As I left the conference yesterday, my conclusion was that I hadn’t really got a handle on what it means to be a ‘Pacific scientist’. I wonder whether the attendees had either.

Perhaps my definition of Pacific science differs a little from that of the Pacific Science Association.  I would have liked to have seen more representation of the Pacific Island states (while there was money set aside for travel grants for developing country scientists, a Fijian researcher told me that the costs of her attendance at the conference had been significant).

But however you define it, I felt that I didn’t get my fill of Pacific science. It’s understandable that a conference on the topic of global change would involve a global rather than regional look at the issues, but I would have liked to have heard more about the impacts of biodiversity loss, climate change and food insecurity in the region, and what Pacific scientists can do.

The convention centre and the Petronas towers - but where was business? (Credit: Flickr/mollyali)

And for a conference that took place in the shadows of the monuments to business that are the Petronas towers, there was little representation from the private sector. There was much talk of the need to reach out to the media and business but – as far as I could tell – I was the only journalist there and I met just one representative from business.

Researchers can talk to each other about the necessity of working with other stakeholders as much as they like, but if they don’t actually do so, such talk is meaningless. And as I mentioned in a previous post, there was little evidence of lively interdisciplinary debate.

I would have liked to have seen panel discussions where researchers, business representatives and policymakers had debated a topic – surely a good way of opening dialogue and taking up Zakri Abdul Hamid’s challenge for scientists to get more involved in policy.

I’ve said before that the conference is a great opportunity for Pacific scientists to get together, let’s hope that next time they invite some other stakeholders too.

Katherine Nightingale, South-East Asia news editor, SciDev.Net

Science diplomacy is the sharing of scientific information and establishing scientific collaborations with nations in which (insert your country here) has limited political relations. It’s not a new concept, at least not the collaborative sense. Projects such as the International Space Station and the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn involved the scientific efforts of multiple countries. The concept of science diplomacy has also been advocated by President Barack Obama, when earlier this year his speech in Cairo mentioned the importance of increased scientific collaboration between the United States and the Arab world.

Granted, science diplomacy can never replace political initiatives. However, science diplomacy can prove to be a powerful diplomatic tool. After all, it was the scientists that were instrumental in keeping the Cold War from warming up by maintaining a relationship between the United States and the USSR. Daryl Copeland, author of Guerilla Diplomacy, describes science diplomacy as “soft power… as a way to liberate scientific and technological knowledge from its rigid national and institutional enclosures and to unleash its progressive potential through collaboration and sharing with interested partners world-wide.”

The key point about science diplomacy is that it doesn’t start at the top with government leaders and lawmakers. This type of diplomacy starts with the scientists and researchers who have an interest in working with other countries on global innovation, technology and solutions. As Nina Federoff, former science adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, put it on NPR in February, “Science is about collaborating and exchanging data, and that’s something we can do now.” In order for scientists all over the world to participate in, well, science, all we need to do is communicate with each other about what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and what he plan to do.

Ali Douraghy, a 2010-11 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow, said in a September 2010 column on SciDev.net that “the challenge is to put people — scientists and researchers — at the forefront of engagement…. Science and policy communities across the globe must work together to create new initiatives and re-visit existing instruments to sustain collaboration and exchange between scientists.” One of the ways to begin collaborating and exchanging data is to talk to the folks at iAMscientist. With over 20,000 members spanning four continents, the researchers that are part of this social network of scientific leaders have had their research published in over 300,000 publications. Even if you may not need to add a new colleague to the team or need international help on your research, get networking for the sake of networking!

 Despite some of the scientists I know behaving far from diplomatically, science diplomacy is an increasingly important endeavor which aims to improve international relations and solve pressing global problems encompassing health, security and the environment. A recent meeting exploring New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy introduced a useful conceptual framework highlighting the multiple dimensions of science diplomacy: Science in diplomacyinvolves informing foreign policy objectives with scientific advice. Diplomacy for science is the facilitation of international science, engineering and technology cooperation. Science fordiplomacy is the utilization of science collaboration to improve relations between countries.

From Tampa’s Bay News: The teams participating in the World Lacrosse Championships in England represent 30 nations, from Argentina to Latvia to South Korea to Iroquois.  The Iroquois helped invent lacrosse and, in a rare example of international recognition of American Indian sovereignty, they participate at every tournament as a separate nation. But they might not be at this year’s world championship tournament because of a dispute over the validity of their passports.  The 23 players have passports issued by the Iroquois Confederacy, a group of six Indian nations overseeing land that stretches from upstate New York into Ontario, Canada.  The U.S. government says it will only let players back into the country if they have U.S. passports, a team official said. The British government, meanwhile, won’t give the players visas if they cannot guarantee they’ll be allowed to go home, the official said.  Iroquois team members born within U.S. borders have been offered U.S. passports, but the players refuse to carry them, because they see the government-issued documents as an attack on their identity, said Tonya Gonnella Frichner, a member of the Onondaga Nation who works with the team.

Iroquois Nationals team member: Bay News

“It’s about sovereignty, citizenship and self-identification,” said Frichner, who also is the North American Regional Representative to the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.  The Iroquois have used their own passports in the past, but State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the new dispute can be traced to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which went into effect last year. The new rules require, among other things, that Americans carry passports or high-tech documents to cross the country’s borders.    After fighting off attempts at assimilation for more than a century, issues of sovereignty strike a deep chord for many Native Americans, said Dean Kotlowski, a history professor at Salisbury University in Maryland who specializes in American Indian policy.  ”What’s at stake is their culture, their identity, their tribes, their reservations,” he said. “They’ve seen diminishment … of their population, threats to their way of life.”  The Iroquois team was in Manhattan on Monday as it awaited news of its status. It has been training on Staten Island in New York City, using the football field at Wagner College.  ”We’re anxious but optimistic,” team manager Ansley Jemison said. “I don’t think a lacrosse team full of world-class athletes poses much of a threat to homeland security.”

Read the rest here.

Digital Diplomacy

Greece and Turkey Fighting Over Whose Culture Heritage Is the Ultimate Source of a Shared Folkloric Character

From Turkey’s Hürriyet Daily News: A debate between Turkey and Greece is growing in the wake of a UNESCO decision to declare shadow puppet theater a part of Turkish cultural heritage. Greece is against the decision and claims that the characters of Hacivat and Karagöz are not a Turkish tradition, the daily Radikal recently reported.  Even Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has become involved in the debate over the legendary characters.  After UNESCO’s decision became effective last September, it raised eyebrows in Greece, prompting Teti Hatzinikolaou, head of the Greek Cultural Ministry department, to write that “Karagöz is a Greek cultural figure.” Greece is set to press its claim to the style of theater, the Foreign Ministry in Athens said Wednesday.  The developments drew the attention of the country’s Foreign Ministry and the Greek Culture Ministry, while Pavlos Gerulanos, Greece’s culture minister, sought to find more information regarding the UNESCO decision.  Several Greek newspapers have demanded a greater debate between Turkey and Greece on the matter.  When asked to comment on the incident, Papandreou smiled and said: “It is better for both countries to have their own Karagöz.”

“The UNESCO convention on intangible cultural heritage enables neighboring countries to access the same commodity,” foreign ministry spokesman Grigoris Delavekouras told a news briefing.  ”Greece has tabled a statement that the same practice exists in our country and discussion … regarding this issue will take place in Nairobi in October,” he said, adding that the “Karagiozis” shadow theater, named after the main character, is an ”inseparable” part of Greek culture.  Karagöz – Turkish for the Greek Karagiozis, meaning “black-eyed” – was a hunchbacked trickster who tried to make a living by hoodwinking and generally avoided all manner of honest work.  The setting is loosely placed during the occupation of present-day Greece by the Ottoman Empire from the mid-15th century to the early 19th century.  UNESCO last year placed Karagöz on its list of intangible cultural elements, associating it with Turkey where the character was originally born.

Read the rest here.

German Performers Wow Arab Audiences at the Beiteddine International Festival

From Lebanon’s Daily Star: “Is it really all in German?” a worried-looking audience member asked her neighbor. Both ladies had been invited to Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester’s Wednesday evening gig at the Beiteddine International Festival, and both seemed daunted at the prospect of sitting through a whole evening of incomprehensible song.  Any audience confusion likely grew when the vocalist and his orchestra strode onto the stage. Dressed in tails, Raabe followed his dinner jacket-clad colleagues as they took their seats behind their instruments. Then, without addressing the crowd, he leaned against the piano in what seemed a very carefully studied pose, and listened to his ensemble play the first bars of “Heute Nacht oder nie,” a German hit from 1932.    While he might not yet have a large following in the Middle East, Raabe has established himself as a star of international standing and is one of Germany’s best-known performers.

Palast Orchester’s Max Raabe: Huffington Post

Born in 1962 in Westphalia, he soon moved to Berlin, where he was trained as a baritone at the University of Arts. There, he discovered that, while Weimar Berlin’s reputation as a bustling hub of the Jazz Age during the 1920s and early ’30s was still very much alive in the minds of many of its citizens, virtually nothing of that tradition had survived the war.  Being Jewish, many of the best composers of that era had been forced to emigrate after Hitler’s rise to power, causing the scene to collapse. A longstanding admirer of the dance and film music of that time, Raabe founded the Palast Orchester in 1986 with the intention of recreating the sound of Weimar’s golden age.  To mark the occasion, the orchestra included an “Oriental Foxtrot” from 1920. The lyrics might have sent the late Edward Said into a rage, but the tune was greatly appreciated by Beiteddine’s audience.  By the time the final notes of the last encore had drifted into the cool air of the Shouf mountains, the audience had been left with the warm feeling of having been transported to a better-sounding time and place.

Read the rest here.

NASA Leader Says He May Not Be Reaching Out to the Middle East Through Science Diplomacy After All

From Layalina Productions: In a recent interview with Al-Jazeera, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden claimed that his “foremost” mission as head of the American space agency was to improve relations with the Muslim world, in accordance with President Barack Obama’s aim to bring scientific and technological outreach “to dominantly Muslim nations,” reports Fox News. Bolden asserted, “Strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned,” as better relations could ultimately contribute to the advancement of space travel.  Fox News comments that Bolden was in Cairo on June 4, 2010, marking the one year anniversary of the president’s speech. Although he spoke at the same university, Bolden denied allegations that he was on a diplomatic mission in Cairo.  Bolden’s interview with the Qatari network stirred quite a firestorm, and though NASA and the White House stood by his statements shortly after the interview, the space agency clarified that such international diplomacy is not Bolden’s “foremost” responsibility, according another Fox News article.  Former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin argued, “NASA… represents the best of America. Its purpose is not to inspire Muslims or any other cultural entity.” While Griffin believed that collaboration with other nations, including Muslim ones, is a positive step, he argued that it is neither a priority nor vital to the US space program’s advancement.  In a written statement, White House spokesperson Nick Shapiro explained that NASA seeks to engage with the world’s best scientists in order “to push the boundaries of exploration” and that international cooperation is vital in achieving this objective. Yet Griffin disagreed, for while he welcomed such cooperation, he believed the US does not need international help to achieve progress.

Read the rest here.

As China’s Confucius Institutes Spread Across the Globe, Many Think Culture Is Not the Only Motive

Opening of an Institute in Canada: Renison U. College

From Canada’s The Epoch Times: When Chinese authorities sent in paramilitary troops to quash Tibetan unrest just months before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, one University of Waterloo instructor rallied her students to “work together to fight with Canadian media” who reported the regime’s heavy-handed tactics.  Yan Li, a former reporter with the Chinese Communist Party’s official Xinhua News Agency, recounted her efforts to confront media sympathy with “Tibetan separatists” in an article posted on a website serving Chinese literature scholars in North America. Yan used class time to explain “the history of Tibet and its current situation,” showing students a map with Tibet clearly inside China.  “Under her influence, some Canadian students bravely debated with anti-China elements on the Internet, some wrote to television stations and newspapers to point out that their reporting was not according to the facts,” the article said.  Eventually, one major Canadian television station even apologized as a result of the “combined efforts” of Yan and her students.  And none of this would have been possible without Beijing’s efforts to establish Confucius Institutes, such as the one Yan directs at the University of Waterloo.  Ms. Yan explained. “What deeply touched me was that though the state still has many areas still needing urgent improvement, they invest such a huge amount of money abroad to establish Confucius Institutes one by one,” Ms. Yan was quoted. “From a strategic perspective, perhaps this is a necessary part of the long-term plan, to gain the world’s understanding and friendship as China is rising again.” It’s a huge investment indeed. The BBC reported in 2006 that the Chinese regime had set aside US$10 billion to establish the first 100 Confucius Institutes by this year. Then the plan grew. According to Xinhua, there are 316 Confucius Institutes in 94 countries and regions as of this month, with more on the way.

Read the rest here.

Nuclear weapons: a case for science diplomacy

There’s a general consensus in both the scientific and political worlds that the principle of science diplomacy, at least in the somewhat restricted sense of the need to get more and better science into international negotiations, is a desirable objective.

There is less agreement, however, on how far the concept can – or indeed should – be extended to embrace broader goals and objectives, in particular attempts to use science to achieve political or diplomatic goals at the international level.

Science, despite its international characteristics, is no substitute for effective diplomacy. Any more than diplomatic initiatives necessarily lead to good science.

These seem to have been the broad conclusions to emerge from a three-day meeting at Wilton Park in Sussex, UK, organised by the British Foreign Office and the Royal Society, and attended by scientists, government officials and politicians from 17 countries around the world.

The definition of science diplomacy varied widely among participants. Some saw it as a subcategory of “public diplomacy”, or what US diplomats have recently been promoting as “soft power” (“the carrot rather than the stick approach”, as a participant described it).

Others preferred to see it as a core element of the broader concept of “innovation diplomacy”, covering the politics of engagement in the familiar fields of international scientific exchange and technology transfer, but raising these to a higher level as a diplomatic objective.

Whatever definition is used, three particular aspects of the debate became the focus of attention during the Wilton Park meeting: how science can inform the diplomatic process; how diplomacy can assist science in achieving its objectives; and, finally, how science can provide a channel for quasi-diplomatic exchanges by forming an apparently neutral bridge between countries.

There was little disagreement on the first of these. Indeed for many, given the increasing number of international issues with a scientific dimension that politicians have to deal with, this is essentially what the core of science diplomacy should be about.

Chris Whitty, for example, chief scientist at the UK’s Department for International Development, described how knowledge about the threat raised by the spread of the highly damaging plant disease stem rust had been an important input by researchers into discussions by politicians and diplomats over strategies for persuading Afghan farmers to shift from the production of opium to wheat.

Others pointed out that the scientific community had played a major role in drawing attention to issues such as the links between chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere and the growth of the ozone hole, or between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. Each has made essential contributions to policy decisions.

Acknowledging this role for science has some important implications. No-one dissented when Rohinton Medhora, from Canada’s International Development Research Centre, complained of the lack of adequate scientific expertise in the embassies of many countries of the developed and developing world alike.

Nor – perhaps predictably – was there any major disagreement that diplomatic initiatives can both help and occasionally hinder the process of science. On the positive side, such diplomacy can play a significant role in facilitating science exchange and the launch of international science projects, both essential for the development of modern science.

Europe’s framework programme of research programmes was quoted as a successful advantage of the first of these. Examples of the second range from the establishment of the European Organisation of Nuclear Research (usually known as CERN) in Switzerland after the Second World War, to current efforts to build a large new nuclear fusion facility (ITER).

Less positively, increasing restrictions on entry to certain countries, and in particular the United States after the 9/11 attacks in New York and elsewhere, have significantly impeded scientific exchange programmes. Here the challenge for diplomats was seen as helping to find ways to ease the burdens of such restrictions.

The broadest gaps in understanding the potential of scientific diplomacy lay in the third category, namely the use of science as a channel of international diplomacy, either as a way of helping to forge consensus on contentious issues, or as a catalyst for peace in situations of conflict.

On the first of these, some pointed to recent climate change negotiations, and in particular the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a good example, of the way that the scientific community can provide a strong rationale for joint international action.

But others referred to the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit last December to come up with a meaningful agreement on action as a demonstration of the limitations of this way of thinking.

It was argued that this failure had been partly due to a misplaced belief that scientific consensus would be sufficient to generate a commitment to collective action, without taking into account the political impact that scientific ideas would have.

Another example that received considerable attention was the current construction of a synchrotron facility SESAME in Jordan, a project that is already is bringing together researchers in a range of scientific disciplines from various countries in the Middle East (including Israel, Egypt and Palestine, as well as both Greece and Turkey).

The promoters of SESAME hope that – as with the building of CERN 60 years ago, and its operation as a research centre involving, for example, physicists from both Russia and the United States – SESAME will become a symbol of what regional collaboration can achieve. In that sense, it would become what one participant described as a “beacon of hope” for the region.

But others cautioned that, however successful SESAME may turn out to be in purely scientific terms, its potential impact on the Middle East peace process should not be exaggerated.  Political conflicts have deep roots that cannot easily be papered over, however open-minded scientists may be to professional colleagues coming from other political contexts.

Indeed, there was even a warning that in the developing world, high profile scientific projects, particular those with explicit political backing, could end up doing damage by inadvertently favouring one social group over another. Scientists should be wary of having their prestige used in this way; those who did so could come over as patronising, appearing unaware of political realities.

Similarly, those who hold science in esteem as a practice committed to promoting the causes of peace and development were reminded of the need to take into account how advances in science – whether nuclear physics or genetic technology – have also led to new types of weaponry. Nor did science automatically lead to the reduction of global inequalities.

“Science for diplomacy” therefore ended up with a highly mixed review. The consensus seemed to be that science can prepare the ground for diplomatic initiatives – and benefit from diplomatic agreements – but cannot provide the solutions to either.

“On tap but not on top” seems as relevant in international settings as it does in purely national ones. With all the caution that even this formulation still requires.

David Dickson,
Director, SciDev.Net

A biofuel plant in Brazil

Is science diplomacy a self-contained field of diplomatic activity or should it be seen as a sub-set of a broader field of international activity that might be described as “innovation diplomacy”?

This was the issue raised by Ademar Seabra da Cruz, head of science and technology in the ministry of foreign affairs of Brazil, speaking on the final day of the Wilton Park meeting on science diplomacy.

He pointed out how Brazil’s surging capacity in science and technology has provided a new channel for establishing relations with other countries, particularly emerging economies such as China and India, and those in other parts of the developing world.

“Science and innovation together have a role that can be used to promote global equality and sustainable development,” Seabra da Cruz said.

“The big challenge to us and other emerging economies is to find ways of using scientific knowledge to enhance our competitiveness and create a new international division of labour. Without linking scientific knowledge to innovation policy, it is impossible to have sustainable development.”

As an example of innovation diplomacy in action, he pointed to how technical knowledge can be exchanged between countries about the best ways of using cheap, sustainable sources of energy – as Brazil is doing with its experience in biofuels — helping to improve relations between the providers of such knowledge and those that receive it.

“This is an example of where we can exchange information about best social and innovation practices – which are all likely to involve science to a greater or lesser degree – and also provide an immediate and relatively easy way of making innovation work for diplomacy.”

He admitted that, as with science diplomacy, innovation diplomacy presents a number of challenges. Diplomats need to be well informed on innovation-related issues, embassies need to develop “observatories ” that monitor the innovation landscape of the countries in which they are based, and ways need to be found to engage a country’s scientific and technological diaspora.

But, if all this can be achieved, “like science diplomacy, innovation diplomacy is a way of broadening the scope and functions of traditional diplomacy”.

David Dickson,
Director, SciDev.Net

Princess Sumaya of Jordan: "The Muslim world must learn to cooperate better"

A key element of the new interest in science diplomacy has been the effort, particularly by the US administration, to improve relations with the countries of the Middle East and the Muslim world.

These efforts to use scientific agreements as a central strategy in so-called “soft diplomacy” were highlighted in a speech delivered in Cairo last year by newly elected President Barack Obama who promised a new era of cooperation with the region.

The optimism of that speech has since faded, partly because follow-up is still awaited. But many remain sympathetic to the idea that building a strong scientific and technological base in the region would not only increase the economic strength of Muslim countries, but also have broader cultural and political implications.

One of the strongest protagonists of this view is Pakistani-born Princess Sumaya of Jordan, who plays an highly active role as president of the country’s Royal Scientific Society based in Amman.

In an address to the Wilton Park meeting on science diplomacy that was both thoughtful and passionate, she presented a vision of how promoting science and technology — a task that she admitted benefitted from external support — could bring both peace and prosperity to the region.

Princess Sumaya used her speech to make vigorous criticism of the way, too often in the Muslim world, scientific leaders had a tendency to focus their efforts on building and controlling their own power bases, rather than seeing their role as part of a global scientific community.

“We Arabs have a demon within us who calls for the biggest and the brightest, a demon that appeals to us to build an edifice that will put the neighbours in the shade,” she said. “Unfortunately, we do little to work together.”

Multilateralism was not a great strength in the Arab world; indeed it was hardly a reality. But it was important for countries in the region to learn to collaborate on science and technology, just as European countries had done to boost their technological innovation.

“Our resource-rich countries must work with talent-rich, but resource-poor, economies for the benefit of all,” Princess Sumaya said. “Spreading opportunities across the Arab world will stem our debilitating brain-drain and help to create a sustainable and productive environment for all our populations.”

A similar plea had come on the previous day from Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), who described how the members of his organisation were committed to promoting science and technology to enhance the well-being of the Muslim world.

Keen to challenge the idea that the transfer of scientific knowledge was primarily a West-to-East affair, he pointed out that, in the seventeenth century, the English scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon had acknowledged that many key inventions – such as printing, gunpowder and the compass – had come from the Muslim world.

Ihsanoglu, a historian of science by profession, complained that Islamic contributions to science and knowledge were in danger of being overlooked as a result of campaigns of “Islamophobia” that sought to demonise the principles and values of Islamic culture.

At the same time he reminded participants that, although science diplomacy had proved to be useful in forging partnerships in fields such as education and agriculture, they should not forget that its ultimate aim – like that of more conventional forms of diplomacy – was to further a country’s interests and wider political goals.

Princess Sumaya issued a similar warning in slightly more colourful terms. “Soft power is a desirable tool for diplomacy, considering the other options available to all sides, but achieving one’s goals through co-option and attraction is only truly sustainable if we all want similar, sustainable outcomes.

“The design and exercise of soft power by the West is, to a large extent, predetermined by cultural values, political institutions and even the demands of the electoral cycle,” she stressed. “If clear, universal goals are not agreed upon, then soft power too can seem antagonistic, to be dismissed by opposing ideologues as the velvet glove of international relations.”

David Dickson,
Director, SciDev.Net

Bruce Alberts: US science envoy

When both countries and aid agencies are asked to talk about the “science for development” projects that they have supported, they frequently tend to focus on those that have been successful.

Bruce Alberts, editor of Science magazine and a former president of the US National Academy of Sciences, wants to change this. He argues that there is often as much to learn from projects that have failed as from those that have succeeded.

“Let’s make a science out of sustainable development,” he told the second day of the science diplomacy meeting at Wilton House in Sussex, UK. “We must objectively learn from experiments in this area, and build up an evidence-based science of what works where – and why.”

Alberts spent much of his time at the academy promoting the need for more science in developing countries. He is now a special envoy to the US administration on scientific issues, putting him at the forefront of implementing the country’s science diplomacy strategy.

Alberts has recently been closely engaged, for example, in negotiating a set of agreements with the government of Indonesia on various aspects of scientific cooperation with the United States.

“Vision is important but we also need effective strategies,” he said.

“Nearly all projects [in applying science to development] claim to be successes, which means that the lessons learned from failure are thereby lost.”

It was understandable that governments and development agencies should be keen to demonstrate a good track record. But the result was that “we keep on making the same mistake over and over.”

Alberts admitted that some organisations, such as the World Bank, do evaluate projects that have failed. “But the reports disappear down a black hole and people never see them. It is a great waste.”

David Dickson,
Director, SciDev.Net

Traditional medicine: a space in the diplomacy debate?

Can science diplomacy be implemented from the bottom up as well as from the “top down”, as usually favoured by scientists and policymakers alike?

Yes, according to Melissa Leach, co-director of the Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability (STEPS) Centre at the University of Sussex’s Institute of Development Studies.

Leach outlined to the Wilton Park meeting a manifesto published by the STEPS centre last week that proposes a “new politics of innovation” based on a commitment to promoting “direction, distribution and diversity” in science and innovation policy — what the manifesto calls a “3D agenda”.

“We can redefine science as being about ways of knowing – including the knowledge that local people have in their own settings – and redefine diplomacy as being about establishing links between people,” she said.

Using these definitions led to a different – if somewhat unconventional – understanding of science diplomacy, she admitted.

But it was one that promised to lead to a more effective technique for bridging the gap between the world’s rich and its poor, as well as meeting the goals of sustainable development, achieving both in ways that current patterns of growth and innovation are failing to do.

“We want to create networks of networks that fit a world in which politics is about connections between actors forming around common agendas and visions for tackling global challenges,” said Leach.

Not all participants were eager to accept the way that she suggested combining a respect for traditional, indigenous knowledge with the more formal types of knowledge that make up contemporary science.

One participant, for example, called this a “deeply dangerous” idea that diplomats should avoid, on the grounds that it meant acknowledging concepts such  as the idea that eating the flesh of an animal could impart some of that animal’s qualities.

But Leach defended her position vigorously and claimed that such criticism was a “serious misreading” of her suggestion.

“We are not talking about folk wisdom that is incompatible with modern science. But we are talking about people’s science which is compatible with Western science, as well as knowledge that can challenge such science,” she said.

She pointed, for example, to areas of which she had direct experience such as forest dynamics and fire management.

But traditional knowledge should also be subject to scrutiny.

“There is scope for hybrids. The need for active deliberation and choice applies as much to traditional knowledge as it does to formal science.”

David Dickson, Director, SciDev.Net

The International Space Station: science diplomacy in action

Using science as a vehicle for international diplomacy has many clear attractions. Such is the case, for example, when it can be used to forge common approaches to international problems (such as climate change), or appears to offer a way around divisive political disagreements.

From the New York Times: There was in the city an old garden, and in that garden there were trees, and under the trees there were women.  And there were no scarves on the heads of the women who sat under the trees in the old Kabul Women’s Garden.  That was all something remarkable once upon a time, as it is even now. Screened from male scrutiny by the leafy canopies of almond or apricot trees, women could go outside as they pleased, dare to wriggle naked toes in fountain water or just gossip without the veil.

Photo: NY Times

Now this oasis of freedom for women, surrounded by the misogynist desert of the capital city, is undergoing a rebirth.  As with so much happening today in Afghanistan, the midwives are foreigners, the gestation is troubled and the parents are hopeful.  Some say this fabled eight-acre enclosure in the Shahrara neighborhood of Kabul goes back to the days of Babur the Conqueror, in the 1500s. More reliably it is dated to the 1940s or ’50s, when King Zahir Shah was said to have bequeathed it to the state.

Karima Salik tells the story of the Kabul Women’s Garden she remembers as a girl in the 1970s, a halcyon age for Afghanistan and its women, before the present 32 years of unbroken war began. “The trees covered everything,” she recalled. “There was laughter and chatter and music.”

For the past three years, Ms. Salik has managed the garden, which is now in the midst of a $500,000 face-lift supported by the United States Agency for International Developmentand CARE International. Most of the money pays laborers who are landscaping, planting trees, rebuilding footpaths and raising the walls still higher. Women on construction projects are almost unheard of in Afghanistan, but the United States Agency for International Development program requires that at least 25 percent of the work force be female. Here they are 50 percent of it.

Read the whole story here.

Theatre as “Bridge” for Cultures

From The Financial Times: Thomas Sadoski never used his first passport. “I had to get it renewed and I sent the poor old thing in completely unused,” the American actor remembers. “The spine was still uncracked.”

He has more than made up for it with his second. In the past three months Sadoski, a genial, curly-haired 33-year-old from Connecticut, has visited Hong Kong, Singapore, France, Spain, Germany, Holland and now London as part of The Bridge Project, an extraordinarily ambitious transatlantic theatre company combining British and American actors to tour classical drama round the world. When the company finally packs up shop at the end of August they will have been together for 10 months, six of them on the road, and played to around 185,000 people.

Sadoski didn’t realise quite what he had taken on until he was flying over the North Pole en route to Hong Kong. “I looked down and saw the Arctic ice. That was the moment when I grasped what the next six months of my life were going to be like,” he says.

The Bridge Project is largely the brainchild of Sam Mendes, the 44-year-old British theatre and film director (who won an Oscar for his direction of American Beauty in 1999) and former artistic director of London’s Donmar Warehouse. I meet him and members of the company as they work the shows into the Old Vic, where they will open this week. It is the technical rehearsal and the crew is midway through the painstaking process of installing the set and plotting every lighting change and sound cue. The theatre’s elegant foyer is pretty well impassable: vast trunks of sound gear and lighting rig cram the space where audiences will soon gather for the first preview. Turning to indicate the theatre around him, Mendes says: “I was here at 10 o’clock last night re-rehearsing a scene I must have rehearsed eight, nine, 10 times in different places. And it’s new again.”

Read the rest here.

Washington Engages Damascus through Science Diplomacy

From Gulf News:

The stream of signals coming from Washington to Damascus has been steady for weeks. This month, three US Congressmen visited Syria, the last of whom, Brian Baird, carried the slogan of ‘science diplomacy’. Baird, who was featured in the mainstream Arab media for being the first US Congressman to visit Gaza in February 2009, is currently leading the Science Diplomacy initiative in Congress, arguing that science transcends political differences and should be used to improve Syrian-US relations.

The Congressman from Washington state is currently leading an effort to lift the sanctions on Syria, imposed by the Bush administration in 2004, probably taking his cue from President Barack Obama. Last July, Obama signalled his readiness, via his Middle East envoy George Mitchell, to ease sanctions on Syria vis-a-vis spare parts for aircraft, information technology products and telecommunications.

Weeks after Baird left Syria, an influential business and technology delegation came to Damascus, representing top firms like Microsoft, Dell, Cisco, Symantec and VeriSign. They met President Bashar Al Assad in a visit that clearly had Obama’s fingerprints all over it, signalling an eagerness to do business with Syria and turning a blind eye to US sanctions that prohibit these companies from doing business with Damascus.

Coinciding with this development was the re-opening of the American High School in Syria, which was closed in 2008 after the US invaded Syrian territory and killed seven civilians, claiming to be hunting for a senior member of Al Qaida.

Science diplomacy, apparently, is kicking off. Last May, the US dropped its veto against Syria joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for which it had applied since 2001.

Read the rest here.

Symphonies from Around the World Gather Together in Russia to Celebrate Music

From the Moscow Times: With one exception — the Israel Philharmonic — participants in the first four installments of Moscow’s annual Festival of the World’s Symphony Orchestras were drawn exclusively from Russia and countries of the European Union. This year’s fifth installment, which took place June 2-11, turned in a mostly different direction, looking eastward, in the broadest sense, and presenting orchestras from China, India, South Korea and Turkey, together with one from the arguably “eastern” Russian Republic of Tatarstan. Completing the festival roster was Moscow’s own Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra.

Photo: Moscow Times

As in the past, the festival took place in the historic Columned Hall of the House of Unions, an excellent and beautiful venue rarely used these days due to its high cost, but apparently affordable by the festival, with its budget of nearly 90 million rubles ($2.9 million) and funds generously supplied by the Russian presidential administration.  Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the concert of the Presidential Symphony Orchestra of Turkey, which was founded under the Ottoman Empire in 1826 and is one of the world’s oldest symphonic ensembles.

Among the four other “eastern” orchestras, the most outstanding proved to be South Korea’s Seoul Philharmonic, led by world-renowned pianist and conductor Chung Myung-whun. Chung is so far the only maestro to make a repeat appearance at the festival. The very first festival, in 2006, found him at the helm of the Paris-based Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, in a concert that I later judged to be the finest I had attended in Moscow that entire year.

Read the rest here.

German Theater is a Hit Among Yemenis

From Deutsche Welle: ”Linie 1″ is among the most widely-performed German plays and the biggest success to date for Berlin’s Grips Theater. Performances have been staged all over the world, including an adaptation in Yemen. At a bus and taxi station in the center of Aden, an old woman fights with a drunken thief until a security officer intervenes. Then a street sweeper gets mixed up in the scuffle, while two boys cutting class try to scrounge up money for a round of gambling. On the edge of it all, a girl stands with a little suitcase in hand, not knowing where to turn.

“A show, a drama, a musical about living and surviving in the big city, about hope and adaptation, courage and self-deceit, to laugh at and cry about, to dream – and to reflect on ourselves.” That’s how the Grips Theater bills its “Linie 1,” written by Volker Ludwig with music by Birger Heymann.

The realistic play follows a young runaway from the countryside, who comes to Berlin chasing after a rock star. But instead of finding her prince, she lingers in the subway where she is able to obverse the tension and diversity of life in the city.  The Grips Theater in Berlin has staged performances of “Linie 1″ continuously since 1986. Many other theaters across the world have followed suit and hosted guest productions, as well as their own versions of the play.  Now, the piece will find a new audience in Yemen – with a few changes. The young Yemeni director Amr Jamal said he tweaked the plot to reflect contemporary issues in his country, noting that people want to come to the theater when they see part of themselves and their problems in the performance.

Read the rest here.

Oliver Stone Film Introduces Americans to Hugo Chavez

See a video report here.

Rapprochement of Cultures, 2010

From Korea Times:This year is the year the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launches a new initiative, the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures, while concluding its Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World (2001-2010).

The first decade of the 21st century was ridden with conflicts that had no boundaries. Terrorism, climate change, and global capital permeated through borders, deeply changing our local and national realities.

Realizing that a much larger world out there can drastically affect the world around us, the UNESCO diagnosed that if conflict prevention is not actively pursued, we could face unbridgeable incomprehension and mistrust, resulting in greater, global tensions. Thus, seeking to address this urgent, humanitarian need, UNESCO launched its new initiative ― the Rapprochement of Cultures.

Why culture? Cultures are the manifestation of our values, life-styles, ways of life, as well as the artistic and creative realization of our world views. But cultures are not static ― they change and are changed by the constant ebb and flow of knowledge, living, and history.

The dynamic processes through which our cultures evolve depend on our quicker abilities to navigate through the uncertainties globalization causes in our day to day lives. And in a multi-cultural world of interdependent nations and people, more is needed in the practice of living in peace with an “other” and the “otherness” of living with oneself.

Read the rest here.

Rango Revives Lost Culture

From The Financial Times: On a hot night in Abu Dhabi a couple of months ago, the Egyptian-Sudanese voodoo band Rango were on stage at the Womad festival. The members of the band sat in a semi-circle, facing inwards. Their drums were the pace of a raised heartbeat, their shakers – aerosol cans filled with pebbles and painted silver – a fraction of a beat behind. The metallic plink of the simsimiyya, a tiny lute, dotted pentatonic patterns into the music…

Zar is a spiritual music, introduced into Egypt in the 1820s when the Egyptian ruler Mohamed Ali conquered Sudan and imported slave workers in their thousands to work in the cotton fields and serve in the army. The earlier burlesque dated back to those days.

A few years ago, Zar had fallen into obscurity. The band was put together by the musicologist Zakaria Ibrahim, who specialises in rescuing dying musics from Egypt: El Tanbura and the Bedouin Jerry Can Band are among his projects. For Rango he brought together Bergamon, Mansour, El Sayed Jackamo Abd Alla and Khalil Said, known as the “chicken killer”. They are all in their 60s; the band’s other musicians range in age from 20s to 40s.

All the elder members of the band came from musical families, mostly Sudanese, though Mansour grew up with Egyptian Zar. “I first heard it when I was 10 years old with my mother and grandmother. This music is old. I don’t know how far back it goes. Many generations, sharing that connection.” Egyptian Zar is primarily women’s music. “In the old days, if I wanted to talk to Hassan or Khalil or Jackamo, I could go to the coffee shop,” said Ibrahim. “But I couldn’t sit in the coffee shop with Sheikha Zainab. For the women, Zar was the coffee shop.”

Bergamon “saw all the instruments in my home from an early age and fell in love with them”. As a child, he played the rango obsessively; when his uncle, driven beyond endurance, smashed his instrument, he built another from scratch. The rango he plays now is an antique, probably 190 years old, inherited from a master.

Read the full article here.

In some instances, the concept is used to describe efforts to organise large-scale scientific experiments requiring support from several countries, such as those in astronomy or high-energy physics.

A second use covers the engagement of scientists in diplomatic negotiations with high scientific or technical content. Typical issue here is the need to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, or to combat global warming and the social impacts of climate change.

Thirdly, the “scientific diplomacy” is increasingly used to describe how scientific collaboration between countries can be used as a lever to achieve diplomatic goals without resorting to more aggressive tactics, such as trade embargoes or even military intervention.

It is this last sense that “science diplomacy” has emerged prominently on the agenda in the past two years as a component of so-called “soft diplomacy” being developed by the administration of US President Barack Obama to secure its political goals, particularly in the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world.

This week, the British Foreign Office is hosting a three-day meeting at its Wilton Park conference centre to test the extent to which these efforts resonate with, and are supported by, other countries, particularly in Europe and in the developing world.

Held under the title “Science Diplomacy: Applying Science and Innovation to International Challenges”, the meeting has been organised in partnership with Britain’s Royal Society, and is intended to address questions such as:

• How can science diplomacy be used effectively as a tool of soft power in international policy-making?
• What mechanisms are needed to strengthen links between the science and foreign policy communities?
• How can science diplomacy help foster positive re-engagement with the Islamic World?
• And how can tensions between scientific independence on the one hand, and the needs of the state on the other, be balanced?

I’ll be blogging regularly from the conference over the three days, starting on the evening of Thursday.  This will not be an attempt to provide a complete summary of the meeting. Rather I’ll be highlighting what seem to be the most significant – or perhaps controversial – contributions to the debate, attempting to give an idea of the flavour of the discussions and a brief summary of any outcomes.

David Dickson
Director, SciDev.Net

Meeting Palis and his colleagues in Cape Town yesterday, Zuma promised that if TWAS was to organise another conference in his country he would attend in person. Oh well…

It has not just been hard work. Last night, TWAS members and staff were dancing on tables in a casino where the final party of the week took place. Unfortunately, your correspondent did not attend with her camera, otherwise this post may have had more interesting images to go with it.

The conference signalled a deepening collaboration between TWAS and South Africa, which is going to set up a regional chapter of the organisation.

It may also mark the end of an era. Mohammed Hassan, TWAS executive director, is expected to retire at some point. This could be his last general conference. But then again, it might not…

Even if Hassan retires, he is unlikely to sever his ties completely with the organisation, according to sources in TWAS. Like a certain Russian president-cum-prime minister, he is likely to stay involved for some time to come. Which, in this case, isn’t a bad thing!

Linda Nordling, SciDev.Net

He emphasised the importance of nurturing excellence, saying that too often, developing country universities lack the creative “soul” of science embodied by the “beautiful” minds that work in places like Oxford or MIT.

Excellence had been top of the list when drawing up Pakistan’s S&T policies, he said. Paying high salaries for mediocre scientists would not give the desired results. So efforts focused on identifying the brightest students used independent auditors to ensure they got the scholarships rather than the merely well-connected.

Quality has been a buzzword at this conference. This indicates a growing maturity in the debate. But not all developing country governments seem to have caught up on this. One South African delegate I spoke to after Rahman’s lecture told me his government would never place such emphasis on top of the line science and technology.

South Africa’s science minister Naledi Pandor would disagree. She is actively promoting excellence, she says. But some academics fear that a more left-leaning government in South Africa will regard elite universities and research as a bourgeois luxury. The country’s mid-term budgets next week may show which way the wind is blowing…

Linda Nordling, SciDev.Net

The University of Oxford - really excellent. Image credit: Flickr / Missy and the Universe

The financial crisis may have almost brought the world economy to a standstill—but it was the economic resilience of the developing country’s biggest economies that kept it going, he said.

Next year’s football World Cup in South Africa, a black man in the White House and Brazil winning the 2016 Olympics are all signs that the tide has turned for developing countries, he added.

Palis’ point was that one of the drivers of this change in developing countries’ fortunes is investments in science and technology.

But the progress has been uneven, and now it is up to the emerging economies—China, India, South Africa—to step up to the plate and share their successes with their neighbours, he concluded.

During the conference, South Africa and Brazil will meet for bilateral talks on how to boost science cooperation. There will be plenty of best practice examples for how to boost such links further.

But so far, the main voices in Durban have come from the powerful emerging economies, or from the developed world. Hopefully we will also be hearing from those who are a bit further from achieving a “knowledge revolution”.

The least developed countries will have access to help, but they also need to help themselves said South African science minister Naledi Pandor.

She voiced concern that four years after Africa adopted a common science plan, many countries either don’t have science ministries, or have not outlined a role for S&T in their national development plans.

———
In “recession watch” news, the German ambassador to South Africa said developed countries will not cut funding for developing country science.

Tell that to the Swedish development agency SIDA which may cut its research cooperation budget by 20% in 2010!

Linda Nordling, SciDev.Net

• Dyson’s stance on climate change: excelente entrevista, contendo mais detalhes e contextualizando apropriadamente a postura do Dyson — e olha que ele nem falou nada sobre plânctons, algas e recifes (e metano)!
• Increasingly Popular Research Yields Increasingly Unreliable Results
• Melhores machos têm menos filhos ou Good males are bad fathers
• Is Science Journalism Breaking the Convention? e The Priesthood of Science Journalism
• Splish! Splash! Hydrotherapy for chronic back pain is pretty good!
• Opinion: Invest in UK science says Martin Rees
• Editors in Web2.0
• Hide files in an image
• Conference Networking e Networking Tips for the Introverted
• [Editorial] Science Journalism Goes Global
• Science can bridge national divides | David Kerr, Are we witnessing the end of science? | Ehsan Masood
• Quantum Mechanics Visible In Everyday Life?
• O papel da universidade, artigo de Gil da Costa Marques
• Fair Research Assessments Require Extensive Deliberation, On article-level metrics and other animals, Impact Factor Boxing 2009
• 7 Man-Made Substances that Laugh in the Face of Physics
• Ciência em ação e Apoio inédito a pesquisa

Such has been the issue over the past two days in the meeting jointly organised in London by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Royal Society on the topic “New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy“.

There has been much lively discussion on the value of international collaboration in achieving scientific goals, on the need for researchers to work together on the scientific aspects of global challenges such as climate change and food security, and on the importance of science capacity building in developing countries in order to make this possible.

But there remained little evidence at the end of the meeting on how useful it was to lump all these activities together under the umbrella term of “science diplomacy”.

More significantly, although numerous claims were made during the conference about the broader social and political value of scientific collaboration – for example, in establishing a framework for collaboration in other areas, and in particular reducing tensions between rival countries – little was produced to demonstrate whether this hypothesis is true.

If it is not, then some of the arguments made on behalf of “science diplomacy”, and in particular its value as a mechanism for exercising “soft power” in foreign policy, do not stand up to close scrutiny.

Indeed, a case can be made that where scientific projects have successfully involved substantial international collaboration, such success is often heavily dependent on a prior political commitment to cooperation, rather than a mechanism for securing cooperation where the political will is lacking.

Three messages appeared to emerge from the two days of discussion. Firstly, where the political will to collaborate does exist, a joint scientific project can be a useful expression of that will. Furthermore, it can be an enlightening experience for all those directly involved. But it is seldom a magic wand that can secure broader cooperation where none existed before.

Secondly, “science diplomacy” will only become recognised as a useful activity if it is closely defined to cover specific situations (such as the negotiation of major international scientific projects or collaborative research enterprises). As an umbrella term embracing the many ways in which science interacts with foreign policy, it loses much of its impact, and thus its value.

Finally, when it comes to promoting the use of science in developing countries, a terminology based historically on maximising self-interest – the ultimate goal of the diplomat – and on practices through which the rich have almost invariably ended up exploiting the poor, is likely to be counterproductive.

In other words, the discussion seemed to confirm that “science diplomacy” has a legitimate place in the formulation and implementation of policies for science (just as there is a time and place for exercising “soft power” in international relations).

 But the dangers of going beyond this – including the danger of distorting the integrity of science itself, and even alienating potential partners in collaborative projects, particularly in the developing world – were also clearly exposed.

The take-home message: handle with care.

David Dickson, SciDev.Net

Click here to go the SciDev.Net website

Christopher Whitty (Credit: LSHTM/Anne Koeber)

That was the stark message delivered by Chris Whitty (right), recently appointed head of research at the UK Department for International Development (DFID), to the two-day meeting taking place in London this week on “New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy“.

Whitty, a malaria specialist who was appointed in January (see UK’s DFID appoints research chief) and emphasised that he was speaking in a personal rather than an official capacity, delivered what he described as a “hymn of praise” for the role of science in international development.

He listed some of the “wonderful things” that science was capable of doing to help to mitigate the effects of poverty around the world, while adding that “it has been massively overlooked by those involved in international development for many years”.

But he was scornful of efforts to use scientific and technical assistance to achieve broader political goals such as increasing influence or even contributing to social stability, both of which he included among “less good reasons” to engage in science in developing countries.

“They are less good because they don’t work,” he said.

One idea he criticised was that training scientists was a valuable way of buying influence with a country’s scientific community. The historical record showed that highly trained scientists often left their countries of origin to continue their work overseas.

“Another idea is that science can promote social stability,” said Whitty. “The evidence is the reverse. Science can be a transformative influence. But transformation can lead to turbulence, which itself can lead to conflict.”

Even the idea that science should be promoted because it was an unalloyed good had its problems. “This is clearly not correct. For example, there is some good south-south collaboration on nuclear issues that does not bring joy to the rest of the world.” No names were mentioned; but no names were needed.

The reason for engaging in science in developing countries should have a single, clear, purpose, he suggested: “to transform the lives of the poor”. A simple enough message. But one that placed a large question mark over the desirability of seeking to use science for diplomatic ends, particularly in the context of relationships with the developing world.

David Dickson, SciDev.Net.

The paro seal: "soft power" Japanese style

For those new to – and perhaps baffled by – the term “science diplomacy”, a quick guide was offered to this week’s Royal Society meeting by Jun Yanagi, director of the International Science Cooperation Division of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Yanagi has closer familiarity with the term than most. Last year, the Japanese government passed a new initiative in “science and technology diplomacy” that embraces a range of activities. One of Yanagi’s tasks has been to put this new political commitment into effect.

This has given him experience of what he described as the “four dimensions of science diplomacy”, which he suggested as a useful approach to unpacking the ways that the term can be used.

“The first dimension is the use of science and technology for diplomatic purposes, which means looking on science and technology as diplomatic tools and assets,” Yanagi told the meeting.

As an example, he quoted Japanese collaboration with developing countries in addressing global issues such as climate change, or US efforts – backed by Japan – to find new tasks for nuclear scientists employed by the Soviet Union on weapons development programmes.

“Secondly, there is diplomacy for science and technology,” said Yanagi. Here he quoted the diplomacy needed both to set up bilateral projects and to engage in international “megascience” projects. (Although Yanagi did not mention it, some see this as a response to criticism in Japan of the government’s failure to win a bid to host the international fusion facility, ITER).

“Then there is diplomacy based on science“. Here he pointed to the growing amount of scientific input into making and implementing policy. “Science can increase the credibility and legitimacy of diplomatic policies,” said Yanagi, referring for example to the impact of the IPCC on climate change negotiations (but making no mention of the contested use of scientific arguments to defend Japan’s widely-criticised whaling policies).

Finally he quoted the use of the term to cover science and technology “as a source of soft power”. Here he described how Japan’s national image could benefit from its many scientific and technological achievements, from remote sensing satellites to the ‘paro’, an electronic toy for sick kids described as both ” the world’s most therapeutic robot” and being suitable for “those who love animals but hate pets”.

Japan’s increasing willingness to open up its scientific programmes to foreign partners, to collaborate in the construction of international research facilities (such as ITER) or projects aimed at global problems, and to sponsor genuinely collaborative partnerships with scientific teams in developing countries, have each been welcomed.

But however effective it may have been in generating political support in Tokyo, the value of putting all these together under the label of “science diplomacy” – given the reservations that others still attach to this term – has yet to be fully proven.

David Dickson, SciDev.Net

Fedoroff: Soft pedalling on"soft power"?

If there is an international cheerleader for the current drive to place “science diplomacy” on the international political agenda, it must surely be Nina Fedoroff, a plant geneticist who, in 2007, was appointed as the chief scientific adviser to the US Department of Science.

Speaking at the AAAS/Royal Society meeting on “New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy” taking place this week in London, Fedoroff set out a broad ranging vision of how such diplomacy was vital to building “constructive knowledge-based international partnerships”.

Perhaps taken slightly aback by the vehemence with which the speaker who had preceded her — UK chief scientific adviser John Beddington– had highlighted dangers of mixing science and politics – Fedoroff started by differentiating between “science diplomacy” and “the use of science in diplomacy” [see previous posting].

The first, she suggested, represented legitimate efforts by scientists to put their skills, both individually and collectively, to tackle global problems, a characterisation that coincided with the description that Beddington had previously made.

“Science and scientific diplomacy at every level are enormously important in filling in the knowledge chasm dividing the rich and the poor,” she argued, a sentiment with which few in the room seemed to disagree.

Fedoroff placed less explicit emphasis on the idea that is helping to give the idea of science diplomacy traction in political circles in Washington, namely its value – which even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has acknowledged — as “soft power” through which the US can pursue its foreign policy objectives.

For example, she described US support for moves to support Russian weapons scientists trained in nuclear and chemical weaponry who sought to move into civilian projects after the fall of communism. But she did not refer to one of the key motivations, namely to prevent such scientists selling their skills to “rogue states”, particularly in the Middle East.

But there was one telling slide in her presentation. Fedoroff was describing the scheme under which research scientists are seconded as fellows to the US State department to learn at first hand the challenges of combining science with foreign policy.

One such fellow is currently working in Iraq helping in a similar fashion to dismantle that country’s military technology capacities and direct its scientists towards peaceful projects. Fedoroff recited the clear pragmatic gains to be made from such an activity. But she did not highlight an additional goal listed at the bottom of the slide, namely “to undermine popular support for terrorism”.

After that it was little surprise to learn that one of the countries on which the United States is currently focussing its efforts at building strong scientific partnerships is Pakistan.

Legitimate enough in its own way. And certainly far from undesirable. But in such situations, the borderline between science and politics is perilously thin.

David Dickson. SciDev.Net

John Beddington (NASA/Dominic Hart)

Any hopes for a quick consensus on either the meaning – or indeed the value – of “science diplomacy” were quickly dispelled by the first speaker on the platform this morning of the meeting that opened today at the Royal Society in London.

Introducing the two-day meeting the president of the society, Sir Martin Rees, had highlighted the long international traditions of the scientific community. He pointed out, for example, how the British and French scientific communities maintained close working relations during the Napoleonic Wars.

But John Beddington, chief scientific adviser to the British government, opened his address by reminding his audience in a deliberately provocative manner of the definition of a diplomat as “an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country”.

Beddington underlined the vital role of scientists in tackling the wide range of problems currently facing the world, from climate change to securing future supplies of food, energy and water.

All this, he emphasised, required greater international collaboration, and he applauded the extent to which “science diplomacy” could be usefully engaged in helping to achieve this. “International scientific and engineering collaboration must be used to meet these challenges and to provide a blueprint for international diplomacy,” he said.

But putting science to political use – another sense in which the terms is often used – “creates a problem for scientists who wish to engage in the diplomatic game”, Beddington added. Particularly given that diplomacy was a field in which “economy with the truth occasionally occurs”.

The danger, he said, lies in attempting to use science for diplomatic purposes “in ways that can distort reality”. Equally dangerous was the use of the uncertainties that occur in science for political aims, particularly when addressing situations, ranging from social values to the regional impacts of climate change, that were themselves uncertain.

Beddington did not provide any easy answers. Indeed he acknowledged that even asking for more collaboration and less competition between scientists created a problem, since “scientists are competitive people”.

His broader questions about the dangers – as well as the values – of close contact between scientists and politicians seem destined to surface frequently over the next two days.

David Dickson, SciDev.Net

Does science have a similar role in helping to meet the political challenges of today? The new US administration of President Barack Obama thinks it does. Enhanced scientific relations lie at the heart of its strategy of using “soft power” to rebuild political bridges with countries across the world, particularly in the Middle East.

How far this commitment is shared by other countries will be debated over the next two days at a meeting in London jointly organised by the Royal Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Under the title “New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy“, the meeting is bringing together eminent speakers from across the developed and developing world to look in detail at the role of science in foreign policy.

Of course, there is much more to the issue than merely repolishing a tarnished international image (understandably the top US priority, following two successful terms of an isolationist administration which seemed to care little about this image). Other countries care more, for example, about ways in which science can help build a global consensus about the need to tackle problems such as climate change.

And lurking in the background is the fact even soft power is still power. If the key purpose of a country’s foreign policy is to extend its influence over the policy of others, there is certainly a debate to be had over the extent to which science should tie itself to this strategy (even accepting the clear economic self-interest in doing so).

The issue is particular acute when it comes to offering science as a form of aid to the developing world. Countries in former European colonies in particular remain highly suspicious of political leverage arriving in their aid packages – even those designed to boost their scientific capacities.

So there will be plenty to talk about over the next two days. Watch this space for more details.

David Dickson, SciDev.Net