World Bank invests in global science base
7 January 1999 (Nature, Vol 397, page 6)
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LONDON] After fifty years of paying for roads, power and schools, and helping poor countries to liberalize their economies, the World Bank the financial arm of the United Nations system has started shifting some of the focus of its activities to supporting ‘knowledge development, including science.Two separate internal World Bank task groups are investigating a potential role for the bank in supporting science in developing countries. Each group will report back this year with proposals on how the bank can best support basic research, something it has never before considered, how to make its expertise more available to developing countries, and whether it needs a new science department to oversee its new initiatives.
The bank, which is owned by 180 governments, provides long-term loans at commercial interest rates, mainly to developing countries. One quarter of its lending is interest-free and goes to the poorest. Fifteen years ago, with its focus on infrastructure development and trade liberalization, it closed its science department and abolished the science adviser’s post,
Direct support for research in developing countries is now seen as more of a priority. This stems partly from the view that research will help the bank to find solutions to its priority issues, such as providing the poor with access to food, clean water and a disease-free environment.
But it also comes from a belief that developing countries need to build up their knowledge-based industries to remain economically competitive. In an attempt to help the poorest countries, particularly those in Africa, to catch up with those better off, the bank is helping to fund information technology infrastructure under a programme called infoDev.
As a sign of this new thinking, the bank devoted the latest edition of its annual World Development Report to bridging the ‘knowledge gap’ between rich and poor countries (see Nature 395, 529; 1998). Last month it agreed to partly fund in Chile the first in a chain of centres of excellence in scientific research known as Millennium Institutes in developing countries (see Nature 396, 711; 1998).
Both events represent the culmination of a three-year study by the bank into how it can fund science in developing countries in partnership with governments and philanthropic foundations (see The World Bank and Foundations in Science and Technology for Development: A background paper).
Ian Johnson, the bank’s vice president for environment, acknowledges that the bank previously considered research and development to be a luxury for developing countries. But he says that attitudes have changed.
"Development in the next twenty to thirty years is going to be more science-based," says Johnson. For example, he says, biotechnology and climate change will have a major impact on world agriculture. "We need to recognize, understand and be prepared for this."
Despite its previous reluctance to provide significant funds for research, the bank is no stranger to science. For example, it hosts the secretariat of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a network of 16 agricultural research centres mainly in developing countries. It is also one of three partners in the Global Environment Facility, the $2 billion United Nations funding agency for environmental projects.
The bank used to have a dedicated science department, but closed it down in 1983 when the bank decided to place greater priority on encouraging countries to liberalize their economies known in World Bank jargon as structural adjustment. This stemmed from the belief that a favourable economic climate was needed for projects to function and loans to be repaid.
Charles Weiss, programme director of science and international affairs at Georgetown University, was the bank’s science adviser until 1986. He believes this latest attempt to get the bank thinking about science has more chance of succeeding than his own department’s efforts. This, he says, is partly because they have the support of senior executives, particularly James Wolfensohn, the bank’s president, and partly because the bank is now keen to promote knowledge-based development.
This strategy is based on the bank’s need for a new role now that private capital has replaced development aid as the main source of external finance for developing countries. Whereas the bank’s lending has remained at around $20 billion for the past five years, private-sector foreign investment in developing countries has increased sevenfold during the same period, and is now more than $150 billion per year.
Wolfensohn is known to be keen for the World Bank’s profile as a ‘knowledge bank’ to be raised. "When the bank was a major financial influence, its information role was downgraded," says Weiss. "Now it is the reverse."
Unusually for a lending institution, the World Bank possesses world-class expertise on the projects and the regions where it lends money. Of its 8,000 staff, 3,000 have a PhD-level qualification, and many of these are top-ranked researchers headhunted from universities. The quantity and quality of the bank’s research is consistently high, and its diary of seminars and conferences easily matches that of any large university.
But this more analytical aspect of the bank’s work has always been overshadowed by its lending arm known as operations which has generally considered the bank’s research to be a function of lending, rather than an activity in its own right. In 1987, half of the research staff were sent to work in operations.
This tension between the bank’s research and lending wings remains, and is one of several challenges that will need to be overcome if the new strategy is to bear fruit. In particular, the need for a new department for science is being questioned by some who do not want to see science confined to a ghetto and think it should be part of the lending portfolio of all of the bank’s departments.
Some operations staff have yet to be convinced of the merits of raising the bank’s research profile or funding research in developing countries. They believe that more attention should be paid in future to conventional infrastructure needs, such as electricity, primary schools and roads, in poorer countries who, because of low credit ratings, will have little access to private capital.
The reaction from developing countries will be an important test of the new strategy. The richer countries of southeast Asia, Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East are likely to be more receptive than poorer countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, where the bank is not particularly popular, and where almost 50 per cent of bank-assisted projects have failed during this decade.
Ehsan Masood
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