How the North can help
the South to help itself
José I. Vargas
President of the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and Third World Network of Scientific Organizations (TWNSO)
Minister of Science and Technology in Brazil from 1992 to 1998.
Last week, Calestous Juma (see The Limits to South-South Collaboration), questioned the value of South-South cooperation in the face of new global realities, especially those related to the role of innovation in economic growth. Here Jose I. Vargas offers a counterpoint, arguing that such cooperation, especially when linked to cooperative initiatives between the North and the South's most advanced developing countries, holds the key to science-based sustainable development.
When ones hears of North-South co-operation in science and technology, the image that usually comes to mind is of a stream of information that moves primarily in one direction - from North to South. Scientists in the South,
however, are increasingly calling for a 'reverse flow' of information as a
core aspect of the growing number of cooperative research projects that
shape the agenda of the global scientific community. These calls are worth
heeding, for a number of reasons.
First, scientists in the North do not have to look far beyond their
laboratories and lecture halls to realize that global scientific knowledge
is far more evenly distributed than the enormous wealth that scientists and
technologists have created through their efforts. Many of the North's
graduate schools in the basic sciences - from elite universities to solid,
state-sponsored universities - would find it difficult to maintain their
current levels of scholarship and research without a steady flow of
graduate students from abroad.
Second, researchers from plant geneticists to meteorologists acknowledge
that many of today's global problems - including issues such as climate
change, biodiversity and maintaining food supplies - cannot be solved
without involving colleagues from around the world. Such involvement is
needed both to understand the problems and to devise sustainable solutions.
Third, there is the cultural dimension of science. Only sport and
entertainment rival science's ability to serve as a vehicle of communication
capable of overcoming barriers of suspicion and distrust between both
nations and individuals. Science, for example, helped keep the lines of communication open between the East and West during the Cold War, and now helps to bridge the information gap between the North and South in the post-Cold War era.
Arguments for a truly global enterprise, based on the international
dimensions of scientific talent, concerns and culture, are well known. But
another important aspect has received somewhat less
attention: the need for Northern scientists to work closely with their
counterparts in the South, particularly in the developing world's most
developed countries - for example, Argentina, my own country of Brazil,
China, India and South Korea - as part of a complex chain to advance
problem-solving scientific research on a global scale.
It is certainly true that the scientific research which takes place in the
United States and Western Europe often does not have immediate applications
in most of the poorest countries in the developing world. But that is not
the case among countries throughout the South. Despite differences in their
geography, culture and economy, for example, Brazil and Botswana share many
concerns related to science, technology and development. So do India and
Ethiopia, or Indonesia and Egypt.
South-South co-operation has become one of the guiding principles of
science and technology policy throughout the developing world. Such efforts
could be significantly strengthened through programmes that facilitate
North-South co-operation - provided that Northern scientists are responsive
to the issues raised by their colleagues in the South, and scientists in
the South share the knowledge they have gained with their counterparts
throughout the developing world.
Let me give one example of how this approach to international scientific
research might work. In 1961, Brazil created a National Space Commission to
develop satellite technology. Some 30 years later, in 1993, with assistance
from a private US space firm, Brazil launched its first resource-data
collecting satellite from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Since then,
Brazil has pursued two inter-related space initiatives: the Brazilian Space
Mission (MECB) and the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellites programme (CBERS).
These initiatives, which now employ about 1000 scientists and engineers
and 2000 technicians, use satellite technology to address down-to-earth
concerns: changes in temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide
concentrations in the atmosphere and real-time data on alterations in soil
and water quality. Equally important, the information gathered from these
satellites has been shared with scientists in other developing countries
through some 300 data-collecting platforms on Earth in Brazil and
neighbouring countries. Brazil has also offered the use of these satellites
and data-collecting platforms to African nations through Unesco.
Brazil's evolving space programme offers a prime example of how North-South
co-operation can be used to foster South-South co-operation. The effort
began with the training of young Brazilian scientists and technicians
largely in US universities and research laboratories. The programme's
initial steps took place with the direct help of private firms and public
institutions in the West: Brazil's first satellite was launched from the
United States with a US rocket.
But the knowledge and know-how that Brazilian space scientists and
technologists have acquired is now being put to use to help nations
throughout the developing world examine critical environmental problems. At
the same time, the initiative has raised Brazil's overall scientific skills
and facilities. Today, a co-operative partnership with China has set the
stage for even more rapid advances in satellite earth observing, data
collection and communication in the future. All of this carries the promise
of allowing researchers in the South to become true partners on projects
devoted to global scientific issues.
Such involvement could prove instrumental in 'southernizing' the North's
scientific agenda. Research efforts could, as a result, be tied more
closely to critical global issues as defined in part by input from
scientists in the developing world. Ultimately, the entire global
scientific community - both in the North and the South - would reap
benefits likely to accrue from using scientific data and knowledge to solve
real problems faced by real people, especially the two-thirds of the
world's population living in the developing world.
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Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1999 Registered No. 785998 England.