Don't count on World Bank initiatives

Sir

As a Chilean scientist working overseas, I read with interest your articles about the initiatives of the World Bank to develop science and technology in Third World countries¹, ². These initiatives include lending funds to create élite centres called Millennium Institutes. Prototype institutes will be set up in Chile. I believe this is the wrong approach.

I collaborate with scientists in Third World countries and am familiar with the vagaries of the development of science in Latin America. I wish to put forward the dissenting notion that publicly funded policies to develop science and technology in Third World countries should not differ from those proven successful in industrialized countries. These include: a focus on funding innovative investigator-originated peer-reviewed research; transparency of all procedures and full public accountability of those involved in the funding process; and societal inputs to create economic and social conditions that ensure the availability of resources for the development of science and technology.

Third World countries need to narrow the knowledge gap that separates them from industrialized countries. But the creation of one or two élite Millennium Institutes in each country will do little to close that gap. In most Third World countries the technological and scientific gap has widened during the past 20 years, in part as a result of the economic and social engineering prescriptions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These prescriptions in general stimulate the creation of export economies based on unskilled labour, intensive exploitation of natural resources, and export of raw materials without industrial transformation and technological innovation. These prescriptions undercut the creation of market conditions basic to scientific and technological development³.

In Chile, for example, recent economic growth has been based mainly on exporting minerals, fish and fish meal, timber and fruit, all products with little or no industrial transformations, that do not require technological innovation, and whose production has generated environmental degradation. The World Bank and the IMF foster policies that, under the guise of ‘restructuring and modernization’, shift government funds from activities essential for the development of science and technology, such as education and public health, towards servicing foreign debt⁴. They further weaken a poor country's capacity to develop the scientific and technological bases needed for economic development.

In Chile, these policies have led to deterioration of the educational system and crumbling infrastructure. The increases in tuition fees that have resulted from World Bank and IMF-supported policies have excluded many talented individuals from the system. The same policies have caused teachers and scientists to live on the margins of poverty. The implementation of these economic policies in Chile was also accompanied by the destruction of democratic institutions and the abolition of human rights. The incomplete recovery of these institutions and human rights still scars and undermines scientific work⁵.

In this context the creation of Millennium Institutes in Chile, and perhaps in other countries, appears to be more a cosmetic than a well designed initiative. This plan fails to address the economic and social foundations of the host of problems that hamper the development of education and science in Third World countries.

Another matter of concern is that the directors of these institutes will be selected by scientists from outside the country. In the case of Chile these institutes will be funded with loans that will eventually be paid by the Chilean treasury. It is therefore worrisome that the manner of selection will remove accountability from the Chilean scientific community and Chile's democratic processes. Despite the undermining of education, science and technology resulting from the policies of the Pinochet dictatorship, and from the relentless ‘restructuring and modernization’ induced by World Bank and IMF economic and social engineering, the Chilean scientific community within the country and in the diaspora has reached a stage that makes outside tutelage unnecessary.

Who is in a better position than Chilean scientists and politicians to determine whether the focus of the research is “of direct relevance to that country's needs”? As you note, “the Chilean government will not decide the disciplines in which the institutes will specialize”, making it all the more necessary that the Chilean scientific community should make these decisions.

The closing of the knowledge gap in Third World countries will require drastic modifications of present economic policies. The consensus to create these changes will require the participation of scientists and politicians in each country.