Most technological challenges require interdisciplinary approaches involving science, engineering, economics, sociology, and public policy. Likewise, engineers increasingly need to think in terms of systems engineering - not only to improve the utilization of resources but because solutions in one area tend to create problems in others. Traffic problems, urban growth, industrial processes, and environmental protection, for example, are all areas that require this combination of problem-solving skills and a systems way of thinking, coupled with interdisciplinary teams and approaches.
In working with less-developed countries to forge advancements that could bring about a more equitable balance of the wealth of nations, it is important that the highly industrialized nations provide infusions of capital and know-how to help people in the developing nations acquire, understand, and effectively apply these scientific and technological tools. The S&T-proficient countries - such as Brazil, Chile, China, India, Mexico and South Africa - can also fill a particularly useful niche in this regard. They can utilize some of the lessons learned from their own evolution, for instance, to help train young scientists, engineers, and medical professionals of S&T-lagging countries in critical fields.
Science and technology can play important roles in assuring developing nations' transitions to sustainable development - whereby human well-being is enhanced, the environment and natural-resource base are preserved and maintained for future generations, and consumption patterns support the goals of health and prosperity over the long term. Recommendations on these issues will prove more acceptable if backed by the advice of the international S&T communities, and of other thoughtful professionals, than if they result only from the interplay of political and power relations between nation-states.
Thus members of S&T communities - and in particular the academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine of many countries - should expand their contributions. While recognizing the deficiencies of some academies, by and large the membership of academies is drawn from the most eminent and influential persons in the national universities and the professional societies. They can help galvanize these institutions, working to establish high standards of quality in all S&T enterprises, to provide independent expert advice for helping to assure wise decisionmaking, and to build collective mechanisms for building understanding and meeting global, regional, and local challenges.
Such an expansion of the goals of academies is already under way. For example, as promised in their May 2000 statement on the role of science and technology in a transition to sustainability.6 The world's scientific academies have committed themselves to applying the resources at their disposal along three main avenues to help developing nations achieve sustainable development:
Science and technology, of course, do not automatically produce unmitigated good. Integral to the promotion of worldwide S&T capacity is the need to take potential ethical issues into serious account, as well as to assess the risks and dangers created by the greater ease with which modern capabilities can be misused.
Science and the practitioners of science should be constantly engaged in a dialogue with society at large. Not only will this benefit the decisions of society by bringing to bear the outlook and knowledge of scientists in the decisionmaking process, it will also help science to recognize the nonscientific aspects of decisions that affect scientific research and the deployment of its products. Through this dialogue of science and society, society will gain a scientific outlook while science will gain a new social contract.
So many obvious benefits are offered by the activities of scientific and technological research and development that they will continue to move forward, even if slowly or spottily, regardless of the relative disadvantage of some nations or the reservations on the part of some cultures. But we can do far better by working together to lower barriers and ease the minds of doubters - or at least achieve viable compromises. The challenges we face, therefore, concern our ability to help guide and quicken the ways in which development might proceed so as to serve the positive goals of as many countries and regions as possible.
A fundamental reason for global cooperation is this: the world is undergoing a transformation so profound that its contours can only be dimly perceived and the momentous consequences barely imagined. We are all passengers on the same ship, facing major challenges together as we sail into the unknown, and insights from all of our cultures and peoples are essential.
Can global cooperation be fostered in this time of unfettered competition? Can we find the means of reaching those at risk of being marginalized or left behind and seek out ways to assist their participation in the extraordinary S&T enterprise of the 21st century? That will depend on our collective ability to modify some aspects of current trends in order to help move the likely outcomes from business-as-usual extrapolations to more desirable outcomes. Systematic actions should occur throughout the world. In many countries, reforms are needed across the board in most local institutions. But that is beyond the scope of this report, which focuses on the institutions of science and research per se. We fully recognize, however, that the enabling framework - the education and training system, political will and public support, for example - are all important parts of the equation.
We also recognize that some local institutions may place obstacles in the path of needed S&T reforms. Some of these obstacles result from misperceptions - that science and technology will be expensive propositions or that basic science is a luxury that poorer countries cannot afford. Some obstacles are created by fear of the potentially disruptive consequences of free-ranging inquiry and expression, which can threaten (or appear to threaten) the religious foundations, as well as the secular ideologies of various societies. Other barriers result from science and technology being seen as synonymous with types of modernization that some local leaders believe will disrupt the continuity and integrity of well-established cultural patterns. Still others reflect fear of the economic and social costs of technological transformations in production.
Another set of concerns focuses on the potentially hazardous aspects of new technologies and the continued use of old technologies with harmful side effects. Whether we think in terms of massively destructive weapons, environmental degradation, biological and chemical threats, or other challenges, it is obvious that we can now create highly dangerous materials and products far more easily than we can limit and control their use. In this sense, science and technology - broadly defined - have presented us with increasingly deep ethical, political, and human dilemmas whose resolution will test the capacities of all societies.
It is essential that the S&T communities, including all those favoring the expansion of S&T capacity building, engage the reluctant parties, recognize the merits of concerns where they are justified, and focus on how science and technology can be of fundamental importance in helping to allay many other concerns. With a strong political will, less bureaucratized administration, a change in the mindset of the S&T community itself, and committed resources, the desired goals could well be achievable.
