UK science adviser calls for realistic projects
8 April 1999
[LONDON] The British government's chief scientist, Sir Robert May, this week described that Unesco/ICSU World Conference on Science as "an extremely important event", but challenged it to produce more than "pious platitudes" and to agree on appropriately realistic and practical achievements.
At a meeting at London's Science Museum on Tuesday, May argued that the divisions between North and South over topics such as the relative priorities attached to environmental protection and development were important issues for the conference to tackle.
Focusing on the issue of genetically modified food, May told the meeting that while such foods are considered something of a luxury in developed countries, the technology might provide a route for feeding a growing world population. May said that the future for the developing world lay in "understanding nature and working with it".
May said it was important for the conference to try and make sense of these issues at an international level, although he warned that they would be a burden for what he described as a "hugely ambitious" conference. "It is important as it is a beginning -- as was [the 1997 climate change conference in] Kyoto. It will set the wheels in motion of managing science for the good of all".
"This is an ambitious undertaking, not only in bringing such as diverse group of participants together, but also in terms of the scope of the conference's work in addressing a whole range of issues which face us all as we move into the next millennium," said May. "Our ability to change the world will make the ethical problems of this century look like shadows on the wall".
"The challenge for the conference will be to concentrate on achieving as practical a perspective as possible," May told the meeting, which heard later that one practical outcome of the World Conference on Science could be the creation of an international centre for science communication, based at London's Science Museum (see next story).
Also present at the meeting was Federico Mayor, Director-General of Unesco, who argued that a global perspective needed to take over from narrow sectoral and national mindsets. "We must think globally and act globally" said Mayor. "We need to pool all knowledge, energies and strengths if we are to solve problems which themselves know no frontiers".
Mayor also said that a significant reduction in either publicly-funded basic research or in the free circulation of scientific knowledge would have disastrous consequences. User-led science, said Mayor, means nothing more than 'consumer-led' science for those with buying power and cannot guarantee the public good.
NATASHA LODER
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Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1999 Registered No. 785998 England.