Last year began with high hopes — after two decades of neglect — of new, high-level political recognition of the importance of science and technology to development. In addition, certain events, like the Asian tsunami, dominating the headlines reinforced the message. But if there has been significant progress in some individual areas, progress in changing broader attitudes has been slow.
Two important nuclear anniversaries take place in August. The first — for many the most significant — is that commemorating the dropping of the first nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6 1945. The second event is likely to receive less notice. But it has, in its way, been just as significant.
Even a seasoned political operator like Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair will have found it difficult to swallow the relative failure of this year’s Group of Eight (G8) summit meeting to produce any significant movement on the issue of climate change. Blair began his campaign for a different outcome more than a year ago, when he took over the presidency of the G8 group.
Mention the word policy and many scientists instinctively reach for their gun. The reality is that science needs policymakers as much as policymakers need science. The obvious reason is financial. Modern science is generally accepted as a public good — an activity that benefits all members of society, rather than selective groups — and, as a result, something that should be supported from the public purse.
Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank presents a major challenge to the whole development community. Science may well benefit but it is essential that poverty alleviation, not ideological ambition, dominates the bank’s agenda. There are fears that Wolfowitz will find it difficult to build a consensus on policy issues with countries that he has alienated so deeply with the invasion of Iraq.
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/ 16 February 2005
The Academy of Science of South Africa has been chosen to receive funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The science academies of Nigeria and Uganda have also received funding. The funding will help boost the academies’ ability to provide African governments and the public with advice on science-related issues.
There have recently been encouraging signs that science and technology are climbing back on to the international development agenda. There could not be a more dramatic — or terrible — illustration of the urgent need for this attention than the devastation that swept through many of the coastal communities of south and south-east Asia as a result of the December 26 tsunami.
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/ 8 December 2004
Some of the most important issues to be addressed in the climate change talks that opened in Buenos Aires is how Brazil, China and India can be persuaded to tackle global warming. Also high on the agenda, is getting the delegates to agree on a comprehensive ”road map” for what happens after the Kyoto Protocol commitment period ends.
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/ 22 November 2004
More than six million children die each year in the developing world from diseases that could be prevented by simple interventions. While effective mechanisms for getting the result of biomedical research to the patients who could most benefit from it remains near the top of the priority list, little research is invested in the ‘how’.
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/ 10 November 2004
The delay on a United Nations decision whether to ban all forms of human cloning has been described as a ”tremendous victory” by Bernard Siegel, executive director of the Genetics Policy Institute in Florida in the United States. Siegel points out that a number of Southern African nations that previously supported calls for a total ban have since withdrawn their support.