UNESCO calls for more investment, more equity in science

A new UNESCO Science Report calls for substantial increases in investment in science in the face of growing crises globally.

The report says spending on science increased by 19% worldwide between 2014 and 2018 – with the number of scientists growing by 13.7%, to 8.8 million – and spending has been further stimulated by the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the 2014-18 figure masks huge inequalities in that growth, with the United States and China between them accounting for nearly two-thirds of the increase, the UNESCO report says.

Four out of every five countries still devote less than 1% of gross domestic product (GDP) to research, perpetuating their dependence on foreign technologies.

Meanwhile, the G20 still accounts for more than 90% of research expenditure, researchers, publications and patents.

Sub-Saharan Africa has 124 researchers per million inhabitants compared to 593 in Latin America, 736 in Arab states, 1,476 in East and Southeast Asia, 3,372 in Europe, and 4,432 in North America.

Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, said the science landscape had become a landscape of the powerful. She warned that Sub-Saharan Africa, with only 0.5% of its GDP devoted to scientific research, is going to be left behind.

This compares with 2.73% in North America and 2.13% in East and Southeast Asia. “We must invest more and invest better,” she said.

“Science must become less unequal, more co-operative and more open. Today’s challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, decline of ocean health and pandemics are all global. This is why we must mobilise scientists and researchers from all over the world,” she said.

Green and digital priorities

A positive finding is the striking way that development priorities have aligned over the past five years. “Countries of all income levels are prioritising their transition to digital and ‘green’ economies in parallel, recognising the urgency of the need to fulfil the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, but also strongly believing that economic competitiveness will depend on how quickly they transition to digital societies,” the report says.

The report’s subtitle, “The race against time for smarter development”, alludes to these green and digital priorities. This seventh edition of the report monitors the development path that countries have been following over the past five years from the perspective of science governance.

It also documents the rapid societal transformation underway, which offers new opportunities for social and economic experimentation but also risks exacerbating social inequalities, unless safeguards are put in place.

The report concludes that countries will need to invest more in research and innovation, if they are to succeed in their dual digital and green transition.

Thirty countries raise spending

More than 30 countries have raised their research spending since 2014, in line with their commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals.

The report says that since the private sector will need to drive much of the green and digital transition, governments have been striving to make it easier for the private sector to innovate through novel policy instruments such as digital innovation hubs where companies can ‘test before they invest’ in digital technologies.

Some governments are also seeking to improve the status of researchers through pay rises and other means.

“The global researcher population has surged since 2014. The COVID-19 pandemic has energised knowledge production systems,” the report says.

“This dynamic builds on the trend towards greater international scientific collaboration, which bodes well for tackling this and other global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss.”

National policies aligned to SDGs

The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide an internationally agreed framework for focusing development policies and aid on addressing the key challenges facing the world. Since 2015 most countries have aligned their national policies with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and are engaged in transition to green economies.

However, sustainability science is not yet mainstream in academic publishing, according to a new UNESCO study, even though countries are investing more than before in green technologies.

At the same time, topics related to environmental sustainability aligned with the SDGs for responsible consumption and production (SDG 12), climate action (SDG 13), life below water (SDG 14) and life on land (SDG 15), received the least donor attention between 2000 and 2013, attracting a cumulative total of less than US$25 billion in funding over this period.

This funding pattern is reflected in outcomes. On average, national progress around the world has been weakest for the core environmental goals of climate action (SDG 13), life below water (SDG 14) and life on land (SDG 15), the report says.

Artificial intelligence, robotics research surging

Published every five years, the new report provides an overview of science and science policy.

Artificial intelligence and robotics are particularly dynamic fields, according to the report which notes that almost 150,000 articles were published on these subjects in 2019 alone.

Research in artificial intelligence and robotics has surged in lower middle-income countries, which contributed 25.3% of publications in this field in 2019, compared to only 12.8% in 2015.

Over the past five years, more than 30 countries have adopted specific strategies, among them China, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, India, Mauritius and Vietnam.

But other crucial fields of research attract significantly lower investments. In 2019 for example, research into carbon capture and storage only generated 2,500 articles, 60 times fewer than artificial intelligence, the report says.

Research on the subject is actually declining in six of the 10 countries leading research in this field (Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the current leader, the United States).

Similarly, the field of sustainable energy remains under-explored, representing only 2.5% of global publications in 2019.

“There is a long way to go before science contributes its full potential to sustainable development. The world must focus on providing science with the tools it needs,” UNESCO said in a statement launching the report.

Research inaccessible to many

Although international scientific cooperation has increased over the past five years, only a quarter of publications are open access and most publications remain largely inaccessible to the majority of researchers, says UNESCO, which is preparing a global standard-setting instrument for open science, which would provide the international community with a “shared definition and framework in which to develop the transparent, inclusive and effective science the world needs”.

The report also stressed that much work remains to be done to achieve diversity in science. At the moment, overall, only one in three researchers are women, with the ratio even lower in critical fields such as artificial intelligence, where they make up 22% of researchers.

“We cannot allow the inequalities of society to be reproduced, or amplified, by the science of the future,” the report says.

Challenges of two-speed science

At the launch of the report, UNESCO’s Azoulay stressed that science increasing at two different speeds is having concrete negative effects.

“You can see what happened with the vaccine for COVID-19. At end of May, according to an independent WHO [World Health Organization] panel, it was reported that 2% of the population of the poorest countries have access to the vaccine whereas other countries have ordered twice as many doses as the number of people.”

She said that for science to fulfil its incredible potential, “we have to act now. This means dedicating new resources to research”.

“We must not overlook the challenges of sustainability, particularly regarding global warming, biodiversity and ocean loss, as well as the ethics of science. This is a matter of equity and efficiency.”

She said: “Science which is inequitable or focused on the short term is fundamentally flawed. It is high time we made science more egalitarian and more open.”

This includes being “more open to women” and “more open to scientists from other countries”.