Technological innovation is an important driver of sustainable transformation, contributing to growth, access, and efficiency of multiple systems, including digital, renewable energy, financial, materials, biotech, health, and decision support solutions.  The path from ideation to integration, however, is not always smooth and can raise concerns about carbon footprint, ethical application, unintended uses, reliance on limited resources for operation, inciting a socio-economic or north-south divide, or lack of regulatory oversight.   Automation and AI have spurred greater efficiencies but may also result in job loss or other disruptions in careers, while creating new needs for skills and labor.  This theme highlights both the technological advances that hope to improve our world and the systems that foster, support, and consume the realization of those technological applications.

• Developing and scaling new smart technologies that support sustainable societies and their wellbeing while keeping within planetary boundaries 
• Transforming the financing of technological innovation
• Reimagining the educational training of a workforce in an increasingly machine-enabled future
• Exploring tradeoffs between high and low tech options and the development of hybridized approaches that merge traditional and computer-enabled pathways
• Mitigating the carbon footprint of 4IR and simplifying carbon reporting
• New regulatory frameworks to enable implementation of transformative and data-driven technologies (including machine learning, AI, Internet of Things, cloud computing, blockchain, and fintech)
• Guidelines for and examples of ethical application of data-driven technologies
• Addressing the pressures and influence of digitalization, including globalization and impact on youth

Communities around the world are adapting to change brought on by a combination of extreme weather events, environmental degradation and pollution, competition for natural resources, cultural shifts, economic opportunities and losses, geopolitical pressures, and other means.  For some this confluence of challenges threatens not only their livelihoods and lifeways, but their existence in their current location.  This theme invites contributions about the polycrises facing many communities, the considerations and challenges to adapting in place, and pathways forward for minimizing conflict, increasing community and personal resilience, and ensuring safe, healthy, productive, and fulfilling living conditions for future generations.  Topics include a breadth of possibility, including:

• Innovative community and collaborative approaches to adaptation and resilience in locations experiencing extreme pressures, including pressures to relocate or migrate
• Navigating complex relationships with external assistance, private sector investors, coordination, and expert groups supporting adaptation
• Coping mechanisms and health systems for addressing uncertainty, climate anxiety, and repeated disaster and disease scenarios
• Diplomacy, peacebuilding activities and communities of support that can reduce tensions
• Equitable access to information, technologies, and resources for decision-making and planning
• Preservation of culture, including both tangible and intangible heritage

Meeting the growing needs for equitable access to clean and reliable energy worldwide requires a multi-pronged approach.  Phasing out fuels that contribute to climate change and mitigating their effects on atmospheric warming is only part of the strategy.  Transitions to renewable and clean energy sources offer only a near-term option to reduce dependency on hydrocarbon and coal-based fuels until transformative alternatives would potentially become available.  These transitions may also have secondary effects such as improved health and economic benefits that could incentivize individual to community-wide adoption, if it is both efficient and affordable. This shift, whether in the form of wind, solar, geothermal, wave, or other energy sources, presents several systemic opportunities but also challenges beyond just progressive technological advancements. This theme welcomes contributions that will address:

• Incentives, policies and innovations aimed at changing cultural mindsets with the goal of making green energy affordable and accessible to all
• Environmental tradeoffs of green energy transition and initiatives to harmonize and streamline transparent regulatory processes 
• Equitable strategies for managing unsustainable global energy consumption, including improving energy efficiency
• Inconsistent, seasonal, and transboundary access to one or more renewable energy sources, including distribution infrastructure and storage
• Geopolitics of the green energy transition and impacts of the transition on international trade and supply chains, including sourcing and processing of critical minerals