[BANGALORE] India is leading calls for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to set up a global fund to recognize and conserve knowledge systems that predate the scientific revolution.

A meeting of scientists and social scientists from India and eight of its neighbours -- including China, Thailand, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan and Iran -- last week pledged to put the issue high on the agenda of UNESCO's forthcoming World Conference on Science in June.

The call was made at an international symposium held in Bangalore, India's high-tech capital, organized by the National Institute of Advanced Studies. The World Conference takes place in Budapest, Hungary, next summer, and the Bangalore meeting was sponsored jointly by UNESCO's India office and the Indian government as a preparatory meeting.

Proposed amendments to UNESCO's draft Declaration on science and the use of scientific knowledge were also approved to reflect the meeting's concerns on traditional knowledge, according to Valangiman Ramamurthi, secretary for the Department of Science and Technology.

Those attending the meeting urged the UN body to organize three international conventions. One would focus on how best to codify and reward the intellectual property of knowledge systems that predate the scientific revolution. Another would address the 'brain drain', and find ways of compensating developing countries for their "loss of trained scientists and technicians to the more developed countries". The third convention would focus on sustainable consumption.

The meeting called for an international code of ethics for science, which would include guidelines on the regulation of so-called 'knowledge monopolies' -- companies or groups of companies exercising monopoly power over strategically important knowledge. It also called for an international conference on science in countries outside Europe and the United States, and on how these cultures might influence science in the next century.

The recommendations form part of a proposed action plan, itself part of a broader 'Bangalore Communique', which the delegates proposed should be included in Science agenda: a framework for action, the document that is planned by UNESCO to be adopted at Budapest.

According to Roddam Narasimha, director of the NIAS, the proposed action plan, in whose drafting the Indian government played a significant role, has been motivated by a perception that more needs to be done to protect the knowledge heritage of India and its neighbouring continents.

A particular concern, says Narasimha, is the tendency of private companies to profit from innovations to well-established products and processes "without passing on the rewards to those who helped develop these products, some of whom are very poor". The action plan also calls on UNESCO to design a series of projects that recognize the economic value of indigenous technologies.

But Narasimha says he wants to emphasize that the action plan should not be interpreted as being anti-Western science. "I want this to be clearly understood," he says. "But in addition to Western science, we need to ensure that our older knowledge systems also survive and prosper."

Those attending the Bangalore symposium also suggested that UNESCO should support training programmes for scientists on legal and policy issues, and for an international conference to examine the role of cultural environments on shaping the sciences in the coming millennium.

India's science minister Murli Manohar Joshi told the meeting, in a speech read out on his behalf, that information technology could create new inequalities. He urged countries to ensure that, while the newly-produced scientific knowledge is legally protected, "those who created and preserved various forms of traditional knowledge so faithfully over centuries are not exploited."

K.S.JAYARAMAN & EHSAN MASOOD