budapest

The most crucial issue facing the World Conference on Science later this month will be how to defend public access to scientific knowledge while benefiting from private investment in research, says Federico Mayor, the director-general of Unesco.

“Science is part of the crucial question of how to ensure that the ‘knowledge society’ does not become a new form of imperialism, placing developing countries in new chains,” says Mayor in an opinion article written forNature's web-based coverage of the conference.

He says that finding solutions to intricate problems will take time. But action can be taken immediately, and issues do not have to be couched in confrontational terms.

“For example, the argument that biotechnology is the key to greater food production has been countered by claims that it is in fact enhanced democracy that increases food production and distribution,” says Mayor. “But we need both; this, surely, has to be the basis of the required relationship between science and society.”

Mayor suggests that the two central documents for the Budapest meeting — theDeclaration and theFramework for Action — connect up vision, principles and practice in a “shared dynamic”, expressed in every area from forms of funding and training, to strategies for networks and communication.

In innovation and technology foresight, for example, the renewed commitment by governments to fundamental research being sought in Budapest by the scientific community “should ensure that basic science continues to produce the new knowledge without which innovation will ultimately dry up,” he says.

New initiatives in the transfer of scientific knowledge, expected to be announced in Budapest, “will attempt to open up global access to the huge store of existing knowledge”. And a redefinition of wealth creation to include the massive indirect wealth created by sustainability and preventive measures “must be the driving vision behind science for development”.

This coherent, global momentum “requires every single participant at the World Conference on Science and stakeholders in science around the world to join forces and play a role,” says Mayor. A universal readiness to get involved in the many initiatives now emerging “can tip the balance and possibly even reverse today's extraordinary concentration of science within a few countries”.

Full text: http://helix.nature.com/wcs/c21.html