What to do about the UNESCO science program

I was invited to sit in this week on a portion of the Board on International Scientific Organizations (BISO) meeting at the National Academy of Sciences during the BISO discussion of UNESCO. As I pointed out in a previous posting, the UNESCO natural science program is to receive only about $30 million per year from the regular budge for tthe next couple of years . There is another $15 million for the social and human sciences program, but this program includes things such as philosophy and sports which are not seen as science within the BISO concept. (There are much larger sums of "extrabudgetary resources" but these are voluntary contributions, usually tied to specific purposes by the donors .)

The question was asked as to whether UNESCO could carry out its charter duties with such a small amount of money. The response during the meeting was that the current program was attempting to do too much with too little, and that it should be more focused on a few priority areas.

That might be true, but the governance of UNESCO is vested in the General Conference with 193 member states, a body that meets only once every two years, and in the Executive Board with 58 members, a body which meets only three times per year. These legislative bodies apparently are as subject to pork barrel politics as is the U.S. Congress. A budget is passed by including funding for all activities desired by any of the members of the governing bodies. Each of the elements of each of the science programs has its supporters.

Assume that the governing bodies did want to cut some activities and emphasize others. Which of the natural science programs would one cut?

• The Freshwater Program is seen as the strongest of UNESCO's science programs, meeting an increasing need for understanding of freshwater systems. The World Water Assessment is fundamental for building understanding of the global water crisis and for establishing an agreed upon base of information for policy makers. The training programs in UNESCO's water centers are helping to prepare the cadre of water scientists and managers that the world needs, especially the arid portions of the developing world.
• The People, Biodiversity and Ecology Program with its global network of bioreserves is not only helping develop global understanding of the crisis of anthropogenic loss of biological diversity, but is helping to create an information base for landscape management that can help to ameliorate the human impacts on the environment and especially species loss.
• The Oceanography Program provides a legitimate intergovernmental umbrella for international scientific cooperation on ocean science at a time when ocean resources are being threatened and when the Law of the Seas Convention is opening new economic possibilities for ocean resource exploitation. Moreover, the program includes a hugely important and successful effort to establish a global tsunami warnint system.
• The Earth Science Program provides support for governments, especially needed by those in developing nations, to understand their own underground resources. If governments are the protectors of public interest against unfair exploitation of water, petroleum and mineral resources, then UNESCO's earth science program is a trustworthy vehicle for support of governments.
• The Basic Science Program deals with the sciences that underlie applied sciences in fields from engineering to medicine and public health to agriculture. It is globally accepted that the basic sciences must be supported by governments, but developing nation governments need help in providing that support, and look to UNESCO for that help. Moreover, some of the great successes of UNESCO, such as the Third World Academy of Sciences and CERN, have resulted from UNESCO's efforts to catalyze international cooperation in the basic sciences. The creation of the SESAME center in Jordan is a recent example, in which countries with little else in common have agreed to cooperate in the operation of this scientific facility.
• The Science Policy and Sustainable Development Program seeks to help meet the need of developing nations to allocate their scarce resources to those scientific activities that meet their most basic needs, and to develop policies that support the successful management of their scientific efforts. Ideally science policy is worked out through discussion and negotiation among government, the scientific community and industry; it is UNESCO that is best placed to help developing country governments to meet their responsibilities in the negotiation of science policies.

An Alternative

If UNESCO doesn't get enough money to adequately carry out all of the needed scientific functions an obvious alternative is to provide more money for the regular budget of the science program.

Donors appear unwilling to do so. In part this appears to be because the major donors seem not to trust UNESCO governance and bureaucracy to efficiently utilize those financial resources to effectively carry out the scientific mission of the Organization. Thus the voluntary contributions to the natural science program are more than three times the regular budget of that program, and many of those resources are under the control of bodies such as the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and the International Hydrological Program Intergovernmental Council and only indirectly under the Control of UNESCO's overall governing bodies.

Over the past 18 years, under the leadership of two Directors General of UNESCO, efforts have been made to reform the Organization and to make it more efficient and more effective. There is general agreement that great progress has been made, but also that more needs to be done if the Organization is to obtain the full confidence of its major donors. Irina Bokova, the new Director General taking office next week, and her senior staff will have to address that problem and I wish them the greatest success.

The 800 Pound Gorilla Hidden Off Stage

One could take the "S" out of UNESCO and create an new intergovernmental system for science. During World War II UNESCO was conceived as an organization focusing on schools and cultural facilities such as museums; science was added almost as an afterthought, largely as a result of lobbying by a few key science policy makers. At the time there were few intergovernmental organizations. Perhaps more importantly, the global scientific system was far smaller than it is today, and its importance was much less recognized so there would have been little recognition of the importance of intergovernmental organizations to promote science. The green revolution in agriculture, the revolution in medicine and public health, and the information revolution have all been science based and have convinced most if not all governments of the importance of science in the modern world.

Perhaps it is now time to rebuild an intergovernmental scientific edifice outside UNESCO, one that could be governed more by scientists and less by diplomats, that could be more efficiently and effectively managed, and as such more worthy of funding consonant with the importance of science in the modern world.

John Daly
The opinions expressed in this posting are those of the author alone, and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO nor of BISO nor the National Academies.