paris

An intergovernmental body, set up six years ago by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to act as an international forum for the discussion of issues related to the funding of major science facilities, seems set to be given a new lease of life.

Earlier this year, some member states of the Paris-based OECD were saying that its so-called Megascience Forum might be closed down, partly because it had not been performing what many had seen as its key role. The forum, as its name suggested, was initially supposed to act primarily as a focal point for intergovernmental negotiations on new ‘big science’ facilities.

But, after a positive review by a four-member external panel, it is now expected that that the forum's work will be continued under a new name — perhaps the Global Science Forum — and with a broader mandate to discuss science policy issues. “We want to keep the word ‘forum’, but get rid of the word ‘megascience’,” says Michael Oborne, associate director of the OECD's science, technology and industry directorate.

When the Megascience Forum was set up in 1992 there was intense interest in the potential rivalry between the US Superconducting Collider and Europe's proposed Large Hadron Collider. But the demise of the US facility, and the apparent waning of political interest in other ‘big science’ projects in areas such as space and fusion research, cast doubt on the forum's continuing validity.

More recently, however, the forum has successfully shifted its focus to topics of more immediate interest to agencies that sponsor science, such as the terms of access to large-scale facilities and the availability of neutron sources (see box).

Member states are also said to have valued highly the discussions of a working group that led to the proposal to establish a Global Biodiversity Information Facility linking biodiversity databases around the world (see Nature 394, 118; 1998 ).

Those involved in the biodiversity databank proposal say it is the type of activity in which the forum has proved its potential value in bringing together scientists and policy-makers, even though it does not qualify as big science.

Another study, on radioastronomy, played a key role enabling researchers and representatives of the telecommunications industry to discuss potential threats to astronomical observations from portable telephones and other devices.

Oborne emphasizes that the new forum, if given formal approval, will ensure that the topics it studies remain close to the immediate concerns of member governments. “The forum has to be action-oriented,” he says. “Governments must not be just concerned about an issue, but under some pressure to do something about it.”

One possibility is that the forum will look at techniques for nuclear waste disposal, a hot potato in many parts of the world, particularly now that a failure to resolve the issues thrown up by scientific debates on the safety of disposal techniques threatens what many see as a major potential answer to the problem of global warming.

“We do not want to be just another bunch of bureaucrats complaining that science does not have enough money,” says Stefan Michalowski, the forum's executive secretary. “We want to have government people, backed up by scientists, trying to figure out how to pool resources and how to generate material that is useful to them.”

Michalowski also points out that the forum allows Japan, as a member of the OECD, to take an active part in such debates (a senior official of Japan's Science and Technology Agency, is its vice-chair). “If Megascience has anything going for it, it is the way it provides a bridge between Japan and other OECD countries.”

The final structure of the new body, as well as its precise terms of reference, are yet to be agreed, and such decisions will be taken in the context of a broader reform of the OECD's science activities. But with key member states recognizing the value of a forum at which senior science policy-makers can get together, its immediate future seems assured.