meeting of IOCD’s General Assembly. She follows she follows Nobel Laureates Glenn T. Seaborg, the founding President, who served 1981-1992, and Jean-Marie Lehn, who served 1992-2021.

Professor Yam said she felt humbled and honoured to be elected and looks forward to working with the members of IOCD to further promote the central role of the chemical sciences in meeting the great challenges that the world faces in the 21st Century – in particular, in achieving a sustainable and equitable future for all.

IOCD’s 40th Anniversary: 2021 was the 40th anniversary of the founding of IOCD, which was launched at a meeting hosted at UNESCO in Paris in 1981 as the first international non-governmental organization specifically devoted to enhancing the role of the chemical sciences in the development process. Marking the anniversary, IOCD’s Executive Director, Federico Rosei, and Secretary, Stephen Matlin, published an article in IUPAC’s Chemistry International, in which they reflected on IOCD’s achievements and the current evolutionary changes that are being made in the organization as it focuses its future role in promoting chemistry for sustainable development.

Chemistry and human securit: The IOCD group Chemists for Sustainability (C4S) has published an article providing the first-ever framing of the role of chemistry in human security, which is defined by the UN as freedom from want and fear and freedom to live in dignity. Human security includes seven main dimensions that are mutually interdependent: health security, food security, environmental security, economic security, personal security, community security and political security. The concept incorporates the SDGs and Planetary Boundaries frameworks and the ‘one-health’ principle which affirms the fundamental interconnectedness among the health of people, animals and the environment.