The UNESCO courier; Vol.:52, 5; 1999unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001158/115858e.pdf20 1 . F r om science to innovation 20 Regina Reszka’s double life Manfred Ronzheimer 20 The

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A n t a rc t i c a ’stainted horizons

C h i l d l a b o u r :a lesser evil?

Mark T h o m a s,British TV maverick

Who owns s c i e n c e?

theC o u rie rMay 1999

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C o n t e n t sMay 1999

PEOPLE AND PLACES3 Nostalgia for Istanbul Photos by Selim Günes,

Text by Nedim Gürsel

EDITORIAL9 Science to what purpose? Federico Mayor

PLANET10 A n t a rc t i c a ’s tainted horizons Interview with David Walton

WORLD OF LEARNING14 Schools for eco-citizens Cynthia Guttman

DOSSIER

17 Who owns s c i e n c e?by Roland Wa a s tand Sophie Boukhari

20 1 . F rom science to innovation20 Regina Reszka’s double life Manfred Ronzheimer20 The science-tech convergence Lewis M. B r a n s c o m b23 The symbiosis of pure and applied science Harvey Brooks24 Staying ahead of the pack Pascal Byé25 Open house or closed shop? David Dickson27 The big three get together Interview with Yo s h i ko Okubo28 2 . The trio that calls the tune28 S c i e n t i fic trends:a global snapshot T. B r a u n ,W. G l ä n z e r,A .S c h u b e r t30 All eyes on El Niño Peter Coles31 Former USSR:halting the brain drain Jasmina Sopova32 C h i n a : a market-minded contender Ted Plafke r33 Latin A m e r i c a : a tough transition Hebe Ve s s u r i34 B r a z i l : bridgehead to the tropics Lucía Iglesias Ku n t z35 Science for citizens V. V. K r i s h n a

ETHICS3 7 Child labour:a lesser evil? Sophie Boukhari39 Pe r u ’s child workers stake their claims L u i s - Jaime Cisneros

SIGNS OF THE TIMES40 M a l i ’s direct democra c y Dietlind Lerner42 In the shade of the palaver tree Jasmina Sopova

CONNEXIONS43 Soaps with a Latin scent Araceli Ortiz de Urbina and Asbel López

TALKING TO:46 British TV comic-activist Mark T h o m a s

Cover and Dossier illustrations © Claude Henri Saunier, E u r e - e t - L o i r, Fr a n c e

http://www.unesco.org/courier

May 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 3

P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S

Nostalgia for I s t a n b u lPhotos by Selim Günes*

The sounds and smells of the fish marke t ,the cool of a café near a mosque, alleyways cascading down towards the sea plied by vessels large and small—the indelible memories of a leading Turkish writer

Text by Nedim Gürsel**

nI s t a n bul is present in most of my books.One of my novels begins with thesewo r d s :“ For a long time I rose early. I t

was there, on the Asian shores of the Bos-phorus, in my beloved city, which has fol-lowed me everywhere and whose memoryis branded in my mind forever.”What newcan I find to say about Istanbu l , as a Tu r k i s hw riter who has lived in Pa ris for twe n t y - fiveyears, except by evoking the piercing nos-talgia I feel for the city from afar. My fore-head bent over white pages, I imagine thecity and invent it through writing.

Slowly it comes into focus in the lam-

plight.Its famous skyline of slender mina-r e t s , lead domes, castle keeps, r a m p a rt s ,t owe rs and office buildings slowly emerges.I see the peeling walls and the pigeons. I feelthe cool air of a café near the courtyard ofa mosque. I picture myself in a taxi. Thed e e p, dark blue wat e rs of the Bosphorus areflowing just alongside.As the road narr ow s ,the trees become more abundant. Cruiseships as big as cities speed past pursued byseagulls, leaving foamy whirlpools in theirwa k e . Long row b o ats and cormorants fendthe dazzlingly white foam as they glidethrough the wat e r. Wooden houses and

*Selim Günes, who was born in Turkey in 1961,is a widely-travelled photographer whose work wasshown at the “Istanbul-Istanbul”exhibition at thecity’s Taksim gallery in November 1998.

** Nedim Gürsel is a Turkish author who writes in Turkish and French.He was born in 1951 and haspublished some twenty novels, short stories,travelogues and essays that have been translated intoten or so languages. Notable among his works are “ALong Summer in Istanbul”,“The Death of the Seagull”and an anthology ofTurkish women’s literature entitled Paroles dévoilées(Arcantère-UNESCO Publishing,1993).His novel “TheFirst Woman”won the Ipekçi Prize, awarded by aGreek-Turkish foundation,for its contribution to understanding between the two peoples. Gürsel has also written the screenplay for a motion picture which is currentlybeing filmed and will probably be called Istanbul My Love.

Through a half-open door,a glimpse into the depths of an old building in the Galata district.

4 The UNESCO Courier - May 1999


1. Ottoman house standing on the shore.

concrete buildings seem embedded intoeach other. From time to time, the dar-kened windows of an old, decrepit ya l î1

stream past the window.T h e n , high gardenwa l l s , n a rr ow a l l e y ways cascading dow nt owards the sea, trees and more trees. F i s h-nets drying in the sun, small white ferry-b o ats and little fishing vessels sail by. At themost unexpected moment, t u rning a corn e ror at a crossing, tombs loom up before me.I know that it is here, in one of these dilapi-d ated tombs, t h at one day I shall be laid tor e s t . But for now I am in Pa ris and alive ,thank God. So I picture myself on KaraköyS q u a r e , sitting at a table in a café near the fis hm a r k e t .

The market is livelier than eve r. Pa s-sersby bustle towards Galata Bridge clut-ching string bags stuffed with provisions.Fresh ve g e t a b l e s , fis h ,d ried fruits and nuts,smoked and salted meat s , and cheese can bemade out under their wrappings. F i s h-mongers shout themselves hoarse, custo-m e rs crowd around the stalls, b l o o d -streaked fish heads fall into the wat e r. H e a d sof tuna, bass and mackerel fall amidst rot-ting potatoes,cabbage leaves and leeks.

Sitting in the café on the corner of themarket, I watch as the crowd swells in thecoolness of the eve n i n g . S t ring bags arebu rsting at the seams.Tr a f fic is blocked onKaraköy Square. Cars for hire are packedt o g e t h e r. Pe d e s t rians try to make their waybetween the buses, lorries, pushcarts andpeddlers.Their hair is disheveled and theylook distraught. From where I sit, I can seepeople crammed into a bu s , their fa c e sstreaming with swe at , lined up like sar-d i n e s , S at u r d ay trave l e rs with lacklustree ye s ,p atiently wa i t i n g .The old Fo r d s ,C h e-v r o l e t s , Plymouths and Buicks are jam-packed. Overwhelmed by exhaustion, thehuman heads remain impassive inside theseairless,hermetically-sealed cans.

I want to get my breath back.To breat h ein the air of the sea, of the foamy wave srumbling in the blue immensity. I am ove r-come by the acrid stench of bu rned oil,

Top, minarets tower above the Eyüfneighbourhood.

Right, convivial café gathering in the Beyoglu district.

Opposite page, lines of washing frame a classic street scene in the Balat neighbourhoodof the old city.

(Continued on page8)



A handoutstretched to Europe



Located on the European shore of the Bos-phorus Straits, Istanbul is at the crossroads

of land and sea routes, Asia and Europe, theBlack Sea and the Mediterranean.It is Turkey’smain manufacturing centre, commercial huband port.With a population of 12 million, the cityand its surrounding suburbs are the country’sfastest-growing urban area.

Founded by the Greeks as Byzantiumaround 658 B. C . , Istanbul became the capital ofthe Eastern Roman Empire in 330 A.D. underEmperor Constantine, whose name it bore untilthe fall of the Byzantine Empire. C o n s t a n t i n o p l ewas taken by the Crusaders in 1204, r e c o n-quered by the Greeks in 1261 and captured bythe Ottomans on May 29, 1 4 5 3 . Mehmed II,the Conqueror, made it the capital of theOttoman Empire in 1458,changing the name toI s t a n b u l . It was not until 1923 that the city lostits status as capital to A n k a r a . The famousbridge spanning the Bosphorus was inaugu-rated in March 1973.

“An old,ring-covered hand stretching outtowards Europe”is how the French poet JeanCocteau described Istanbul, whose historica r e a s, where many Byzantine and Ottomanlandmarks stand side-by-side, were added toUN E S C O’s World Heritage List in 1985.The famousHagia Sophia church,built between 532 and 537by order of Emperor Justinian II; the Mosque ofSüleyman,named after Süleyman the Magnifi-cent and inaugurated in 1556; the Blue Mosque,Topkapi palace and the great bazaar bear wit-ness to a history spanning well over a thousandyears. n

Istanbul

Turkey

Greece

Bulgaria

Romania

Ankara

Black Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Right,a thirst-quenching snack in the heart ofthe old city.

Below right, taxis parked bumper-to-bumper inthe Bostanci district.

Opposite page, a waterfront fish stall on Karaköyquay.





Minarets and domes of the Blue Mosquerise up in the distance.

Crowds on Istiklac Street in the Beyoglu district.

swe at and uri n e . I look away from KaraköySquare, turning my gaze left to the otherbank of the Golden Horn . Suddenly thespectacle changes. The stage seems tow i d e n . I see clouds briskly scudding past inthe southern wind. Straight ahead, B aye z i tTower gradually gr ows fainter in the ashenlight. In the distance, I can make out thespiky minarets of the Mosque of Süleyman,its heavy domes overwhelming the oldh o u s e s , and stacked crates forming a wall infront of the covered market.The pigeons ofthe New Mosque—little black spots—standout against the sky. Taking off from them o s q u e ’s court ya r d , they land on the blac-kened walls and canopies of the Egyptianb a z a a r. O d d l y, the opposite bank seemsmore peaceful. But the fish market makes adeafening racket. In the shimmeri n gcolours, fishing boats moored at the quaybob up and down on the filthy water.TheGolden Horn is strewn with shreds of oilyrags and dead seagulls.

A tide of passengers pours out of theEyüp ferry which has drawn up alongsideG a l ata Bri d g e .Thick smoke belches out ofthe funnel. Soot rains down on bunches ofgrapes and polished apples in the stalls, o nthe old civil servants sitting in the bridge’sc a f é s , smoking hookahs as they finger their

p r ayer beads. Police motorboat s , t a rt a n sand pot-bellied barges glide past. So doesthe boat owned by the fisherman who sellshis catch near the landing pier.The seve r e dfish heads make me feel sick. So I get up andhead for a quieter neighbourhood.

Back in the streets, strolling past wo o d e nhouses with iron gat e s , I feel I am livingthrough a dream.As if I am outside the cityin an unknow n , inaccessible place, facing at h e atre set beyond which it is impossible tog o. Sometimes cars pass by, and street pedd-l e rs. “Rags! Second-hand goods!,” s h o u t sone of them.Another yells that he sells wat e r-melons or, d r a g ging out the “ o ” ,s ays “ t o o-m at o e s ” instead of “ t o m at o e s ” . And “ Pe p-p e rs! Eggplant! Chicory! Lettuce! Okra!”They are the cries of another age, of anI s t a n bul I have never forgotten.They comefrom an unreal wo r l d . A world I can nolonger reach even if I go there.Ye s , I am inPa ris and, like the gr e at Turkish poet OrhanVe l i , who died there at the age of 35, “ Ilisten to Istanbul with my eyes closed.”A n dthe lines of another Istanbul poet, w h o s ename still bu rns my lips and who enduredmore than his share of separations and nos-t a l gic longi n g s , come to mind:“ Two thingsare forgotten only in death / The face of ourmother and the face of our city.” n

(Continued from page4)

E D I TO R I A L


nScience reigns tri u m p h a n t . N e ver has it been so powerful and influ e n t i a l . It has

conquered diseases which have decimated whole populat i o n s. It has abolished exhaus-

ting physical labour and wearisome repetitive tasks. It has vanquished distance and

pushed back the frontiers of our knowledge of the infinitely large and the infinitely small,

in both the inanimate and the living world.

In short, it has acquired the ability to shape our lives, to change life itself. But it has

also increased its capacity to destroy life.The strength of an army can rest on the number

and determ i n ation of its combatants but it is also, and chiefly, based on the technologi c a l

sophistication of their weaponry.The bombing of Iraq,and now of Serbia, are the latest

examples.

Yet science is wave ri n g . For the first time since the Enlightenment, the way science can

be used is being challenged.The link between scientific progress and social progress is we a-

kening and signs of obscurantism are appeari n g . Hiroshima sounded the alarm .Then the

c risis of the env i r o n m e n t ,t riggered by the dominant mode of deve l o p m e n t ,t u rned ques-

tioning of science into a worldwide issue.This form of development is inseparable from

a frantic and indiscriminate quest for technological innovation.Finally, advances in bio-

technology, which harbour many grave dangers for human dignity, are often too closely

bound up with the selfish interests of their promoters.

No one blames science for not knowing eve ry t h i n g . No one criticizes it because it has

not yet found a vaccine against AIDS or reached a conclusion about the theory of the Big

B a n g . It has never been claimed of science, as it has of history, t h at it has come to an end.

It must keep on tirelessly probing the enduring mysteries of life.

But science can no longer avoid—and nor can we—the basic question of what and who

it is for. In other wo r d s , are the we l fare and interests of the public being served by the pri o-

rities of researchers , the thrust of their wo r k , the ways in which they are organized, the fun-

ding they receive , and the circulation of their findings? Or are scientists looking mainly in

the direction of high-spending consumers at the expense of long-term basic research?

Because of the gr owing “ p ri vat i z at i o n ” of research, are we not tending to overlook essen-

tial and universal human needs which cannot immediately be met?

Those who are excluded from this new “ s c i e n t i fic powe r ” must make their voices heard.

For example, the inhabitants of the 600,000 villages which have no electricity or the wo r l d ’s

two billion people without access to drinking water have the right to ask science to find

solutions adapted to their ve ry meagre resources. Humanity also has the right to ask science

to gi ve pri o rity to research into processes of global disruption and ways of coping with them.

W h at ’s more, all citizens have the right to ask science to further our understanding of the

mechanisms of inequality and exclusion which are gradually undermining peace and demo-

cracy.

To move towards such a new contract between science and society, UNESCO and the

I n t e rn ational Council for Science (IC S U) are inviting scientists, p ri vate firm s ,g ove rn m e n t s

and other stakeholders to attend a conference which will be held in Budapest at the end

of June. One major purpose of this meeting will be to see that the benefits of science go

p ri m a rily to all those who have hitherto been unreached. Their conditions will only

improve if they have access to the mighty power of science. n

S c i e n c e to whatp u r p o s e ?

Federico Mayor

A re the welfare and intere s t sof the public being served bythe priorities of re s e a rc h e rs,the thrust of their work, t h eways in which they areo rg a n i z e d , the funding theyre c e i v e, and the circulation oftheir fin d i n g s ?


P L A N E T

Who owns Antarctica?The Antarctic is unique in that it is

owned by no one country and has beengoverned for almost 40 years by an inter-national treaty (see box).Because of this itcannot be controlled or policed as areas ofn ational sovereignty can.To make changesin the rules, the 27 Antarctic Treaty (AT)countries all have to agree.

Do people need to get a visa to go there?If you are a citizen of an AT country, t h e n

these days you have to get a permit to meet therequirements of the environmental protocol.Since these countries represent 70 per cent ofthe wo r l d ’s populat i o n , there is a strong pre-sumption that most people who will be goingto the Antarctic will be getting perm i t s. I fthey are touri s t s ,t r avel agents will get a perm i tfor them.C o u n t ries which are not party to thet r e aty do not have to provide perm i t s.

A n t a r c t i c a ’s t a i n t e dhorizons

The A n t a rctic was designated ‘a continent for peace andscience’ in an international treaty signed 38 years ago. In thelast decade a wide-ranging Protocol has been added to this top rovide the continent with better environmental pro t e c t i o n .But today dark shadows of pollution are looming over thisremote continent with a unique international status. On theeve of a meeting of A n t a rctic Treaty nations to be held in May1999 in Lima, Pe r u , D r. David Walton of the British A n t a rc t i cSurvey explains why conservation of what is still ‘the world’scleanest place’ is important for all of us.


P L A N E T

Is there much tourism?To u rists attracted by the continent’s

remoteness, wildlife and stunning sceneryfirst came by ship in the 1960s,and in thepast two decades their numbers haveclimbed steadily.Air tourism has also deve-loped over the past decade. Last year therewere over 10,000 tourists in Antarctica—more people than were concerned with allthe scientific stations and their logistic sup-p o rt . Some 60 or so sites are regularly usedfor tourist visits.

Do tourists bring pollution?M a ny tourists are already well inform e d

about environmental issues and know thatuncontrolled tourism can damage the fea-tures that make the area special. As ye t

there is no unequivocal scientific evidenceof damage but there must be a limit to thenumber of visitors that sites can sustainbefore the vegetation or wildlife are tram-pled out of existence.

How can numbers be controlled?There appears to be no legal way at

present to do this for visitors to an inter-n ational area. G ove rnments can helpmanage tourism by limiting permits to com-panies with good environmental records,bu tmy view is that the tour companies them-s e l ves must accept the responsibility to limitimpacts by policing their customers.

Worryingly, the passenger capacity ofc ruise ships is ri s i n g, with ships carrying upto 1,700 passengers proposing to transitthe Antarctic whilst others intend to land upto 800 passengers at individual sites. Myp e rsonal experience of tour ships has sofar been good, with guides working hard toinform passengers as well as keep them toa strict environmental code whilst on shore.They do not leave litter, the ships do notdeposit waste overboard in Antarctic wat e rsand for the most part visitors do not appearto seriously disturb wildlife.

Why is it so important to preserve theAntarctic environment?

The Antarctic is special because it hasless pollution than anywhere else in theworld—it doesn’t have any smokestackindustry, agricultural activity or perma-nent human population. We can use it asthe baseline against which pollution levelsin other parts of the world can be measu-red, to tell us whether or not the situationis getting worse. From this point of view,the Antarctic will only remain scientifical-ly valuable if it is properly managed today.

Sampling snow cores in Antarctica hasgi ven us a range of pollution ya r d s t i c k s.Wecan see in the snow the increasing levels oflead we have been putting into the atmos-phere since the Industrial Revo l u t i o n ,w i t hthe most rapid increase when lead wa sadded to fuel for cars. The snow alsocontains a signature of the worldwide pol-lution caused by the atomic bomb tests ofthe 1950s and 1960s. Most recently weh ave been able to detect carbon part i c l e sin the air produced by forest fires in the tro-pics.

What can be done to combat theseenvironmental threats?

You have to distinguish between glo-bal and local threats. Let’s look at thelocal problems first. Until the mid-1950sthere was very little scientific activity inthe Antarctic and the only industry in the

area was whaling. At that time the oceanswere seen as suitable repositories forwaste, and dumping waste in uninhabitedareas was acceptable. When I first beganwork in the Antarctic in 1967, recyclingwas not even considered in many researchstations and dumping waste in remoteareas of the Antarctic was a commonpractice.Unfortunately, in the low tempe-r atures characteristic of the A n t a r c t i c,there is virtually no bacterial decay, so thewastes associated with scientific stationsand with this laissez-faire attitude of ear-lier days are still with us. In fact it was thisproblem of waste disposal that raised thealarm among AT countries and led to thesignature in 1991 of the Protocol for theProtection of the Antarctic Environment.This protocol,which came into legal forcein January 1998 but had been followed bymost countries since 1991, introducedrigorous environmental regulations andforced countries to clean up the mess theyhad created.

Is the protocol working?The rules comprise the most stri n g e n tc o n s e rvation and management rules so fa ragreed upon anywhere in the world.Theyc over all human activities in A n t a r c t i c a ,and include stipulations for rigorous control

of waste disposal and contingency plans tocombat marine pollution and protect floraand fauna. No mining or exploration forminerals or hydrocarbons will be allowed inthe Antarctic for the next 50 ye a rs.The ATnations have taken their role as managersve ry seriously and made enormous amountsof investment in changes of practice. I tcosts a lot of money to be environmentallyc l e a n . When the U. S . a greed to the pro-tocol they immediately produced $30 mil-lion for clean-up operations around theAmerican scientific stations.

In other words, the Antarctic Treaty and theProtocol to prevent pollution arefunctioning well within the Antarctic itselfbut pollution is coming in from outside.

Air view of Antarctica’s icy peaks. An albatross that died after taking the bait from a fishing hook at sea.


P L A N E T

T h at ’s ri g h t . Most of the Antarctic pol-lutants come from industrial and agri c u l-tural activity in the nort h e rn hemisphere.We can measure them in the air, the snowand in the plants and animals. Fo re x a m p l e , there is one especially unpleasantgroup of chemicals called persistent orga-nic pollutants (POPs) which compri s e si n s e c t i c i d e s , herbicides and other env i r o n-mentally damaging substances. T h e s ecompounds do not exist nat u r a l l y, b r e a kd own only ve ry slowly in marine and ter-r e s t rial ecosystems and accumulate witht oxic effects. None of them are made orused in the Antarctic and they are nowbanned from use both there and in manyother parts of the wo r l d .They mainly ori-gi n ate from the nort h e rn hemisphere, p r o-duced by agri c u l t u r e , i n d u s t rial processesand from waste breakdow n . M e a s u ri n gtheir presence in Antarctic penguins andseals indicates the baseline pollution leve lfor these compounds throughout thewo r l d . The increasing range and concen-t r ation of many POPs in Antarctica is as o b e ring reminder of how far these dama-ging compounds can spread outside ourcontrol and how little we can do about it.

Industrial countries of the North contributeup to 80 per cent of the greenhouse gasemissions that cause global warming andendanger fragile areas like the A n t a rc t i c. Ye tthese countries are also parties to thee n v i ronmental protocol to preserve theA n t a rctic enviro n m e n t . Isn’t there ac o n t radiction here ?

T h at is quite corr e c t . It is surp ri s i n g, t osay the least, that states which have shown

e x t r a o r d i n a ry co-operation in preserv i n gthe Antarctic environment are not doingenough to control the pollution in theirown parts of the world.

The Antarctic Tr e aty is a bit like the Inter-n ational Law of the Sea, where eve ry b o d ya grees on what should happen on the highseas and then does something different intheir own wat e rs.There seems to be a contrastb e t ween what countries can do co-operat i ve l yin an area that is not owned by them and is

not being industrially developed by themand has no indigenous populat i o n ,and whatthey do in their own terri t o ry where there isa populat i o n ,i n d u s t ry and expectations for adifferent way of life.

What can be done?Nothing can be done to prevent this

long-range pollution in the Antarctic whichis due to industrial activities in other partsof the wo r l d . Antarctic pollution willcontinue as long as pollution continueselsewhere in the world.What we can do isto attempt to keep our own Antarctic housein order by ensuring that the activities thattake place down there are first of all subjectto environmental impact assessment andthen that we use technologies and metho-d o l o gies that minimize damage or pollution.

Would you say that environmentalprotection is easier in the Antarctic than inthe Arctic?

One major reason why the AT nat i o n sh ave been able to introduce such stri n g e n te nvironmental regulations is that there is noindigenous population seeking to fulfil itsa s p i r ations at the cost of the env i r o n m e n t .I nthe Arctic region on the other hand, w h e r ethere is a sizeable population and countri e sh ave sovereign terri t o ry, there are ve ry consi-derable areas of mineral development andhydrocarbon and gas extraction. In Siberi a ,for example, there are enormous oil spillsfrom fractured pipelines and heavy metalpollution problems from smelters that simplydo not occur in the A n t a r c t i c.

Who is liable for environmental damage inthe Antarctic? Environmentalists say theTreaty is not clear about this.

T h at is tru e . No agreement has been rea-ched as ye t .This question is on the agenda forthe treaty meeting in Lima in May.

Why do countries not agree about this?There are a number of difficult pro-

blems. First of all you have to get 27 coun-t ries with 27 different legal systems and 27different cultural expectations to agree onwhat liability means.

Ta k e , for example, the idea of a protectedarea in a national park. In the U. S . , a nat i o n a lpark is a protected area owned by the Fe d e r a lg ove rnment and is run as a park for conser-vation purp o s e s.A national park in the UK isnot owned by the gove rnment but by lots ofs e p a r ate land-ow n e rs. It isn’t run mainly forc o n s e rvation purp o s e s. It contains industry,housing and all sorts of other activities. I td o e s n ’t bear any resemblance what s o e ver tothe A m e ri c a n ,G e rman and French ve rs i o n s.The same term in law means lots of different

A continent for p e a c e and s c i e n c eInternationally co-ordinated work in the A n t a r c t i c

began with the scientific initiative called theInternational Geophysical Year in 1957.The resultswere so impressive,both scientifically and politically,that in 1959 the participating countries signed theAntarctic Treaty (AT ) , which came into force in1 9 6 1 . The Tr e a t y, which runs indefinitely, d e s i-gnates the continent as an area for peace ands c i e n c e, freezes all territorial claims, forbids militaryactivity and nuclear waste disposal,and encouragesinternational collaboration in science and logistics.The Treaty was initially signed by A r g e n t i n a ,A u s-t r a l i a , C h i l e, Fr a n c e, New Zealand, N o r wa y, t h eUnited Kingdom, B e l g i u m , Ja p a n , South A f r i c a ,t h eformer Soviet Union and the United States. S i n c e1961 a wide variety of extra legislation has beenagreed at the regular meetings of the AT nations,

who now comprise 27 countries with active scien-t i fic programmes covering areas of science rangingfrom the outer atmosphere to the rocks beneath theice sheet, from the bacteria in ice cores to theorigin of the Southern Hemisphere continents.Many of the projects are now so large (e. g . ,e s t i-mating whether the whole ice sheet is growing ormelting) that they can only be accomplished by biginternational teams working over several years.Afurther 16 countries have acceded to the Treaty butdo not undertake research.AT countries representaround 70 per cent of the world’s population.

In 1991,the AT nations signed the Environ-mental Protocol to the Antarctic Tr e a t y, w h i c hbans mining for 50 years and provides for a fullycomprehensive regime of environmental protec-tion. n

Old waste dumps like this one are beingremoved from Antarctica as part of theenvironmental clean-up.


P L A N E T

things in different countri e s.T h at is one of themajor problems we face in the case of liability.

Do any states parties to the Antarctic Treatystill have territorial claims over theAntarctic?

The Antarctic treaty freezes all territo-rial claims that were there in 1961 andthese cannot be improved on or added to inany way.Taking away this major source ofi n t e rn ational disagreement has allowed theparties to continually adjust the treaty tomeet changing public and political needsover the past 38 ye a rs. Of particular impor-tance throughout that period has been thescientific advice on the best methods formanagement that has been supplied by thei n t e rn ational science community. T h atmakes the AT a slightly unusual treaty. Byincluding scientists right from the start it hasbeen able to tap into the scientific com-munity and get sound scientific advice.

What kind of scientific research is beingdone in the Antarctic?

The special environmental characteri s t i c sof the continent make it possible to carry outscientific inve s t i g ations and experi m e n t swhich are not possible anywhere else in thewo r l d .We are looking at animals and plantst h at can surv i ve in the ve ry low tempera-tures and ve ry dry atmosphere which arec h a r a c t e ristic of the A n t a r c t i c.We are usingthe Antarctic as an experimental area to testout theories about whether life can surv i ve onM a rs. And we are managing one of the lar-gest fis h e ries in the southern hemisphere.

Because of the characteristics of the ear-t h ’s magnetic fie l d , the Antarctic has someunique features enabling us to inve s t i g at ethe causes of solar storm s.These occur whena solar flare on the sun produces a storm of

charged particles which hurtle towards thee a rth and affect its upper at m o s p h e r e ,w h e r ehundreds of communicat i o n s ,n av i g at i o n a land television satellites have been positioned.In the Antarctic we are working on measuri n gsolar storms and developing a model whichwill wa rn us about their likely effects so thatwe can protect satellites by moving them toa safer orbit or by switching them off.Damage can affect a lot of people.

For instance, a solar storm produced atremendous amount of induced current in ap ower system in North A m e rica a few ye a rsago causing the whole of Quebec’s electri c a lsystem to collapse. If we can develop a modelwhich tells us what the strength of the stormwill be and when it will strike and so on wecan take precautions to stop that sort ofthing happening. In addition to measuri n gpollution leve l s , research is also being carri e dout into many aspects of global wa rm i n g,melting ice sheets and rising sea leve l s.

There have been reports that ice shelvesin the Antarctic are disintegrating anddrifting away. Is this so?

We know that some of the smaller flo at i n gice shelves on the Antarctic peninsula haved i s i n t e gr ated over the last 40 ye a rs. T h e yd o n ’t make any difference to the sea leve lbecause they were already flo ating but theydo show that significant regional wa rming iso c c u rring in this area. W h at we still don’tk n ow yet is whether the total ice sheet is inb a l a n c e .We are developing a model but it willtake many more ye a rs yet before we can bec e rtain if and when the ice sheets could melt.

What is the present situation of ozonedepletion above the Antarctic?

It was the discove ry of the hole in theozone layer over the Antarctic in 1985 by the

B ritish Antarctic Survey that drew at t e n t i o nto the depletion by industrial processes,notably chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases,of the ozone layer that stops harmful solarr a d i ation from penetrating through to the ear-t h ’s surfa c e .Last spring saw the lowest ozonel e vel in the Antarctic ever recorded.

We will not see the ozone level climbback up to normal protective levels until weh ave got rid of all the chemicals which arecausing ozone destruction in the upperat m o s p h e r e . Since CFCs are still around itis unlikely that there is going to be a suddenr e c ove ry of the ozone layer in the next fewd e c a d e s.As of now there is a black market inCFCs to get round the restrictions on tradingand manufa c t u r e .

There are so many CFCs around—indeep freeze and air conditioning plants—t h at it is not going to be possible to get rid ofthem quickly.We are going to be faced withozone depletion for a considerable time.Depletion is already happening in the A r c t i c,and ozone levels above Europe have declinedin the past few ye a rs. It is happening all ove rthe wo r l d .The most frightening thing is justh ow difficult it is to gain any real controlover such serious global damage to conservethe world for future generat i o n s. n

Interview by Ethirajan Anbarasan

The world’s c o l d e s t,d r i e s t,w i n d i e s t

place Antarctica and its ice shelves cover about 14

million square kilometres, 10 per cent of the

e a r t h ’s land area. Less than 1% is free of per-

manent ice and snow.The highest continent (esti-

mated average altitude 2,300 m), it is perpe-

tually hidden beneath the planet’s largest ice

c a p, built up over 400,000 years of compacted

snow fall and now almost 5 km deep in places.

The ice cap contains over 32 million km3 of ice

(about 90% of the world’s ice and almost 70% of

its fresh wa t e r ) , but with an average precipitation

of only 5 cm per year, Antarctica is the driest

place on earth.

Antarctica is also the world’s coldest place

(annual mean temperature -160C ) . The coldest

temperature ever recorded on earth was -89.60C

at Russia’s Vostok research station in July 1983.

Strong winds, sometimes up to 320 km per hour,

blow throughout the year.Recorded annual mean

wind speed average is about 67 km per hour,

making it the planet’s windiest place. n

The U.S. McMurdo base, on Ross Island.


W O R L D O F L E A R N I N G

Schools F rom pollution to over- p o p u l a t i o n , education has a key role to play in helping learners realize early onhow they can influence the future—for the better

nGone are the days when env i r o n m e n t a le d u c ation was simply about nat u r eoutings in pri m a ry school to discover the

local flora and fa u n a , or projects to unders-tand a regi o n ’s landscapes, economic activi-ties and traditions.To d ay,the accent is on noless than giving students the right set of toolsand values to become eco-citizens—respon-sible consumers , p r o d u c e rs and decision-m a k e rs , able to measure the implications oftheir actions, not only on their own surr o u n-d i n g s , but at a more global leve l .

In an environmentally literate society,e c o n o m i s t s , for example, will have a basicu n d e rstanding of what a balanced ecosystemis while biologists will be in a position tograsp such notions as economic effic i e n cy.“Just as with literacy, it is through educat i o nt h at we can train citizens to integr ate env i-ronmental dimensions into their decision-making processes,”argues Canadian biologi s tand author Claude V i l l e n e u ve1. “The objec-t i ve is to change behaviour in order to dimi-nish the impact of human activity on theb i o s p h e r e .As such, it is an education gearedt owards action.An ecologically literate pers o nshould be able to understand and act in spe-c i fic ways in his or her daily life.”

The new 3Rs–Reduce, Reuse,Recycle

At the community college where heteaches in Quebec, V i l l e n e u ve and his col-leagues put this credo into practice throu-ghout the science fa c u l t y. Whether in bio-l o g y, c h e m i s t ry or physics experi m e n t s ,students are asked to show systemat i c a l l yt h at they have chosen the least dangerousoption for the env i r o n m e n t ,b y, for example,minimizing waste or foreseeing special recy-cling containers. In studying a physical phe-nomenon like the meanders left by water onan inclined plain, students will observe whathappens when those naturally traced by ri ve rsare tampered with, leading to erosion, d e f o-r e s t ation and a rise in water leve l s.“The aimis to make students aware of sound env i r o n-mental practices at the end of their studies bysetting down objectives that are common toall disciplines,” explains V i l l e n e u ve .

With their often centralized and ri gi ds t ru c t u r e s , e d u c ation systems appear ill-equipped to break down the wat e rtight wa l l sb e t ween disciplines and integr ate env i r o n-mental concerns across the board. Ye t , t h eprocess towards a more holistic approach isu n d e r way at all leve l s ,s p u rred by the presentc risis and an emergi n g,more interdependentvision of the future.

From the 1972 United Nations Confe-rence on Human Environment in Stockholm

to the highly publicized 1992 Earth Summitin Rio, d e velopment and environment havegone from being radically opposed to eachother to standing on parallel tracks.The rea-lities of population gr ow t h , depleting nat u r a lr e s o u r c e s , rising pollution and widening dis-p a rities between North and South—to men-tion just a few causes for gr ave concern —tell us that the present course is untenable forboth human beings and the biosphere itself.

S t r at e gies must be found to protect thewo r l d ’s resources while allowing for moreequitable socio-economic deve l o p m e n t ,h e n c e

Student bird-watchers in Cameroon’s MountKupe forest.

1. Qui a peur de l’an 2000? Guide d’éducationrelative à l’environnement pour le développementdurable. Editions Multimondes/UNESCO, 1998.



for e c o- c i t i z e n s Cynthia Guttman*

the notion of “sustainable deve l o p m e n t ” .Although it has been interpreted in morethan one way, the most commonly held defi-nition was put forward in 1987 by the Wo r l dCommission on Environment and Deve l o p-m e n t , presided by Gro Harlem Bru n d t l a n d ,as “ d e velopment that meets the needs of thepresent without compromising the ability offuture generations to meet their own needs.”

In working towards this endeavo u r , t h ep i votal role of education has been stressedtime and time again on the intern at i o n a ls t a g e , from the 1990 conference in Jomtien onE d u c ation for A l l , to other world gat h e ri n g son populat i o n , wo m e n , social deve l o p m e n tand cities. The transform at i ve potential ofe d u c ation is often highlighted by the simplefact that educated mothers are more likely to

adopt desirable health and nutritional prac-t i c e s ,h ave fewer children and send their ow nd a u g h t e rs to school.

In educating for sustainable deve l o p-m e n t , the connections between people,r e s o u r c e s , health and quality of life aree m p h a s i z e d . “The objective is to deve l o presponsible behav i o u r , to be able to make thep e rtinent and right decisions, and act res-ponsibly at an individual and collective leve lt owards env i r o n m e n t a l ,p o p u l ation and deve-lopment issues,” s ays Nathalie Barboza fromUN E S C O’s office in Dakar (Senegal).O ver thepast decade, a majority of countries in theSouth have integr ated these concerns intof o rmal and non-formal curri c u l a .

The motto of the environmental move-ment—“act local, think global”—has lostnone of its hold.“ C o u n t ries generally find thecontents of programmes in the local reality,”explains Barboza.“A teacher will, for example,s t a rt off the geogr a p hy lesson by showing hisor her students a field of scorched eart h ,a n dfrom there, discuss resource managementand the consequences of deforestat i o n .M o s t

t e a c h e rs feel directly concerned by thesequestions and are aware that the key thing isto develop responsible attitudes to preserve thee nv i r o n m e n t .”R e flecting the interdependentn ature of issues, the ministries of health,yo u t h , social affa i rs and the environment areoften invited to work in tandem with educa-tion authori t i e s.

In revising curri c u l a , disciplines oftentake on a much more pertinent beat . I nM e x i c o, for example, the recently revisedn atural science curriculum for pri m a ry schoolsbroaches topics such as the importance of

water for life, types of pollution and theirs o u r c e s , p o p u l ation gr ow t h , i n d u s t ri a l i z e dand natural foods and how technologies affecte c o s y s t e m s.The intention is to help childrenview the environment as a “common good,which requires different consumption pat-t e rns for progress to be compatible with theuse of natural resources,” s t ates Edgar Gon-z a l e z - G a u d i a n o, from Mexico’s Ministry ofthe Env i r o n m e n t . “As of third gr a d e , t e x t-books teach the rule of the 3Rs—Reduce,

Celebrating Earth Day in Manila,the Philippines.

*UNESCO Courier journalist

The aim is to make studentsa w a re of sound enviro n m e n t a lp ractices at the end of theirstudies by setting downobjectives that are common toall disciplines



R e u s e , R e cycle—with special emphasis onthe firs t , to show the students the import a n c eof looking after our natural resources, i rr e s-p e c t i ve of how ‘ a bu n d a n t ’ they may be.”

One way to encourage transdisciplinari t yis to make teachers feel they are part i c i p at i n gin a common educational pr o j e c t ,s t resses V i l-l e n e u ve .The notion of density in mat h e m a-t i c s , for example, can be just as easilyexplained in terms of dots on a page as bytrees in a forest. A teacher will likely choosethe second option if he or she looks at learn i n gthrough an environmental lens. Making lear-ning such a “future and action-ori e n t e d ”project requires, in the best of wo r l d s , the par-t i c i p ation of the society at large.

Learning to think globallyTo r o n t o, one of the wo r l d ’s most multi-

ethnic cities, is a case in point.When the Boardof Education embarked on a school reform ,t h eprocess was not locked in academic circles.I n s-t e a d , some 7,000 individuals, from parentsand staff to business leaders ,NGOs and repre-s e n t at i ves of the arts world turned up for full-d ay consultations on how education should beresponding to the demands of a changi n gwo r l d .W h at ,p a rticipants were asked, s h o u l dstudents know,do and value by the time theygr a d u ate from school? Rather than a narr ow setof goals geared towards the wo r k p l a c e ,p a rt i-cipants stressed concepts like responsible citi-z e n s h i p, c ritical thinking, p e rsonal life skills,values and actions.

According to Charles Hopkins, one of thec o - o r d i n at o rs of the project,“if you were to readall the answe rs that came in with sustainabled e velopment eyeglasses and highlight eve ryreference to the env i r o n m e n t , economic andhuman deve l o p m e n t , the pages would haveleapt into colour.”As the curriculum guideliness t at e ,“ l e a rning must help students to conducttheir lives in ways that foster healthy social

and natural systems, both locally and glo-b a l l y.”The environment is a theme ru n n i n gacross disciplines, from social studies to then atural sciences.Around such key concepts asp owe r , time and change, students ascend fromthe personal and the local to the global as theycome to grips with the multi-layered dimensionof issues and draw connections between them.

But bri n ging about changes in at t i t u d e s

A summer camp with a m e s s a g e“Down there in the village, life is hard,the-

r e ’s drought, animals are dying. Th e r e ’sno work, the village is cut off, there’s a lack ofbasic services and lots of other problems. So Icame to the city,” Modou tells his friend.But lifethere does not turn out to be much better: M o d o udoesn’t find work, and discovers the reality ofprostitution,slums and urban violence. Some sixmonths later, he runs into a friend from home andfinds out that villagers have formed an organi-zation to improve their lot by taking initiatives ina number of fie l d s, from agriculture to drillingw e l l s. Upon hearing the news, he willingly sets offback to his village.

Rural exodus was just one of the themesbroached in the dialogues, comic strips, poems,short stories and games written by youth bet-ween 12 and 25 during a summer camp held inAugust 1998 in Senegal,in the coastal village ofPa l m a r i n . Organized by UN E S C O and the NGOGroupe pour l’Etude et l’Enseignement de laPopulation (GEEP), it aimed to increase youth’sawareness of a number of issues related to sus-tainable development.

Participants had a set goal to work towa r d s :t h eproduction of a manual that would serve as avaluable tool for other teenagers engaged in com-munity mobilization and awa r e n e s s - r a i s i n g .

Printed in 2,000 copies and now distributed inSenegalese schools—notably those running pro-grammes on environment, population and deve-lopment (EPD), the manual1 provides a livelyapproach to understanding and tackling deve-lopment challenges.

Two units of the book are comprised of a dia-logue followed by questions in which participantsare asked to identify and analyse EPD themes,from the consequences of uncontrolled urbaniza-tion or coastal erosion to early marriage.Th e n ,s o l u-tions have to identified and explained. During thew e e k , participants’ talents at getting messagesacross was put to the test. While the morningswere set aside for working on the manual, t h eafternoons were devoted to field activities inseveral villages. One group worked on a tree-planting project, another painted a series of muralson EPD themes, while a third organized meetingswith villagers to raise awareness of issues. Th ecamp also enabled youth from rural and urbanareas to work hand in hand, bridging the gapbetween these two worlds,and together becomingeducators for a more viable future. n

1. Peer Education for a Viable Future. A Manual forYoung People, UNESCO Dakar/GEEP

d o e s n ’t happen through rote learn i n g . It start swith building children’s sense of self-esteem,since without, they are highly unlikely to feelc o n c e rn towards others or their surr o u n-d i n g s.T h e n ,t e a c h e rs must encourage initia-t i ves that have a positive resonance in com-m u n i t i e s. “ You cannot develop a cari n gattitude towards one another and the env i-ronment through listening to lectures,”s t r e s s e sO. J. Sikes of the United Nations Fund forPo p u l ation Activities (UNFPA ) . “The tea-ching has to be part i c i p at o ry.”Training is cri-t i c a l , and when it is lacking, the whole endea-vour is compromised. In many countries offrancophone A f ri c a , lack of sufficient funds top rint mat e rials and provide on-the-job teachertraining is stalling the spread of sustainabled e velopment messages. W h at ’s more, s i n c ec h a n ging habits and attitudes does not stopwhen the school day ends, s u p p o rt from thecommunity is essential in making pro-grammes a success. In the end, one of yo u t h ’sfirst tasks might indeed be to question andperhaps alter the attitudes of their own peers.

n

In Spain’s Asturias region,children enjoy aguided visit on a reclaimed wetland belonging toa chemical factory.

May 1999 -The UNESCO Courier 17


n“ W h at ’s good for science is good for humanity.”Until the end of the Cold Wa r , few peopledared challenge this dictum originating in the

p h i l o s o p hy of the Enlightenment and gi ven gr e at e rforce after the Second World Wa r. Despite the threatof the nuclear holocaust which it had made possible,science was widely seen as a beneficial force. I nboth East and West, it was invested with a sacredmission—to guarantee the security and prosperityof nations.

In the United Stat e s , the we a l t hy leader of the“free wo r l d ” , the idea took root after 1945 thatpeople should trust the state and the scientists, a n dt h at spending on basic (and military) research shouldbe unlimited. It was argued that pure science wo u l dinevitably have applications that would contri bute top r o gress and social we l fa r e .U n i ve rsities and majorsources of funding, such as the National ScienceFo u n d ation and the va rious branches of the arm e df o r c e s , were left to decide on research pri o ri t i e s.

* Respectively, sociologist of science at the French Scientific Institute for Development in Co-operation,and UNESCO Courier journalist

Roland Waast andSophie Boukhari*

For many years, the political leaders and scientists of theg reat powers called the shots in science. “Leave it tou s,” they said to citizens. “ We ’ re working on your behalf,for your security and your pro s p e r i t y.”

This tacit contract between science and society hashad its day. On the world economic battlefie l d , re s e a rc his increasingly geared to the market and technologicali n n o v a t i o n . The fro n t i e rs are becoming blurred betweenl a b o ra t o r i e s, both public and private, and corpora t em a r keting services. In a situation in which science isi n c reasingly re g a rded as a commercial re s o u rc e, how canit yield benefits for all?


In France, people were also expected to trust thea u t h o ri t i e s , which opted for a more diri gi s t ea p p r o a c h .The state decided policy and chose stra-tegic areas, and then administered and funded onan ad hoc basis executing agencies such as theN ational Centre for Scientific Research and theAtomic Energy Commission.

These two models, which had the advantageof leaving scientists with a degree of independen-ce, were widely followed elsewhere in the world.They boosted basic research, which producesnew knowledge with a wide range of applications.But they also served to rubber-stamp massivepublic spending for military and civil purposes.And in this tacit agreement between scientistsand society there was a geographic and democra-tic deficit, in the sense that science developed lar-gely in a few urban centres as part of a nationalf r a m e wo r k , and ordinary citizens were neve rconsulted. The direction of research was largelydecided by political and scientific elites and the“ m i l i t a ry - i n d u s t rial complexe s ” of a few bigpowers.

But the last 20 years have seen major changesin the world of research. The state has lost itscapacity for initiative. Belief in progress is givingrise to doubts and controversies. The prestige ofscience,like that of state technocracies, has faded.Its main preoccupations increasingly takeaccount of private-sector interests, which thesedays fund and carry out two-thirds of all researchin some industrialized countries.

This new situation has several causes. In the1 9 7 0 s , the benefits of science and technology beganto be challenged, mainly by the env i r o n m e n t a lmovement and in the developing world. After theCold War ended, the strategic interests which hadaccounted for huge gove rnment expenditureschanged and military spending dropped sharply.

G l o s s a r yApplied re s e a rc h . Research aimed at developing practicalapplications to basic research.Basic re s e a rc h . Experimental or theoretical investigationu n d e r t a ken primarily to acquire new knowledge of theunderlying foundations of phenomena and observa b l efacts, without any particular application or use in view.I n n o v a t i o n . The introduction of a new technique, p r o-duct or production process. I n n o vation can take two forms.The first, referred to as incremental innovation, aims toimprove a product or launch a new one by making slighta d a p t a t i o n s. The second, more radical and much rarer,enables the development of a new sector, like biotechno-logies.I n v e n t i o n . The devising of a new product, process orsystem.K n o w - h o w. C o n fid e n t i a l ,p r a c t i c a l ,u n p a t e n t e d ,t e c h n i c a lk n o w l e d g e,professional experience and accumulated skillsfor the production and distribution of commodities and ser-vices.Pa t e n t . A certificate of grant by a government of an exclu-

sive right with respect to the use and sale of an inventionfor a limited period of time.R & D. Research work carried out by a company or group toconceive and develop new products.Te c h n o l o g y. The practice of any or all of the appliedsciences which have practical value and/or industrial use.The employment of tools, m a c h i n e s, materials and pro-cesses to do work, produce goods, perform services orcarry out other useful activities.Transfer of technology. Process of transmitting andadapting technology to a different productive apparatus,generally through its export from a developed to a less-developed country.Venture capital. Companies that finance innovations bytaking a stake in firms that don’t have enough capital or suf-ficient guarantees to obtain long- term loans for suche n d e a v o u r s. Such capital is lost if the enterprise goes ban-krupt.

Sources: OECD Science, Technology and Industry Outlook, Dictionary ofEconomics by Donald Rutherford, Chambers Science and TechnologyDictionary, Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology,McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms

“Science doesn’ti n t e rest me. It seems tome pre s u m p t u o u s,analytical ands u p e r fic i a l .I td i s re ga rds dre a m s,ch a n c e, l a u g h t e r,feelings and dissent—all things I love.”

Luis Buñuel,Spanish film-maker

(1900-1983)



Then the United States noticed with alarm thatJapan,where research was dominated by industry,was scoring in advanced sectors such as inform at i o ntechnology, electronics and new materials. As eco-nomic interests came to the fore, the idea that bu s i-ness was much more effective in ensuring people’swe l fare than the political and scientific establishmentbecame widespread. In this struggle for competiti-v i t y, science lost its supremacy to technologi c a l“innovation”(pages 20-24).The main goal was tocome up with new products and innovatory pro-duction methods.

The power of a nation now depends on its eco-nomic performance—and therefore its capacity toinnovate.All stakeholders, including the state andthe unive rs i t i e s , are supposed to strengthen thiscapacity. Research facilities have been rejigged tot u rn out new products more quickly and morecheaply (page 27). Scientists are valued less fortheir disinterestedness than for their feel for markete f fic i e n cy. B a rri e rs between public and pri vate sec-tors have become blurred.Bridges have been builtb e t ween the two which scientists cross in increasingn u m b e rs (page 20).The difference has also becomefuzzy between basic and applied research, whichnow interact continually (page 23).The synergy isespecially close in high-tech companies, w h i c haccount for 40 per cent of private sector industrialR&D in the rich countries.

These trends, which have developed with theg l o b a l i z ation of world trade, h ave strengthened thegrip of the big three—the United Stat e s , Europe andJapan—on research (pages 28-29). Some A s i a ncountries, such as China (page 32), are boostingtheir capacity for innovat i o n , but whole regions arebeing left out.Science outside the big three coun-t ries registered significant advances at the begi n n i n gof the century—in medicine, agriculture, naturalsciences and economics—and then grew strongly innew independent stat e s. In the past few ye a rs ,research activity has diminished in some Lat i nAmerican countries. It has collapsed in the formerSoviet bloc countries and is subject to “desertifi-cation” in black Africa.

Meanwhile,research is being partly globalizeditself as international co-operation grows (again,mainly between the big three and between Asianc o u n t ri e s ) , if only because gove rnment spending onresearch has been cut in each country (page 30).

The upheavals which have affected the world’s4.5 million or so scientists and engi n e e rs have set off

lively debate. By trying to make science serve them a r k e t , is there not a risk of depriving most ofhumanity of its benefits? By forcing unive rs i t i e sand state-funded laborat o ries to increase their pro-fit a b i l i t y, might we not kill off basic research, w h e r ethe public sector plays a key role? How can wefight abuses of pat e n t i n g, which is no longer limitedto protecting the applications of research but nowextends to “privatizing”certain discoveries?

H ow can we fight the emergence of a culture ofs e c r e cy which threatens the free flow of know l e d g e(pages 25-26)? How can we prevent whole areas ofresearch from being neglected, with only a few“ t e c h n o l o gical pat h way s ” being explored, w h e nmore and more firms are trying to establish mono-polies by imposing their standards? In the era ofgenetics and the virtual, how can we build ethicalsafeguards and reconcile the precautionary pri n c i p l ewith that of maximum profitability?

All these questions should spur intern at i o n a ld e c i s i o n - m a k e rs to once more promote truly unive rs a ls c i e n t i fic activity (see box above ) .They should alsod r aw public opinion into a debate that must be heldabout the funding and aims of research (pages 35-36).But before that can happen, people need to knoww h at ’s really happening. n

Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD),by volume and as a percentage of GDP

(US billion PPP*)

Year GERD GERD (% of GDP)

1990 387.7 /425.7** 2/2.2**

1992 428.58 1.81994 470.4 1.4

* Purchasing power parity* * Low and high estimates caused by changes in the former USSR

Source: World Science Reports, UNESCO

B u d a p e s t,world science capital

Despite its astonishing progress and social and economic impact, science is currently facing

a crisis of confidence and investment,as well as a debate about its ethics. UNESCO and

the International Council for Science (IC S U) are organizing a conference in Budapest from June

26 to July 1,1999,to discuss these and other issues. The gathering,called “Science for the

21st Century:a New Commitment”, will turn the city into the temporary world capital of science.

According to UN E S C O’s Director- G e n e r a l , Federico Mayor, the meeting, the first at this level

for 20 years, will enable “scientists, decision-makers and other stake-holders to address the

major issues at the interface between science and society together and negotiate a new social

contract.”

Bodies like the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OE C D) , the Euro-

pean Laboratory for Particle Physics (CE R N) and the World Bank, along with N a t u r e m a g a z i n e

and experts from all scientific fie l d s, will have six days of discussions culminating in the adop-

tion of two documents: a Declaration on Science, which will stress a political commitment to

s c i e n t i fic progress, and a Science A g e n d a — Framework for A c t i o n , which will encourage scien-

tific organizations to promote development and environmental improvement.

IC S U’s Executive Director, J e a n - François Stuyck-Ta i l l a n d i e r, says that the most ground-brea-

king feature of the Budapest meeting is that scientists will come face to face with public and

p r i vate sector decision-make r s. “ We want to improve the public’s perception of science, s h o w

that much has been done, and that much remains to be done, but that we can’t do everything

because there are ethical issues to be considered.” n

http://helix.nature.com/wcs/

http://helix.nature.com/wcs/


Regina Reszka started out working in East Germany’s re s e a rc hl a b o ra t o r i e s.After the Berlin wall came down, she took a crash course in capitalism

A German chemist’sdouble l i f e Manfred Ronzheimer*

Although conventional wisdom still sees basic science as distinct from industrial re s e a rc h , it is actually very hard to draw the line between the two

The science-tech c o n v e rg e n c e

nFor Regina Reszka of Berlin, the hardest partis juggling two careers: research and business.“There’s an abyss between the worlds of com-

merce and science,” says the 46-year-old chemist,who founded a biotechnology company calledGOT in 1995. She embodies a new breed ofscientist,found around the world, who are increa-singly at home with balance-sheets as well as test-tubes. Reszka has never stopped working in thelab and says she is still a researcher deep down.But these days, scientific results are not the onlything she is after. She must also come up withfunding.

GOT works on cancer-fighting substancesbased on liposomes, which are tiny drops of fat.The main gene-therapy technique the company isdeveloping helps enhance them with bits of DNAcapable of limiting the spread of cancer cells. Itcould be used in cases where chemo- or radiationtherapy fails.

Reszka was not trained to win markets and fin dsponsors. She studied chemistry in Leipzig before

s t a rting her career on the eastern side of the Berlinwa l l , at the cancer research institute that was a partof East Germany’s powerful Academy of Sciences.After reunification in 1990, she joined the MaxDelbrück centre of molecular medicine (MDC), amajor national research institution.But Reszka nolonger found her work fulfilling.Tired of writingscientific articles and speaking at congresses, shewanted to help alleviate the suffering of cancerp atients in a direct way. So she founded a companyfor what she calls “ethical” reasons.

Reszka and her five colleagues started GOT withnothing but their savings (450,000 Deutschmarks, o r$ 2 5 0 , 0 0 0 ) . But they had good reason to think that thee x p e rience was wo rth try i n g . In the 1990s, m a nyr e s e a r c h e rs in the former German Democratic Repu-blic caught the business bu g .M a ny had lost their jobswhen laborat o ries closed down and research insti-tutions were restructured in 1992. S e veral form e rA c a d e my of Sciences institutes shut dow n , l e av i n g14,000 scientists unemploye d .The result: the crea-tion of a slew of small companies.

nIndustrial managers are being asked today tos o l ve two seemingly contradictory problems: o nthe one hand, to produce more innovat i ve pro-

ducts based on the latest science, and on the other,to drastically cut costs and reduce the time it takesto get these products to the market.

The first task requires access to the best unive rs i t ys c i e n c e , the capability to perform imagi n at i ve research,and a creat i ve environment in which to innovat e .T h esecond requires focus on near-term product sche-d u l e s , disciplined use of resources, and limitat i o n son technical ri s k s.These requirements,which may pullin opposing directions, h ave always been with us. B u tin less competitive , less technically sophisticated timesthey were accomplished in sequence.A scientific dis-c ove ry was followed by applied research to build aprototype of a commercial product. Only then wo u l d

a company put its engi n e e rs to wo r k ,d e veloping theprocesses to produce it.

This sequential approach can take a long time.Totake one example of the process of finding a com-mercial use for a scientific discove ry, scientists havebeen trying for a decade to make mat e rials that exhibitsuperconductivity at near room temperat u r e . So fa rthey have had little success,but if they do succeed,e l e c-t ricity would flow without resistance, making pos-sible a new world of more efficient electrical devices.

But early applications of the most radical disco-ve ries are seldom successful.So innovat o rs today arefocusing their energy on concurrent pursuit of both thescience and the commercial idea. Science is no longera stranger to technology; i n d e e d ,product and processideas come together with science through basicr e s e a r c h , leading to eve r - i m p r oving technology.



Lewis M. Branscomb

*Journalist in Berlin,Germany

The German gove rnment has encouragedbiotechnology development for several years. In1996, the research ministry granted GOT a 1.4-million-Deutschmark (approximately $800,000)subsidy. In November 1998, the Länder of Berlinand Brandenburg awarded the company theirInnovation Prize. Its team works at the MaxDelbrück centre, which groups together hospi-tals, public institutions and laboratories rentedout to private companies. One of GOT’s star pro-cesses has been patented as part of an MDC-managed project.

Reszka says the company’s priority is to beginthe second stage of tests on this process. Sheneeds “a partner with strong nerves” because theo p e r ation will cost 10 million Deutschmarks(approximately $5.5 million). She met severalother recently-founded biotechnology firms andventure capital companies at the Bio-EuropePa rt n e ring conference held in Berlin inDecember 1998. Venture-capital firms invest ininnovative projects, making big profits if majorcompanies purchase their innovations and putthem into mass production.

American companies were out in force at theconference. With biotechnology innovation pro-gressing at a snail’s pace in North America since1997, they are increasingly interested in Europe.“I was amazed to hear Americans making meoffers to set up a joint-venture right away,” saysReszka. “We’re negotiating with two major lipo-some-manufacturers based in the United States.”Reszka is out to win the West—unless the opposi-te happens. n

The merging of scientific research and com-mercial innovation has been made possible by thetotal transform ation of science and engi n e e ri n gsince the Second World Wa r. Before 1940 mosttechnical knowledge was based on empirical obser-vat i o n .The power of scientific prediction based onm at h e m atical theory was we a k ; new ideas couldonly be va l i d ated by building prototypes and testingt h e m .S c i e n c e , since the Wa r , has made such extra-ordinary progress that all this has changed.

Take the case of IBM’s largest computers, inwhich the design of the product and the technologyfrom which it is constructed must be deve l o p e dconcurrently. Faster circuits require a new archi-tecture for the computer. But you cannot test thatarchitecture in a prototype without the new cir-cuits in hand. Product cycle times can be cut in halfby computer simulation of both the circuits and them a c h i n e . When the first machine comes off theproduction line no working prototype has ever beenbuilt,except in cyberspace.

*Aetna Professor of Public Policyand Corporate Policy, emeritus,Harvard University

Pe rcentage of expenditure on R&D financed bygovernment and industry in the OECD countries,

1 9 8 1 - 1 9 9 6100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

01981 1986 1991 1996

45

51.2 54.158.7

4235.8

32.3

61.3

z Industryz Government

Source: Main Science and Technology Indicators , OECD,1998.

“ I m agi n ation is more importantthan know l e d ge.”

Albert Einstein,German-born physicist

(1879-1955)


E ven the most complicated molecules and mat e-rials can now be designed to meet specific com-mercial needs. Computer codes and va l i d ated law sof nature can also be used to create molecules andm at e rials that never existed in nat u r e .P h a rm a c e u-tical companies that build designer molecules toh ave predictable therapeutic properties must wo r kvery close to the limits of chemical and biologicalk n ow l e d g e .The margin between basic science andapplied technology is hard to find.

Technology roadmaps to guidecorporate strategy

Basic science plays another essential role inhigh-technology innovation by making possiblei n f o rmed choices between altern at i ve technologi e s.Robert Galvin, the imaginative former Chief Exe-c u t i ve Officer of Motorola Corp o r at i o n1, p l a c e sgr e at importance on the preparation of “ t e c h n o l o g yr o a d m a p s ” to guide corp o r ate technology strat e g y.These roadmaps describe what future improve-ments in technology our scientific knowledge allow s.Using them, it is possible to pick the technology withthe greatest promise for future improvement.

In a situation where further improvements in ac u rrent technology are increasingly difficult to make,the timing of a decision to shift to an altern at i vewith a more extendable future may be a life-and-deat hdecision for the firm . Ralph Gomory, when directorof research for IBM in the 1970s and early 1980s,organized teams of researchers to acquire the scien-t i fic knowledge that allows wise choices among tech-n o l o gi e s.Analysis made on the basis of this approachg ove rned IBM’s decision to abandon the pursuit ofsuperconducting Josephson junctions, a radical alter-n at i ve to the use of semiconductors in integr at e dc i r c u i t s , as a replacement for more conve n t i o n a lsilicon-based semiconductors. S i m i l a r l y, IBM foundthe technology roadmap for silicon-gate semicon-ductor memory chips leading to many ye a rs of impro-ve m e n t , while the roadmap for the metal-gate tech-nology IBM was then using appeared to bed e a d - e n d e d ,e ven though it was cheaper at the time.

E ven the institutional setting for innovation isc h a n gi n g,c h a l l e n ging our conventional thinking aboutbasic science as something distinct from industri a lr e s e a r c h .The central corp o r ate laborat o ry is still thesite for the basic research performed by the mosttechnically aggr e s s i ve , science-based firm s. But thesel a b o r at o ries are smaller, and more focused in thatcommon ground of motivated scientific and techno-l o gical research that I have descri b e d .And the role oftechnical innovator is shifting to the smaller, highly spe-cialized firm s.

These small and medium enterprises (SMEs)are more technically specialized firms that can movefaster and with more imagination than their muchbigger customers.They are often part of their cus-t o m e rs ’ i n n ovation system, s h a ri n g, over theI n t e rn e t , a computer design system that allows theSME to become a member of the larger firm ’sdesign team.The result is a boost to productivity andinnovation in the economy as a whole. It accounts

for much of the sustained economic growth in theU.S. recently and represents a challenge to thosesocieties with weak high-tech SME sectors.

‘Jeffersonian science’H ow should we describe the kind of research in

which science and technology are merged and whichis motivated by visions of new possibilities? The lat eDonald E. S t o k e s , of Princeton Unive rs i t y, c a l l e dsuch research “ Pa s t e u r ’s Quadrant”, contrasting LouisPa s t e u r ’s “use-inspired basic research” with whatDanish nuclear physicist Niels Bohr called “pure basicr e s e a r c h ” .H a rva r d ’s Gerald Holton reminds us thatin the early 19th century President Thomas Je f f e rs o ncommissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition into thePa c i fic Nort h west to collect ve ry basic scientific infor-m ation about ecology and Nat i ve A m e rican languages,but for a ve ry clear and important applied purp o s e .

“ Je f f e rsonian science” m ay have the practicalgoals we associate with technology,but it must be per-f o rmed in the creat i ve , intellectually competitivee nvironment we associate with basic science. S o m emight think that “basic technology research” is acontradiction in term s. I see it as characteristic ofmuch industrial science.Once there is general accep-tance of the idea that science and high technologyh ave merged and must be pursued concurr e n t l y,wecan simply call the combination “ r e s e a r c h ” .

Of cours e , there is no way even the largest firm canbe self-sufficient in scientific know l e d g e . E ven thebest corp o r ate research laborat o ry can only be aw i n d ow on the world of technical know l e d g e .Since thei n n ovat i ve SMEs have relat i vely short - t e rm hori z o n s ,and the big companies have cut back on corp o r at eresearch as they rely more on the SMEs, the bu r d e nfor keeping the knowledge base expanding falls on uni-ve rsities and national research institutions.

Most governments are trying to increase theiri nvestments in this knowledge infrastru c t u r e . I norder to keep the work in touch with the world ofi n d u s t rial research, i n c e n t i ves are offered for colla-b o r ation between unive rsities and industry.Thus thei n n ovation system is becoming a process carried outby a network of institutions, in which academicscience, large company research, and SME inno-vation are linked.This is the direction in which alladvanced economies are headed. n

World Largest R&D Spending Firms, 1996

Company Country Sector R&D spending R&D as %(billion $) of sales

General Motors United States Automotive 8.9 5.6Ford Motors United States Automotive 6.8 5.8Siemens Germany Electronics 4.7 7.7Hitachi Japan Electronics 4.3 6.1IBM United States Electronics 3.9 5.2Daimler-Benz Germany Automotive 3.6 5.2Matsushita Japan Electronics 3.4 5.9Fujitsu Japan Engineering 3.0 9.2Nipon Telegraph

& Telephone Japan Telecommunications 2.7 4.0Novartis Switzerland Chemicals 2.7 10.1

Sources:Company Reporting, The UK R&D Scoreboard, 1997, The OECD Observer, No. 213,1998.

“Scientists perfo rmve ry gre at services fo ri n d u s t ry ; but theyre c e i ve from it eve nm o re importants e rv i c e s ;t h ey owe theirexistence to it.”

Henri de Saint-Simon,French philosopher andeconomist (1760-1825)

1.The world’s second ranking manufacturer ofelectronic chips.



nLittle in life fits into neat boxes dividing oneset of objectives from another. And science isfar from an exception. I have in mind the pre-

mise that pure research, m o t i vated exclusively bythe search for knowledge for its own sake, has suf-fered from the rise in technological or appliedr e s e a r c h . As industry increasingly invests in andc o l l a b o r ates with the academic wo r l d , some peopleassume that scientists have strayed from the goal of“ a d vancing know l e d g e ” to “ c r e ating we a l t h ” .

There is no denying the trend towards indus-t rial funding of unive rsity research which began inthe 1970s and has since intensifie d . In the UnitedS t ates for example, i n d u s t ry ’s share of academicR&D support rose from 2.6 percent in 1970 toalmost seven per cent in 1995, an almost eight-foldincrease in absolute R&D purchasing powe r. B u ta g gr e g ate data do not suggest that a rise in appliedresearch means a cut in pure (also referred to as“ f u n d a m e n t a l ” or “basic”) scientific research.There are several reasons. F i rs t , i n d u s t rial moneyis just too small a fraction of unive rs i t i e s ’ t o t a lresearch budgets to have such an effect.

More import a n t l y, in most areas of scientifice n d e avo u r , the goals are a mix of pure and appliedr e s e a r c h . In the past few decades, pure researchhas led to highly profitable and socially va l u a b l eproducts or know l e d g e . At the same time, p r o fit -m o t i vated inventions and new technologi e s — t h atis to say, applied science—have provided new toolsfor breakthroughs in pure research.

Einstein and the laserConsider the example of nuclear magnetic

resonance (NMR). This was a “pure” researchdiscovery made in 1946 on the ways in which cer-tain nuclei act as tiny magnets. Scientists thencould scarcely have imagined the practical appli-cations which would lead to today’s multi-billiondollar industry in magnetic resonance medicalimaging (MRI),which doctors use to scan the tis-sues and bones of patients in diagnosing cance-rous tumours or hair-line fractures. But the origi-nal discovery only provided the opportunity forthe applications. To realize these required a greatdeal of additional sophisticated engi n e e ri n g,applied science and commercial development.

Likewise, the notion of pure research beingseparate from applied science fails us in tracingthe development of fibre-optic communications,in which glass or plastic fibres transfer light wavesgenerated from lasers, whose amplitude is thenmodulated to carry information for telephoneconversations or TV programmes. In 1905 Albert

Einstein first predicted the idea of stimulatedemission of electromagnetic radiation, a pureresearch principle underpinning lasers. But itwa s n ’t until 1960 that T. H . M a i m a n , a nAmerican scientist, built the first laser. Yet, toactually use lasers for communications applica-tions required scientists to learn to make fineglass optical fibres of unheard of purity. To achie-ve that end, scientists needed to do fundamentalresearch on the nature of defects and impuritiesin materials—but with a very well-defined practi-cal objective (i.e., communications). In addition,fibre-optic communications required a good dealof engineering. Thus, the journey from the purescientific research of Einstein to the developmentof fibre-optic communications involved a com-plex interplay of pure research and application-motivated fundamental research.

These examples demonstrate that the notionof pure and applied science waning and waxing atthe expense of each other just doesn’t hold water.There are just a few fields—like particle physics,cosmology and some areas of pure mathematics—in which the research agenda can be determi-ned exclusively by the conceptual structure of thesubject without regard for possible societal orbusiness applicat i o n s. But generally speaking,pure science discoveries open up unsuspectedopportunities of application, while at the sametime the search for technological applicationsoften invites us into new areas of fundamentalresearch. n

F i b re optics and medical scanners are among the many offshoots of the give-and-takebetween applied and pure science

The symbiosis Harvey Brooks*

o f p u re and applied science

*Professor emeritus of Technology and Public Policy, HarvardUniversity


nHow does the giant chemical and biotechno-logy company Monsanto manage to keepcontrol of its herbicide Roundup, e ve n

though other companies now have the right tomake it? The answer to this simple questionr e veals the power of pri vate sector research.Under the pressure of competition, firms havedeveloped formidable capacities to innovate andto market their discoveries.

Monsanto, with a turnover of more than $8billion in 1998, is an excellent example of such afirm. Several of its discoveries have helped far-mers and consumers. It developed the biodegra-dable herbicide Roundup in the early 1970s.Farmers who use it are relieved of the long andtiresome job of weeding. They just have to takecare not to damage their crops as they apply theherbicide, which can increase yields by an estima-ted 30-50 per cent and bring more land into cul-tivation.

A big money-spinner

Roundup, which can be used on about 100crops, is a big money-spinner for Monsanto,though its exact contribution to the firm’s profitsis not known. In the early 1990s, the herbicide’spatent expired in several European countries andthe product was copied by rival firms. Monsantodid not lose control of it however.

Monsanto’s research teams are in close andconstant communication with the firm’s salesforce, who monitor changes in the market, andwith its strategic planners, who work out whatkind of future a product has. So when Roundupwas no longer legally protected, Monsanto wasready. Since 1989, the firm has come up withmany by-products of the herbicide.These can besold at a higher price than the basic product,whose manufacturing costs fell by around 20 percent between 1990 and 1998.

The economic goal of Monsanto’s researchersis to encourage work which is part of its industrials t r ategy and drop work which is outside it.Products arising from such research are alsoquickly put on the market. Monsanto, like mostother chemical and pharmaceutical companies,spends four to five times more on advertising andmarketing than it does on research in the strictsense.

To stay ahead of the pack, the firm asks itsresearchers to anticipate changes in the market.In 1972, a biochemist in its agricultural division,Ernest Jawarsky, went back to university to studycell growth. Seven years later, he set up the firm’sMolecular Biology Group (MBG), which in 1982succeeded in genetically altering a plant’s cells.

The American firm Monsanto’s flagship pro d u c t , R o u n d u p, highlights a strongpoint of private-sector re s e a rch—its capacity to create and market new pro d u c t s

Staying a h e a d of the pack Pascal Byé*

The MBG has ties with consultants trained atmany prestigious institutions, such as Berlin’sMax Planck Institute. In this way, it taps into thefindings of state-funded research on the genomeof plants to further its goal of extending the life ofRoundup.

In 1988, Monsanto announced it had develo-ped genetically-modified plants that were immu-ne to Roundup. If farmers used them, they wouldno longer have to take precautions to prevent theherbicide from damaging their crops.The compa-ny is creating new outlets. Cotton, for example,requires a lot of herbicides but is damaged bysome of them. By developing a cotton seed resis-tant to Roundup, Monsanto opened up a newmarket—one for new seeds—and at the sametime expanded the market for its own herbicide,which can now be used by cotton growers.

Industrial research often seems more valuableand less suspect than publicly funded research,which is sometimes accused of going off in expen-sive directions. There is a downside, however. Toensure profitability, Monsanto has dropped entireareas of research. Its new products are alsoincreasingly seen as a threat to the environmentby those who oppose genetically-modified orga-nisms (GMO). They are also condemned bythose who think plant seeds should remain part ofthe common heritage of humanity. n

* Researcher at the FrenchNational Institute for AgronomicResearch

“In practice,the distinction between inventionand discovery in areas such as genetics and infor-mation technology is becoming increasingly mea-ningless and irrelevant,” says patent lawyer SimonCohen of the London-based company Tay l o rJohnson Garrett.

This interpretation is increasingly accepted bythe court s. In a number of landmark cases, f o re x a m p l e , both U. S . and European courts haveupheld the claim that the knowledge of the sequence

of chemical bases that makes up a human or animalgene—whose undisputed status as a major “disco-ve ry ” is endorsed by its announcement in the pagesof prestigious journals such as N at u r e and S c i e n c e—can be patented.

The only caveat is that this knowledge must bes h own to have some potential commercial va l u e .B u tt h at is seldom difficult to demonstrat e , for exampleby using knowledge of, s ay, a gene discovered to bei nvo l ved in breast cancer to design a test to seek outmutations in the gene that indicate increased sus-ceptibility to the disease. The courts have gi ve nsimilar endorsement to the patenting of mat h e m a-tical algorithms.

At the same time, h owe ve r , this trend—and par-ticularly the patenting of scientific discove ries onliving processes such as animal cell lines or geneticallye n gineered animals—has become increasingly thetarget of critics such as environmentalists and animalrights support e rs concerned at the potential implica-tions on control of access to scientific knowledge thatit represents.

Three criticisms in particular are being widelyheard.The first,primarily from the scientific com-munity, is that the growing ability to patent scien-tific “ d i s c ove ri e s ” is encouraging researchers toconstruct a wall of secrecy around their work thatdirectly challenges the traditions of open commu-n i c ation on which modern science has depended forits vitality and success.

Up to now, science has thri ved on the sharing ofe x p e rimental results, often ve ry preliminary,b e t we e nc o l l e a g u e s. Much of science develops through debat e st h at take place in forums that can range from the



In pra c t i c e, the distinction between invention and discovery in areas such as genetics and information technology is becoming incre a s i n g l ymeaningless and irre l e v a n t

* British journalist

David Dickson* As a result of hothouse pre s s u re to patent scientific discoveries,the debate and sharing of experimental results that tra d i t i o n a l l ystimulated re s e a rch are giving way to a culture of secre c y

O p e n house or closed s h o p ?

nThere was a time when basic scientific know-ledge was considered primarily to be a publicgood.The argument was that since most of it

was produced through public funding—namely theg ove rn m e n t ’s support of unive rsities—and intendedto benefit society as a whole, no one should be ableto control access to it by others.

Today, however, all that has changed.The keyrole of science at the heart of the modern “know-ledge economy” means that what was previouslyseen as a public good is being transformed into a pri-vate commodity.

Two industries in particular have been respon-sible for this shift. One is the biotechnology industry,where information about the detailed structure ofliving cells and individual genes, previously ofinterest primarily to the laboratory biologist, nowoffers the possibility of being rapidly transformedinto profitable pharmaceutical products or medicalscreening technologies.

The second is the inform ation technology industry.Up to now, m at h e m atical formulae were consideredto be too abstract—and,by implicat i o n ,too accessibleto anyone with the appropri ate intellectual skills—tobe considered pri vate propert y.But the reliance of high-p owered computing on sophisticated mat h e m at i c a la l g o rithms has led to a gr owing acceptance that eve nm at h e m atical formulae can in certain circumstancesbe treated as pri vate propert y.

A controversialtrend

Under challenge in both cases is an importantdistinction that,previously, was used to define thelimit of what could be patented.This is the dis-tinction between a scientific “ d i s c ove ry ” ( w h i c hcould not be patented) and a technical “ i nve n t i o n ”(which can).

To d ay, h owe ve r , the speed with which scientificdiscoveries can be turned into technical productsand the large commercial profits that can be gene-r ated by this process means that , in practice, the dis-tinction between discove ry and invention hasbecome blurred.As a result, the moral distinctionb e t ween what should and what should not bep atented has once again become highly conten-tious.

I n d u s t ry ’s argument is straightforwa r d . If it has“paid” for a certain useful scientific discovery bys u p p o rting the scientists—either in its own labora-t o ri e s , or even in a unive rsity—who made it, then ithas a right to seek a return on its investment by char-ging others for using this discove ry (or even keepingit for its own exclusive use).

“ I n ventions cannot, i nn at u re, be a subject ofp ro p e r t y.”

Thomas Jefferson,third President of

the United States (1743-1826)


l a b o r at o ry coffee room to intern ational c o n f e r e n c e s.But scientists are now being wa rned that , i f

they discuss their results openly prior to publishingthem in a scientific journ a l , they run two ri s k s. O n eis that, if someone reports these discussions—forexample, in the proceedings of a conference—thiscan be taken as a form of “ p u b l i c at i o n ”t h at can jeo-pardize their chance of being awarded a patent.

This is because, at least in Europe,a patent appli-c ation must be made before an invention or discove ryis made public (the rules in the United States aremore fle x i b l e ,a l l owing a scientist a “ grace peri o d ”o f12 months after publication of a new discove ryd u ring which a patent application can be fil e d ) .

The second risk is that an unscrupulous col-league, overhearing an original idea from anotherr e s e a r c h e r ,m ay hastily incorp o r ate it into his or herown patent applicat i o n , without divulging where theidea originated from.

In order to avoid either situation ari s i n g, s c i e n-tists are now being advised—for example, by pat e n tlawyers—not to divulge their results to colleaguesuntil it has been completed and full patent protec-tion has been applied for.

Secrecyon the campus

The result is a growing “culture of secrecy” inu n i ve rsities where even researchers working inn e i g h b o u ring laborat o ries are reported to be increa-singly reluctant to discuss their fin d i n g s ,e ven thoughfailure to do so may slow down the scientific dis-covery process.

The issue of gr owing secrecy on unive rsity cam-puses was highlighted at a recent meeting sponsoredjointly by the Massachusetts Institute of Te c h n o l o g yand the A m e rican A s s o c i ation for the A d va n c e m e n tof Science.

“ Pa rt of the failure lies with academics who think‘by God, I’m going to be ri c h ,”Alan Goldhammer ofthe Biotechnology Industry Organization told the

m e e t i n g . John Deutch, f o rmer dean of science atM I T, d e s c ribed secrecy as “a major threat to scienceand . . . antithetical to the purpose of unive rs i t i e s.”

A second cri t i c i s m , coming mainly from cri t i c sof genetic engi n e e ri n g, is that permitting patents onbiomedical discove ries—such as new genes, or eve nparts of genes—is inherently immoral, as humansh ave no moral basis for claiming commercial ri g h t sover living matter.

The third question addresses the issue of Nort h -

South equity in a world where both scientific know l e d g eand economic power are unequally divided. Here theargument is that those countries that are already the mosteconomically powerful are being allowed to increase theirdominance by exploiting the fact that they also controlaccess to the scientific knowledge that increasingly prov i d e sthe basis of this powe r.

The battle is far from ove r. M a ny scientists, f o re x a m p l e , are now insisting that inform ation deri ve dfrom their efforts be placed in the public domain.T h o s e

attending an intern ational meeting in Bermuda inFe b ru a ry 1996, for example, designed to establish acommon framework for human genome sequencing—d e c i p h e ring the precise sequence of the amino-acidbases that make up a single strand of human DNA—urged that all sequence data produced by centres fundedfor large-scale sequencing should be placed in the publicd o m a i n .

Most of those engaged in these debates accept thatthe distinction between discovery and invention is nol o n g e r , in itself, a valid basis for determining the boun-dary line between public and private knowledge.Thechallenge ahead is to rewrite the rules of the game in asocially equitable and morally acceptable way. n

The argument is that those countriesthat are already the mosteconomically powerful are beingallowed to increase their dominanceby exploiting the fact that they alsoc o n t rol access to the scientificknowledge that incre a s i n g l yp rovides the basis of this power



directed towards industrial applicat i o n s , at theexpense of basic research.To d ay, they are shifting thebalance of their strat e g y. In Europe, the UnitedKingdom was the first country to encourage the ri s eof industrial research. Even France, which placesvery strong emphasis on basic research, is goingdown that road.

Might this change in focus not be harmful in thelong run?

Nowadays,a country’s economic performancedepends more than ever on its capacity to innovat e .Research is adapting to this world trend and isbeing harnessed to the economy. But gove rn m e n t s ,especially in North America, have become awaret h at they cannot neglect basic research. In the shortterm, applied research undoubtedly leads to tech-nological innovation.But in the long run,withoutthe reservoir of knowledge produced by basicr e s e a r c h ,i n n ovation breaks dow n .E ven corp o r at i o n sh ave made a commitment to basic research, w h i c huntil now was conducted in public-sector labora-t o ries funded by the stat e .To create new products,they need scientists capable of understanding whatis going on in the public sector, building relationswith that sector and drawing on its results.

Today, the problem no longer lies in decidingwhether basic or applied research should be thep ri o ri t y, but in striking a balance between them, d i s-tributing tasks and organizing exchanges betweenuniversities and the corporate world. Many coun-t ries are experimenting with these issues and lookingfor solutions. France encourages gr a d u ate studentsto work with corp o r ations and public-sector resear-c h e rs to set up their own bu s i n e s s e s. Japan is urgi n gacademics to patent their breakthroughs in order toprofit from them and to co-operate more closelywith pri vate industry, which used to be consideredas a comedown. n

Interview by Sophie Boukhari

UNESCO’s World Science Report describes three main models for conducting and fundingscientific research. What’s your thinking about this?

There certainly are three major models. By andl a r g e , Japan invests ve ry little in defence, a n dindustry still dominates research. Europe empha-sizes basic civil research and the United States putsmore stress on military research. But the threemodels are converging.

How did these “models” develop and why are theyconverging?

As far back as the late 19th century, Japanfocused on applied science to catch up with theWest. After the Second World War, all the majori n d u s t rialized countries made massive inve s t-ments in basic research, which they consideredthe driving force behind progress. Japan couldn’tafford such a luxury at that time. But once itbecame a world power, it realized that it couldproduce itself the knowledge that gives rise tot e c h n o l o gical innovat i o n . In the 1970s, t h egovernment began investing more in research,almost 80 per cent of which was financed by theprivate sector. In 1995, it earmarked some $140billion for research over a five-year period (1995-2000). The primary goal is to strengthen publicinstitutions and basic research.

Europe and the United States have moved inthe opposite direction. After the Second WorldWar, they went for pure research. Their econo-mies were flourishing. The prevailing ideologysuggested that science would bring economic andsocial progress. In the 1970s, those countriesbecame aware that basic research, which is veryexpensive, was not always profitable in the shortterm.And Japan’s example showed that economicgrowth was not necessarily linked to investmentin pure research.

After the Cold War, the United States curbedtheir military budget and went all-out on research * Observatory of Sciences and Technology, France

Public ( c i v i l )

Military

Industry

European Union United States Japan1990 1994 1990 1994 1990 1994

36.2 39 18.5 18.6 25.4 25.5

52.3 52.8 50.6 59 73.1 73.4

11.5 8.230.9

22.4 1.5 1.1

Financing of R&D in the ‘big three’ (%)

A c c o rding to Japanese re s e a rcher Yo s h i ko Okubo*, E u ro p e a n ,A m e r i c a nand Japanese re s e a rch policies are converg i n g

T h e big three get together

“ To know one know swh at one know s, a n dto know one isi g n o rant of wh at onedoes not know :t h at ist rue science.”

Confucius,Chinese philosopher

(555-479 B.C.)


The top twentyThe table at right ranks countries in terms of their

share of world scientific output as measured by theproduction of articles that appear in scientific publi-c at i o n s1.There is remarkable continuity between thet wo periods considered, with the same 20 countri e sa p p e a ring on both lists.The United States accountsfor the lion’s share of scientific activity, p r o d u c i n gmore than one-third of all publications recorded by theSCI dat a b a s e .There is howe ve r , strong competitionfor the runner-up position.Although this is still heldby the UK, Japan inched up its share by 1.3% and Ger-m a ny by 1.2%. In the lat t e r ’s case, u n i fic ation playe da part ,e ven though the GDR never accounted for 1%of total output.

Taken as an entity, the European Union hasi m p r oved its position and has gained a competitivee d g e : it succeeded in ove rtaking the U. S . ,with 35.9%of all papers signed by an author with a Europeanaddress between 1990 and 1995, against 35.1% bya U. S .a u t h o r. I n d i a ’s decrease is cause for concernand could reflect an unfort u n ate draining of scientistst owards the bu r e a u c r atic and political arena.

Data on the output of scientific publications show that the world’ss c i e n t i fic hiera rchy has remained remarkably stable over the past decade,with the continued domination of the U. S. - Ja p a n - E u rope triad

A global snapshot of scientific

Highs and lowsThe table at right indicates those countries

which have shown the highest and the lowestgr owth rate in terms of publication output.Foreseeably, Asian countries come out in the topp o s i t i o n s , s h owing impressive gr ow t h . S p a i n ’sadvance over the past decade is partly linked to itsi n t e gr ation into the programmes of va ri o u sEuropean organizat i o n s. The same holds forPortugal and Greece. These three countries arethe only ones in Europe that posted significantgrowth rates. In contrast, countries in transitionsuch as the Czech Republic and Russia show amarked decline in output, as does India.

The 20 most productive countries and their sharein the world science total

(1984-1989 and 1990-1995)

Country 1984-1989 1990-1995

Rank % share Rank % share

U.S. 1 36.52 1 35.82UK 2 9.21 2 9.24Japan 3 7.37 3 8.67Germany 5 6.22 4 7.42France 6 5.17 5 5.88USSR/Russia 4 6.85 6 4.97Canada 7 4.66 7 4.77Italy 8 2.69 8 3.49Australia 9 2.27 9 2.40Netherlands 11 2.01 10 2.40Spain 14 1.21 11 2.08India 10 2.22 12 1.94Sweden 12 1.84 13 1.90Switzerland 13 1.44 14 1.67China 19 0.81 15 1.38Israel 15 1.18 16 1.17Belgium 17 0.96 17 1.10Poland 16 0.97 18 0.97Denmark 18 0.89 19 0.96Finland 20 0.67 20 0.78

High and low annual average publication

growth rates (1980-1995)

Countries or territories % growth rate of publication output

South Korea 24.49China 17.46Taiwan 15.96Singapore 15.80Turkey 11.16Portugal 10.80Hong Kong 10.80Spain 9.95Mexico 6.02Greece 5.72Bulgaria -1.58Hungary -2.39India -3.55Czechoslovakia/Czech Rep. -4.32USSR/Russia -4.42

1.This overview of trends and patterns in world science isbased on the Scientific Citation Index (SCI) databaseestablished for bibliographic purposes by the Institute forScientific Information (ISI) in Philadelphia, USA.Regarded as one of the most accurate reflections of wherecountries stand in terms of research activity, the SCImeasures scientific output by the number of articlespublished in scientific journals.The database providessystematic coverage of the articles from the 2,500 mostcited scientific journals. It should also be stressed that data

tend to focus on basic rather than applied research ortechnology. These data are used by other institutions,suchas the European Commission, which produces theEuropean Report on Science and Technology Indicators.

* Tibor Braun and Wolfgang Glänzel are respectively with theInformation Science and Scientometrics Research Unit (ISSRU)and the Bibliometric Service of the Library of the HungarianAcademy of Sciences, Budapest,Hungary;András Schubert is a member of the Research Association ofScience Communication and Information (RASCI),Berlin,Germany



t re n d s Tibor Braun, Wolfgang Glänzel, András Schubert*

International collaborationFigure at left shows the instances of co-

authorship between the three major producers ofscientific articles, namely the United States, theEuropean Union and Japan. It is worth notingthat output is practically equal in the U.S.and theEU. Japan more often co-operates with the U.S.,although other data indicate an increase in co-authorships with the EU. Less than 20% ofpapers in the U.S. and Japan are internationallyco-authored,a figure that reaches between 30 and40% in the EU because of the links betweenscientists from different European countries.

Data can also provide a more detailed insightinto how international collaboration evolves overtime. In one analysis, links between 14 countries2

were studied between 1985 and 1995 using theSalton measure, which distinguishes we a k ,medium and strong links. The change is striking:whereas in 1985, only 7 countries, all developedones, had international co-operation links, all ofwhich were weak, in 1995, the picture was signi-ficantly different.All 14 countries had internatio-nal co-operation links with one or more coun-tries, and in 7 cases, they were strong ones.Although weak, the two developing countries inthe selection—Argentina and Mexico—both for-ged links over this period.

I n t e rn ational co-authorship reflects more thanc o l l a b o r ation between individual scientists. I tpoints to emerging part n e rships between the insti-tutions behind the scientists, namely academia,g ove rnment and industry. In developed countri e s ,these are becoming the norm . In less deve l o p e do n e s , i n d u s t ry ’s part i c i p ation in the funding ofscience is often extemely weak or non-existent,h i n d e ring intern ational collaborat i o n . S o m e t i m e s ,this is counterbalanced by the stat e , when publicscience is recognized as an important engine ofeconomic progress in the global economy. n

2.Argentina,Australia, Canada,Denmark, France, Italy,Japan,Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden,United Kingdom, United States.

P u b l i c a t i o n p ro files As well as measuring scientific activity in terms of the number of articles published, data alsoenable us to draw up different publication profiles, pointing to relative specializations thatare specific to different parts of the world. Four main models can be distinguished:The “Western model” characterizes publication patterns in the developed Western countries,

where clinical medicine and biomedical research are the leading fields of specialization;The model specific to the former countries of the Soviet bloc,along with China,where the

emphasis has traditionally been on chemistry and physics;The bioenvironmental model is more specific to Australia and to developing countries, w h e r e

efforts are concentrated in the fields of biology, earth and space sciences;The Japanese model,now also characteristic of other developed Asian economies, is predo-

minantly focused on the engineering sciences and chemistry. n

The North-South g a p

Why does so much scientific research—and moreand more—originate from the the United States, t h e

European Union and Japan? Their share of it, as measuredby the number of scientific publications, increased from73.3% in 1990 to 74.8% in 1995.1

John Rumble, chairman of the International Councilfor Science’s committee on data for science and techno-logy (CODATA ) , believes that the answer lies in the closecorrelation between research capacity and economicp o w e r.“ The percentages of government funds devoted toresearch are approximately the same, regardless of thec o u n t r i e s,” he says, at least among large and medium ran-king countries.

Just as national budgets vary widely, so there are hugedifferences in research budgets from country to country.And since inequalities of wealth persist, the interna-tional scientific hierarchy is not about to change. Th egrowing role of privately-funded research will not alter thesituation either, says Rumble, since the strength of ac o u n t r y ’s business sector is also proportional to nationalwealth.

The rise of the Internet has confirmed the trend.“Many new research activities have been generated bythe Web,” says Rumble.The richer a country is, the moreit uses the Internet.And the cost of “admission”to theclub of world scientific powers is increasingly high. B e f o r ea country can take off, it has to create a “critical mass”of R&D resources. But the investment required for this isbeyond the means of many developing countries, espe-cially the 48 of them at the foot of the ladder.

Some people blame these inequalities on humanfactors. South African scientist Fanie de Beer says theimportance of scientific knowledge is often played downin the countries of the South in order to resist “a blatantimperialistic promotion of science and technology in theWestern sense”. He also points to the deadlocks that haveresulted from attempts to impose rich country models onthe nations of the South without taking into accountlocal conditions. Special formulas must be “ i n v e n t e d ,” h es a y s, which are based on “a productive integration of dif-ferent forms of knowledge,” including “ n o n - We s t e r nand non-scientific forms”.

Many scientists who cannot find in their own countrythe basic material conditions in which to live decently anddo their job continue to leave for exile abroad.This braindrain weakens the weak and strengthens the strong. I t ’sa vicious circle. n

1. Indicateurs 1998, Observatory of Sciences and Technology,Economica publishers, Paris).

EUUnited States

Japan

“Science has no country.”

Louis Pasteur,French chemist and biologist

(1822-1895)


* British journalist

c o u n t ries to support an ambitious intern at i o n a lresearch project on the tropical oceans.The synergyb e t ween researchers around the globe made it possibleto envisage a bigger project than any one countrywas willing to fin a n c e .

B o rn in 1985, the 18-nation Tropical Ocean andGlobal Atmosphere Program (TOGA) started adecade of observations that helped to minimize theimpact of the 1997/8 El Niño. Its long-term aim wa sto establish an observation network to predict cli-m at e . By the end of the project, in 1995, an arr ay ofabout 70 bu oys—the Tropical Atmosphere OceanA rr ay (TAO ) — was in place, straddling the equat o ri a lPa c i fic.These continue to send real-time measures ofsea surface temperat u r e , s u r face wind and salinityvia sat e l l i t e s , to research centres that use the data to testand fine-tune climate models. Ships are assigned fulltime to placing and servicing the bu oy s. It is a costlyt a s k , but the annual $18 million that the U. S .a l o n ei nvested was a small price compared to the estimat e d$2 billion they lost in the 1982/83 El Niño.

Measuring sea level by satelliteUnlike the at m o s p h e r e , the scale of some ocean

phenomena can be relat i vely small—10 to 100 kmacross—so many more data points are needed. F u r-t h e rm o r e ,c l i m ate modelling and forecasting require anu n i n t e rrupted series of dat a .When TOGA start e d ,a fews atellites were making observations of the sea surfa c e ,but cloud cover frequently obscured their view.With the1992 launching of the Franco-U. S . To p e x / Po s e i d o ns atellite equipped with two radar altimeters that couldsee through cloud, it became possible to measure seal e vel to within a few centimetres.Scientists invo l ved withTOGA were able to conve rt this inform ation intot e m p e r ature dat a .

When TOGA ended in 1995, the scientistsr e grouped under a new $100 million per year pro-gr a m m e — C l i m ate Va riability and Predictability( C L I VAR)—continuing for 15 ye a rs. Using the samebu oy s , these scientists first detected an unusual rise int e m p e r ature below the surface in the tropical Pa c i ficearly in 1997—first signs of an El Niño.Combining thebu oy data with satellite images, they were able to trackits onset almost daily. When it was clearly bu i l d i n gu p, the U. S . National Cl i m ate Centre broadcast dat aon the Intern e t . El Niño watch centres established insome of the vulnerable countries like Pe ru were able totake action while others like Kenya , which did noth ave such fa c i l i t i e s , were ill-prepared when floods anddrought hit.

The success of TOGA and CLIVAR in predictingthe 1997/98 El Niño has confirmed that the inve s t-ment was wo rt h w h i l e .N ow,s c i e n t i s t s ’ main aim is tomake their forecasting models even more reliable,b ycombining a supply of data from the bu oys withimages from new Jason sat e l l i t e s.The longer aheadEl Niño is detected, the gr e ater the opportunity vul-nerable nations have of taking action. n

nPe ruvian fis h e rmen have known about El Niño forhundreds of ye a rs , but until now they have neve rbeen able to predict when it would stri k e .In 1982/83,

this recurring we ather pat t e rn caused an estimated $8 to$13 billion in damages.T h e n ,e ven the wo r l d ’s leading cli-m ate experts were not much wiser than local fis h e rm e n .But when the 1997/98 El Niño appeared—the strongeston record—a vast intern ational monitoring network wa sin place.With a few months wa rn i n g, fa rm e rs in Braziland Australia were able to switch to crops that would notbe hit by the coming drought,while some other countri e s ,expecting flo o d s ,d e l ayed construction projects and bu i l tb a rri e rs.

El Niño happens when there is a reversal in theusual wind and surface temperature pat t e rns in the tro-pical Pacific. Scientists knew that the world’s oceansplay an important role in determining climate by sto-ring and transporting large quantities of heat energy,but they knew little about how oceans interact with theatmosphere. By the early 1980s, a new generation ofs u p e r c o m p u t e rs had appeared able to run complex cli-mate models.What was missing were the data from avery wide area.

In 1979, the U. S . N ational Oceanic and A t m o s-p h e ric A d m i n i s t r ation (NOAA) had a research project inthe equat o rial Pa c i fic, m e a s u ring ocean current in realtime from a bu oy moored on the equat o r. But the costsof the 1982/83 El Niño led the U. S . to be among the firs t

A worldwide monitoring network has been set up top redict a destructive climatic event and soften its impact

All eyes on El Niño Peter Coles*



nWhen Alexei Perchuk joined Moscow’s presti-gious Institute of Geology, Mineralogy, Petro-chemistry and Geochemistry in 1987, he was

looking forward to a glittering career in the best tra-dition of Soviet science. The son of an eminentuniversity professor and,like him, a petrochemist,the 24-year-old graduate was fulfilling a dream ofmany fellow students at that time, for whom a jobas a researcher was still a great honour.

Today only Academicians still have real status.Rank and file researchers like Perchuk no longerdo. A 1996 public opinion poll by Moscow’sCentre for Science Research and Statistics sho-wed that the three most prestigious professions inRussia were business, banking and politics. Thethree least respected groups were researchers, themilitary and engineers. Very low pay—Perchukearns about 800 rubles ($30) a month—has com-pletely devalued the work of scientists and engi-neers.

To escape poverty, Russian scientists havethree choices—go into industry and earn about$100 a month, become a “businessman” andhope to earn millions, or go abroad. A dozen ofPerchuk’s friends have already made up theirminds—half of them have gone into business andthe rest have left the country.

Perchuk himself hasn’t decided yet. His affec-tion for his country and his work still overrides hismoney problems. Financially speaking, the insti-tute where he works belongs to the privileged fewthat have been given priority status by the govern-ment. As a result, its scientists work in good

conditions and none of them has yet left forabroad. But while there have been no departures,no one new has been hired for the past 10 years.This means that after 12 years, Perchuk is stillone of the Institute’s youngest researchers.

At national level, the situation is catastrophic.UN E S C O’s 1998 Wo rld Science Report s ays Russiahad about 900,000 scientists involved in researchand development (R&D) when the Soviet Unioncollapsed in 1991. Four ye a rs later there were onlyhalf a million.The figures are similar in other form e rS oviet republics, especially in A rm e n i a , where R&Dscientists fell from 15,000 to only 3,000 over thesame period.

EU initiativesSince 1993, the European Union has become

the main partner of Russia and the other formerm e m b e rs of the Soviet Union grouped as the Com-munity of Independent States (CIS).1 It has steppedup its aid in the hope of giving new life to its ownresearch and helping the ex-Soviet scientists. C o m-mitments so far total about $155 million.

The Intern ational A s s o c i ation for the Promotionof Co-operation with Scientists from the NewlyIndependent States of the Former Soviet Union( I N TAS) has so far backed more than 1,200 projectsto the tune of $69 million.The Intern ational Scienceand Technology Centre (ISTC), founded inM o s c ow in 1994, has sunk more than $120 millioninto projects mainly to do with conve rsion from mili-tary research.

In Fe b ru a ry 1999, the European Union andthe Russian Fe d e r ation reached agreement on aproject for scientific and technological co-operat i o n .A p a rt from cash, the accord enables the signat o ri e sto take part in each other’s research programmes,except in nuclear mat t e rs.The main fields are spacer e s e a r c h , t e l e c o m m u n i c at i o n s , e nvironment andtransport.

The five main co-operation programmes withWestern countries (the European Union,Sweden,N o r way, I c e l a n d , S w i t z e r l a n d , I s r a e l , the UnitedS t ates and Canada) add up to about $320 million.Will this be enough to halt the brain drain? If thismoney was used to pay the CIS’s 750,000 resear-chers a monthly salary of $1,000,it would only beenough to pay half of them, for one month. n

* UNESCO Courier journalist

Low wages and a poor public image have forced more than half Russia’s scientists to quit science in the last 10 years. International co-operation is trying to repair the damage

FORMER USSR:halting the brain dra i nJasmina Sopova*

“ F re e d o mis for science wh at airis for an animal.”

Henri Poincaré,French mathematician

(1854-1912)

1 The CIS,set up in 1991, covers 99.2 per cent of the areaof the former USSR and is home to 97.2 per cent of itspopulation.


Chinese science has lagged for centuries. But economic reforms have given science in thew o r l d ’s most populous nation a new life

C H I N A:a m a r ket-minded c o n t e n d e rTed Plafker*

nC e n t u ries before Europe emerged from theMiddle A g e s , C h i n a ’s scientists began wo r-king in advanced mat h e m atics and astronomy,

and had already claimed credit for inventing paper,g u n p ow d e r , the compass, and the mechanical clock.These great and early scientific achievements aret o d ay well known to virtually eve ry Chinese school-child. But these same schoolchildren know just asclearly that China now lags behind in science andtechnology.

Chinese offic i a l s , of cours e , k n ow it too. B u tthey also understand many of the reasons and theyh ave launched numerous initiat i ves to revitalize Chi-nese science.The strategy centres on prodding scien-tists to commercialize their research.While it may betoo early to yet call China a force in intern at i o n a ls c i e n c e , the country has clearly become a playe r.

The impediments to scientific progress havebeen both ancient and modern.With people andtheir labour being more abundant than any otherr e s o u r c e , i n c e n t i ves for labour-saving scientificinnovations have traditionally been scarce.

More recently China has heaped other bu r d e n son its science establishment. One was the admi-nistrative structure it adopted in the early 1950sfrom the Soviet Union. By placing nearly all scien-tific institutions under the military, the gove rn-ment, or the central Academy of Sciences, Chinareplicated one of the Soviet system’s main flaws: astructure that left impenetrable institutional wallsb e t ween those who created good science and thosewho could apply it.

In the late 1950s, Mao Zedong launched 20ye a rs of political mayhem and Chinese sciencecame to a virtual standstill.

Commercializing researchWhen the dust settled in 1978, Deng Xiaoping

was in charge and eager to re-open to the world.Since then, China has done much to break downwalls between researchers and producers. Ratherthan directly funding research from state coffers,China has encouraged scientists to commercializetheir own results and generate their own funding forfurther research.

Addressing China’s parliament in March 1999,Premier Zhu Rongji spoke again of “the problem ofmost scientific and technical personnel beingdivorced from enterprises and markets”.

One of the main ways in which the gove rn m e n ttries to encourage commercialization of scientificresearch is the 11-year-old Torch Programme whichp r ovides seed capital for technology start - u p s. L o c a lgovernments across China have sought to create*Journalist in Beijing (China)



nUntil now, more than 80 per cent of LatinAmerican science has been funded by thepublic sector. But until now, s t ates have

actually done little more to encourage the growthof the scientific community than handing outoccasional scholarships or backing unive rs i t ycourses on the grounds that this is “good” for thecountry. But there is no sign of real nationalscience policies.

So the development of science has been anar-chic, shaped by the intellectual interests and incli-nations of a scientific community whose membersare more interested in working in advanced fieldsthan in those directly related to society’s basicneeds.

The regi o n ’s economic capacity is a major obs-tacle to investment in science.Scientific and tech-nological infrastructure is poorly developed, withR&D budgets less than 0.5 per cent of GDP. It iss i g n i ficant that no Latin A m e rican countries feat u r eamong the wo r l d ’s top 20 nations in terms of indus-t rial and technological pat e n t s. H owe ver a fewc o u n t ri e s , including A r g e n t i n a , Brazil and Mexico,have excellent records in research and innovation.

For the past 15 years, the World Bank and theInter-American Development Bank have played abig part in encouraging gove rnments to push appliedresearch and build bridges between research andi n d u s t ry. But links with national centres of pro-duction are still in their infancy, mainly becauseindustrial sectors are weak and small and generate

little demand for local research.The result is that thes c i e n t i fic community hesitates to change its pri o ri-ties or set more practical goals attuned to the market.

W h at ’s more, the most advanced sectors ofn ational production are subsidiaries of foreign firm s.These have access to the parent company ’s labora-t o ries and to exchange agreements with foreignu n i ve rs i t i e s. In recent ye a rs , such firms have realizedthat Latin America has excellent human resourcesand labs and are starting to use them.This could gi ve

a new boost to scientific research.Science and technology in Latin A m e rica are in

a transitional phase, in which the scientific com-munity is having to rethink its role and learn how toco-operate with other sectors. At the same time,governments will have to adapt their policies onscience and technology to local conditions andm e d i ate between unive rs i t i e s , labs and industry.Governments are less and less likely to be able tosubsidize academic research and ambitious tech-n o l o gical programmes which cannot be put to edu-cational,economic or social use. n

* Head of the Department ofScientific Studies at theVenezuelan Institute for ScientificResearch,Caracas.

G o v e r n m e n t s, re s e a rc h e rs and industry will have to join forces for science in Latin America to serve the re g i o n ’s needs

Latin A m e r i c a :a tough t ra n s i t i o n Hebe Vessuri*

“technology development zones” that offer firmsfavourable conditions and tax incentive s. In addition,the central government has promised to make iteasier for high-tech firms to be listed on the coun-try’s stock exchanges.

But Chinese corp o r ate investment in scienceand technology development is low, accounting foronly 0.39 per cent of sales vo l u m e .E ven for high-teche n t e rp ri s e s , the figure reaches only 0.6 per cent,or onetenth the level of spending in developed countri e s.

Although the government encourages greaterp ri vate investment in science, gr owth has been slow.O f ficials estimate that overall pri vate inve s t m e n tincreased only 2.9 per cent last year. Governmentspending howe ver continues to ri s e . The 1999budget calls for a 9.5 per cent increase in the cen-tral allocations for science and technology. T h i sbrings total state and enterprise spending to morethan $14 billion, e q u i valent to roughly 1.5 per centof gross domestic product.

S t i l l , China is emerging as a contender. Fo r e i g nscientists and foreign firms are increasingly eager toco-operate with Chinese colleagues. More foreignf i rms (including the likes of IBM) are basingresearch facilities in China.The country frequentlylaunches communications satellites for othern at i o n s. And China is engaging in increasinglyambitious projects,like a $60 million scheme withGermany to launch a one-tonne solar space teles-cope in 2003.

More telling still is the fact that China’s ownb rightest scientists are showing more interest inworking in their own country. Since 1978, China hassent 300,000 students abroad, the vast majori t yfor science or technology training.More than twothirds have stayed abroad,however,and this braindrain has cost China some of its best talent. Butaccording to the Ministry of Educat i o n , the numberor returning students is rising rapidly, and there arenow more students returning than leaving. n

The scientific community hesitates to change its priorities or set more practical goals attunedto the marke t

“Look for science asfar as China.”

Taken from the Hadith,traditions relating

the deeds and sayings of theProphet Muhammad

Paulo University.Yet both sides have much to gain from this kind

of collaborat i o n . PUC Prof.Antonio José JunqueiraBotelho says firms “most of all want access to stu-dents and researchers familiar with Brazil who canhelp them ‘ t r o p i c a l i z e ’ their markets.The unive rs i-ties get direct income—because the companies payt a xes or rents—and also equipment, since the firm s

install supercomputers , the latest software andother sophisticated facilities which can be used bylocal researchers.”

The Brazilian government is considering newlegislation which would oblige firms granted ope-r ating licences in gas, oil or telecommunications toinvest in local R&D.The head of the PUC’s centrefor the development of science and technology,P r o f. José Antonio Pimenta-Bueno, s ays pri vat ei nvestment in research still only amounts to isolat e di n i t i at i ves motivated by goodwill or the hope ofp r o fit rather than a genuine desire to advance basicresearch. n


nAlthough Brazil is one of the wo r l d ’s ten biggesteconomies,it invests very little in R&D.WorldBank figures show that in 1995, the South A m e-

rican giant earmarked only 0.6 per cent of its GDPfor these activities.T h r e e - q u a rt e rs of this went to thepublic sector, and the present gove rnment wants tocut the figure to half by the year 2002.

H owe ve r , institutions like the pri vate Po n t i fic a lC atholic Unive rsity (PUC) of Rio de Janeiro orthe stat e - run Unive rsity of São Pa u l o, the country ’sbiggest research centre which every year turns outhalf the country ’s Ph.D. s , h ave more than 400exchange agreements with pri vate firm s , with morebeing signed all the time.Tr a n s n ational companieslike Siemens electronics or the vehicle manufa c t u r e rRenault are already in town and planning to openresearch labs on Brazilian campuses.

But the relationship between universities andbusiness “still doesn’t match the huge potential forc o - o p e r ation between these two big sectors ofn ational life,” s ays Jacques Marcov i t c h , rector of São

Both sides can benefit from a deal between univers i t i e sand business

BR A Z I L: a b r i d g e h e a d to the tro p i c sLucia Iglesias Kuntz*

Black A f r i c a , a scientific d e s e r tAfrica has always been on the sidelines of modern science. It produces less

than one per cent of the world’s scientific publications, according toUNESCO. In a continent where the private sector plays a negligible role inresearch,government-funded laboratories, often poorly equipped and offe-ring low salaries, cannot keep researchers, who move to jobs abroad.

The situation has deteriorated in the last few years. Research is stagna-ting in North Africa and is even on the decline in Egypt,which ranks secondafter South Africa in the publication of scientific papers.The situation is onlyimproving in Morocco and Tunisia,which are fourth and fifth in the publica-tions ranking and have almost doubled their output of papers since 1991.

At the other end of the continent, South A f r i c a , which has providedA f r i c a ’s only Nobel laureate for science1, is slipping backwa r d s,with only 1,398articles published in 1997,down from 2,130 in 1991.

Between the two extremes,basic research structures resemble a landscape“turning into a desert,” says Roland Wa a s t , who is looking into A f r i c a nscience for France’s Scientific Institute for Development in Co-operation.In

recent years, he says, government-funded research institutes have “ c o l-l a p s e d ” in several countries, such as Nigeria (even though it holds thirdplace in the publication rankings).Spending on research has been sharplyreduced as part of public spending cutbacks and structural adjustment poli-cies.

“NGOs and various bilateral and international aid organizations havet a ken over,” says Wa a s t .B u t , he notes, they are mainly funding research relatedto the priorities of the rich countries, such as environmental protection andbirth control. Many researchers turn away from basic research because it isn’tprofitable. They prefer to do studies for foreigners—private firms, UnitedNations agencies and NGOs. The result is that sub-Saharan Africa is losingground in the scientific fields which directly concern it, such as tropicalmedicine and agricultural science. n

1 . South African microbiologist Max Theiler won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medi-cine in 1951 for his work on the virus of yellow fever.

Most of all firms want access to students and re s e a rc h e rs familiarwith Brazil who can help them ‘ t ropicalize’ theirm a r ke t s


“ We know nothing.The only hope ofk n owing is to know allt oge t h e r, to merge allclasses in know l e d geand science.”

Leo Tolstoy,Russian writer (1828-1910)



* Centre for Studies in SciencePolicy, Jawaharlal NehruUniversity, New Delhi

The time has come to negotiate a new social contract between science and society.At its heart: the notion of science as a public good, especially in countries of the South.

Science for c i t i z e n sV.V. Krishna*

nH i r o s h i m a , C h e rn o b y l , the Bhopal chemicalplant disaster . . . the twentieth century bearsmany tragic scars to remind us that the pro-

gr e s s i ve and emancipat o ry role of science and tech-nology cannot be taken for granted.

Such terrible eve n t s , together with loss of life dueto disasters in mines, fa c t o ries and transport systemsh ave triggered public disenchantment with scienceand technology. I n d i c at o rs of these anxieties are therise of anti-nuclear and environmental move m e n t sin the West and the growing influence of people’sscience movements (PSMs). In India, for example,PSMs such as the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Pa ri s h a d(KSSP) are struggling to inculcate such scientificvalues as sceptical questioning, to improve peo-ple’s scientific literacy and to relate the results ofscience and technology to the basic needs of people.

For many, this disenchantment is fuelled byother trends.The problems are particularly acute inthe developing countri e s ,which account for less than10 per cent of world expenditure in science andtechnology research.

As part of the globalization process, the concep-tion of science as a “market good” has spread tothese countries as a result of policies based on eco-nomic liberalization and pri vat i z at i o n . This newconception of science, in which market-based cri-t e ria are applied to eva l u ate and regulate research,h a schallenged the prevailing mode of science as a publicg o o d , and there are clear signs that research serv i n gthe ideal of “science as a public good” is stagnating orbeing cut back.This is a serious problem in deve l o p i n gc o u n t ries like India where over 80 per cent of researchand development is funded from public sources.

In these countries,science academics and pro-fessional societies have a major social responsibilityto safeguard science from commercial interestsd ri ven by the logic of knowledge as pri vate propert y.The state should sustain science as a public gooduntil these societies are able to absorb the shocksgenerated by market forces.

Some advances in science and technology chal-lenge widely held ethical values. The informationr e volution has impinged on personal pri va cy, and thepossibilities unleashed by the biological revo l u t i o ninterfere with the uniqueness and natural processesof human beings.

There are also signs that some scientific andt e c h n o l o gical innovations have a disturbing capacityfor harm . In agriculture chemical pesticides and her-bicides bearing long-term risks to human beings areused on a mass scale. Violent experiments areconducted on animals to test safety devices andchemical hazards. As the Indian scholar and envi-ronmentalist Kamla Chow d h ry has observe d ,“ t h ekind of technologies that the major nations of theworld have been developing in the military, agri-culture and consumer industries have led to ‘vio-l e n c e ’ , accompanied by loss of values such as com-passion,helpfulness, reverence and spirituality.”

Closely associated with the violent and hege-monistic aspects of modern science and technologyare questions of equity and sustainable consump-t i o n .The idea of sustainable development cannot bed i vorced from the structure of consumption pat t e rn sin modern societies.The crucial issue here is whe-ther developed countries are ready to cut down theconsumption levels which are draining non-rene-wable resources.

All these issues lead to a single question: whatcan be done to ensure that science and technologymeet the basic needs of society today, particularlyin low- and medium-income countri e s. I believe thata new social contract needs to be made betweenscience and society through the democratic process.There are four key ingredients in this process.

D e c i s i o n - m a k i n g. This should not be monopolizedby a scientific and political elite, often joined by pri-vate corporate interests. Decision-making systemsshould be enlarged to include representatives of awide range of interest gr o u p s , p e o p l e ’s sciencegroups and other social stakeholders.

Since the welfare of the majority and the equi-table distribution of resources are fundamental tod e m o c r a cy, the democrat i z ation of technical changeand the establishment of priorities in science andtechnology call for new forms of part i c i p at o rydecision-making and the creation of institutional


A H i p p o c ratic oath for scientists?Wh a t ’s the best way to make scientists think about unfo-

reseen consequences of their discoveries? Under theauspices of UN E S C O, some 30 scientific , cultural and politicalfigures from many countries, led by South African judgeRichard Goldstone, have drafted a “declaration of humanduties and responsibilities” for the Valencia Foundation for theThird Millennium.Article 12 of the declaration includes the fol-lowing statements:

“ The research and scientific communities have a dutyto act with full respect for the life and welfare of everyhuman being and to take all necessary measures, i n c l u d i n gthe adoption of a code of ethics, to prevent the results ofs c i e n t i fic and technological research being used for the pur-pose of threatening peace and security, or in a mannerwhich infringes upon human rights and fundamental free-doms. Individual researchers and scientists have a duty atall times to conduct their research in accordance withstrict ethical practices and to inform the public of any une-thical or potentially dangerous research of which theybecome aware.”

A French member of the group, the philosopher MichelS e r r e s, has suggested adding an oath, l i ke the Hippocraticoath doctors take, which would be sworn voluntarily by all

young students embarking on scientific research. Serres hasproposed the following form of words:

“I swear that,in whatever falls within my responsibi-lity, I will never use my knowledge, my inventions and theapplications that I might find for them,to promote des-truction or death, to increase poverty and ignorance, toenslave people or to promote inequality, but instead to dedi-cate them to achieving equality between people, to helpthem live, to enhance their lives and make them morefree.”

The idea of the oath, says Serres,arose from the diffic u l t yof drawing up a universal code of conduct amid so many dif-ferent cultures. “A Japanese Shintoist and a Canadian Pro-testant just don’t look in the same way at life,d e a t h ,h u m a ndestiny and the human person,”he says. H e n c e,according toS e r r e s, the need to go back to the private individual and hisor her responsibilities.

The draft declaration of duties and responsibilities,intended to complement the 1948 Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights, has been submitted to UN E S C O D i r e c t o r-General Federico Mayor. The proposed oath will be putbefore the international scientific community at a laterdate. n

“safety nets”. For example, i s o l ated tribal commu-nities in the developing world should be repre-sented on official regulatory commissions on sub-jects such as biodiversity and biotechnology. Therelevance of international regimes like those pro-posed by the United Nations Conference on Env i-ronment and Development held in Rio de Janeiroin 1992 and the Convention on Biodive rsity shouldbe re-examined from the perspective of such com-munities. In developing countries, where a majorp r o p o rtion of the research effort favo u rs thedemands and needs of privileged sections of theirsocieties, governments should foster participatorydecision-making systems. G ove rnments should alsoincrease research expenditure related to safety byboth the public and the private sector.

Social contro l . In order to control the adva n c i n gforces of technological determinism more shouldbe done to educate people about the impact scienceand technology will have on their live s. Science acti-vist groups like those which have gr own up in Indiah ave an important role to play in this process andg ove rnment support should be gi ven to their activi-t i e s.

The “neighbourhood effect”. In the deve l o p i n gc o u n t ri e s , there should be questioning of the processwhereby academic research is dominated by themest h at are prevalent in the We s t .M a ny of these themes,though important for advances in scientific know-l e d g e , h ave no immediate relevance to the real pro-blems of developing countri e s. M e a n w h i l e ,only resi-

dual attention is gi ven by science laborat o ries andu n i ve rsities to problems confronted by people in theiri m m e d i ate neighbourhood, such as malnutri t i o n ,p ove rt y,p o l l u t i o n , and industrial hazards.To enhancetheir “neighbourhood effect”, science laborat o ri e sand unive rsities should allocate part of their researche f f o rt to solving these problems,when necessary in col-l a b o r ation with social scientists. R e p r e s e n t at i ves fromlocal neighbourhoods could well become invo l ved insuch part i c i p at o ry research in formal institutions.

D e m o c racy and the scientific spirit. There is a closelink between the values of science and democracy.If societies are to benefit from democracy theirm e m b e rs must develop the “ s c i e n t i fic temper”, i . e .qualities such as scepticism and doubt,respect forfacts and dat a , and the questioning of assumptionsin their approach to public issues. n

+ …l http:/helix.nature.com/wes/

Nobel laureates in natural sciences,(1901-1998) by geographical region

Region Number of laureates PercentageWestern Europe 230 50North America 200 43Eastern Europe 13 2.8Asia 9 1.9Australasia 4 0.8Latin America 3 0.6Africa 1 0.2Arab Region 0 0.0

“ E ve ry discove ry inp u re science ispotentially subve rs i ve ;even science mustsometimes be tre at e das a possible enemy.”

Aldous Huxley,English writer

(1894-1963)


E T H I C S

from the acronym of Niños y AdolescentesTra b a j a d o r e s (“Child and Teenage Wo r-kers”), a movement that has sprung up inL atin A m e ri c a . It began in Pe ru (see art i c l epage 39) in the 1970s, spread to many otherLatin American countries a decade later,and then to West Africa and India in the1990s. It is now making headway in Asia,notably Thailand.

The Nats are also trying to build aworldwide structure to gi ve them a voice inmatters that concern them.They oppose alegal minimum age for starting work and are

Child l a b o u r :Sophie Boukhari* a lesser evil?

nFor the media, child labour is a guaran-teed tear-jerker. Jo u rnalists nearly alway sr e p o rt on the most heart-rending situa-

tions—children working down mines, c h i l ddomestic servants being beaten and raped,kids preyed on by paedophiles. We s t e rnc o n s u m e rs are stepping up campaigns tob oycott goods produced by child wo r k e rs.

More than 250 million of the wo r l d ’schildren work at jobs (see box ) .This fig u r e ,which UNICEF calls “ m o n s t r o u s ” , h a ss p u rred most NGOs and We s t e rn gove rn-m e n t s , along with the United Nat i o n s , t omake a determined effort to eradicate childl a b o u r.

“Kids in poor countries have the right toa childhood, just like you and me inE u r o p e ,” s ays Robert Saintgeorge, s p o-kesman for the Intern ational Labour Orga-nisation (ILO)’s worldwide programme toabolish child labour, launched in 1992.“Turning children away from education islike abolishing the future,” s ays the head ofthe ILO in France, Jean-Daniel Leroy.

But some of the young would-be bene-ficiaries in developing countries are objec-t i n g . Thousands of children and adoles-cents, mostly of them living in towns andcities, claim they have a right to work inproper conditions. They are called Nat s ,

When there is no possibility of schooling, perhaps it’s better for children to work in dignity than hang out in the stre e t s. Some childre n ’s movements are contestingUnited Nations policy to abolish child labour


Child workers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.


E T H I C S

250 million child worke rs in the world

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says 250 million children between the ages of five and

14 are working—61% of them in Asia,32% in Africa,7% in Latin America and a small number in

rich countries (two million in the European Union).One in three children in Africa works, one in four

in Asia and one in five in Latin America.

On top of that,15-20% of children in developing countries work for no pay, often as domestics or

f a r m w o r ke r s.Two-thirds of child workers live in the countryside:20% of them are between 5 and 9 years

old,compared with only 5% in this same age bracket in towns and cities.

About 120 million children work full time.This means they can neither go to school or learn a trade

and have little time to play. n

strongly against boycotts of goods theymake for export , which are produced byonly 5 per cent of all child workers, accor-ding to the UN. They want the UN to“make a distinction between exploitation ofchildren and other forms of work whichhelp their development.”

In fact the ILO conventions are beco-ming more fle x i b l e . The first one, w h i c hdates from 1919, set the minimum age forfactory work at 14. But the main interna-tional legal instrument is Convention 138,signed in 1973. This fixes the minimumage at 15 (or at the end of compulsory edu-cation) and makes many exceptions.

Punishable crimesBut most developing countries think

this is too strict and only about 20 ofthem have rat i fied it. A more widelyaccepted version is currently being nego-tiated in the ILO and is due to be adop-ted in June 1999 in Geneva.This one willdeal only with the most inhuman anddangerous categories of labour, like slave-ry, prostitution, drug trafficking and workharmful to health.

For the Nats, these activities shouldnot be regarded as work but as punishablecrimes. Their existence, they say, shouldnot be an excuse to throw the baby (achild’s right to work) out with the bathwater (the inhuman tasks they are some-times forced to do).What’s more, accor-ding to Michel Bonnet, a former ILO offi-cial who has written a book called LeTravail des enfants:ter rain des luttes (“ChildLabour: A Battleground”)1 only 10 percent of Nats live in intolerable conditions,

mostly in Asia.At big conferences, complains Dibou

Faye, a 14-year-old maid from Senegal,“adults speak for us. They say that if chil-dren work, they’re no longer children.When I was seven,I would’ve preferred togo to school. But as my parents didn’thave the money to send me, I decided towork instead.” Since the maids in Dakarhave organized themselves, and march inthe annual May Day procession alongsidetrade unionists, their working conditionshave slightly improved.

“When one of them is beaten or wron-gly accused of something, she can counton the support of others and can lodge acomplaint. Before, the police wouldn’te ven listen,” s ays Hamidou Coly, o fENDA, an NGO that supports Nats inWest Africa. ENDA provides the childrenwith an education geared to their situa-tion (in the evenings and with the contentworked out with the students), legal aidand help in negotiating cheaper medicineand hospital care.

“In Africa,” says Coly, “the minimumlegal age for starting work is usually 15.Education is compulsory and supposedlyfree up to the age of 12. But even if theygo to school until then, what are kidsgoing to do between 12 and 15?”

N ats are being helped by organizations likeE N DA in A f ri c a , MANTHOC in Pe ru andC o n c e rned for Working Children in India.This does not rule out “the risk of beingm a n i p u l at e d ” , s ays Bonnet, who nonethe-less welcomes the emergence of the Nat s.

“They want to be respected, get adecent wa g e , h ave work breaks, a n daccess to education and health care.Whatthey don’t want is to wake up and find intheir district some ill-thought-out projectfrom a rich country which is going to losethem their job.”

Duncan Green, a British worker withthe Catholic Aid A g e n cy, who spent seve-ral months last year with the Nats in Lat i nA m e ri c a , laments that “most [We s t e rn ]

adults think child wo r k e rs in the T h i r dWorld are the equivalents of the little boy sused as forced labour in British fa c t o ries inV i c t o rian times.” Not so, he say s.“ Wo r k i n ggi ves them self-confid e n c e , k n ow - h ow andmoney to feed themselve s.”

UNICEF and the ILO have been for-ced to recognize this. “The lesson of 1994has been digested,” Leroy says.That year,the owners of textile mills in Bangladeshsacked 50,000 child workers after a billwas put before the U.S. Congress to banthe import of clothing made by child wor-kers. Some of the children thrown out ofwork were forced to go begging or beco-me prostitutes.

Accepting that working in a factory isbetter than being on the street, UN agen-cies set up a programme enabling some ofthe children to be rehired and also haveaccess to education and health care on thejob. Brutal solutions should be avoided,says Saintgeorge, “but we can’t legalizechild labour. If we do, we’ll have no wayof controlling it in many countries.”

Minimum standardsThe UN recognizes it is unrealistic

and dangerous to want to abolish childlabour. Developing countries, often for-ced to cut social spending, do not havethe resources to provide education for alland social security coverage for poor chil-dren. But the UN continues to campaignfor abolition. UNICEF “is stronglyurging the World Trade Organisation toadopt a ‘social clause’,” which wo u l drequire minimum standards from compa-nies, including a ban on child labour.

This ambiguous position illustrat e sthe complexity of the problem. “Whetherthey work or not,poor children are at risk.You just have to know which risks are theworst,” says Bonnet. n

1.Editions page deux publishers, Lausanne,Switzerland.

In Delhi, India,working children join in ademonstration organized by Bel Mazoor Unionfor street and working children.


E T H I C S

Young Peruvians set up apioneering movement forworking children andt e e n a g e rs

nThey’re called “Nats”, the acronym ofNiños y Adolescentes Trabajadores—Child

and Teenage Wo r k e rs. The term mainlyr e f e rs to needy children in towns and cities,although there are more child wo r k e rs in thecountryside. Poverty, unemployment andfamily problems, including violence, havepushed them onto the streets. Often it isn’tpossible—or even desirable—for them tor e t u rn home to their parents. They fre-quently work in very harsh conditions andare exploited and mistreated.

The Intern ational Labour Organisat i o nreckons there are 17.5 million child wo r k e rsin Latin A m e ri c a , but some NGOs say thereare between 25 and 30 million, including1.5 to 2 million in Pe ru .The United Nat i o n shas criticized Pe ru for being the onlycountry in Latin America to legally allowchildren to work from the age of 12, i n s t e a dof 14 as elsewhere.

The Nats in Lima, Peru’s capital, werethe first children in the world to organizet h e m s e l ves in a social move m e n t . In theearly 1970s, m e m b e rs of the Christian Wo r-kers Youth Movement opened centres forstreet children in the city’s poorest neigh-b o u r h o o d s. Most of the centres looked afterchildren who earned a living doing oddjobs in open-air markets.

A national charterBut when Lima city council threat e n e d

in 1976 to sell the land on which the streetc h i l d r e n ’s centres stood, there was an outcry.In the southern part of the city, the children,their parents, grandparents and others gottogether to defend the centres. They alsodemanded that the centres be connected towater,electricity and sewage services.Thechildren and teenagers called for access toschool places and health care.

The protests brought the children’scentres together into a loose netwo r k , a n dgradually the movement took shape. Its sup-p o rt e rs developed the idea of “ p r o t a g o-n i s m ” ,i .e.considering children as respon-sible people, defending their right to wo r k ,and believing in their ability to act for them-s e l ve s , organize and generally improve theirown situation.

The Movement of Working Children ofChristian Workers (MANTHOC) was setup in Lima in 1978.“Our aim was to streng-then a movement established by and forchildren and geared to their specific needs,”s ays Nelly To rr e s , the founder of MAN-THOC. “We wanted them to share theire x p e riences with the majority of street chil-dren, who weren’t organized.”The move-ment slowly spread to other tow n s , e ve nthough it still only invo l ved a ve ry smallnumber of Nats.

TodayTorres runs the National Move-ment of Peruvian Young Workers’ Organi-z ations (MNNAT S O P ) , a federation setup in 1996 representing nearly 10,000 chil-dren between 7 and 14 living in 18 towns allover the country. It has drawn up a nat i o n a lcharter for the rights of Nats. Its memberspoint out that because the school dropoutr ate is ve ry high, children are better offworking rather than hanging about thestreets all day long. A job can even helpkeep their families together by providingextra income.

M N N ATSOP believes that the essentialthing is for the Nats to earn respect, andencourages them to associate in produc-tion workshops to demand better workingc o n d i t i o n s. A credit system has been setup to enable the most vulnerable Nats to

reduce their working hours so they canstudy or enjoy themselves.

MNNATSOP considers it very impor-tant to develop good relations with thea u t h o ri t i e s. Last ye a r , it scored a success bysigning an agreement with the Lima cityg ove rn m e n t , which promised to create 600jobs for Nats over the next two ye a rs. N e g o-t i ations to win social security rights are alsogoing on, though so far without success.However,a number of ad hoc agreementsh ave been signed with hospitals and clinicswhich have agreed to provide child wo r-kers with free medical care.

More progress seems to have been madeon the educational front, thanks to efforts byNGOs and by the gove rn m e n t . M A N-THOC opened the first school for Nats in1986 in a south Lima neighbourhood. It wa sgeared to child wo r k e rs ’h o u rs and interests.In 1996,the ministry of education startedspecial programmes for Nats in 9 of thecapital’s primary schools.

M N N ATSOP also has a scheme to pro-tect young wo r k e rs called Colibri , which isrun by the national police force. “ We try toprotect street children from delinquents,but also from abuse by city officials whom i g h t , for example, seize the wares of unau-t h o rized child ve n d o rs ,” s ays Col. Luis Her-mosa Ortega.

“I ran away from home because mydad’s new wife beat me,” says Pablo OrtizV i c u ñ a , a 12-year-old being looked afterby Colibri offic i a l s.“ N ow I live at the houseof a friend who washes cars like me. S o m e-times I go begging but only when I don’thave anything to eat.” n

* Journalist in Lima, Peru

A child shells corncobs in the Urubamba valley in Peru’s Cuzco department.

Pe r u ’s child workers s t a ketheir claimsLuis-Jaime Cisneros*

S I G N S O F T H E T I M E S


nThe 144 employees of the T i m buktu air-p o rt wrote to complain about their wo r kc o n d i t i o n s.They were not receiving their

s a l a ries on time, back pay was due and paidva c ations were going uncompensat e d .T h e yd i d n ’t have the funds necessary to travel alongd e s e rt and mountain roads down to the capital,B a m a k o, in order to present their complaint inthe fle s h .N o n e t h e l e s s ,M a l i ’s minister of jus-t i c e ,D i a b até Hamidou, duly read their letter.

Cheick Coulibaly,a former sergeant in theMalian army, raised a gri e vance dating backto 1968, 8 ye a rs after the West A f rican countrygained independence from France.M r.C o u-libaly wanted financial restitution for the fiveye a rs he spent doing hard labour during thep e riod when he was politically at loggerheadswith the gove rn m e n t .Dressed in a traditionallong gown called a bu bu , with a white hat ,h eread his letter directly to the gove rn m e n t .

M r. Coulibaly and the airp o rt employe e swere among the 40 individuals and groups toavail themselves in December 1998 of theannual EID, Espace d’Interp e l l ation Démo-c r atique (Democratic Question T i m e ) , a five -year old institution that forms a bridge bet-ween tradition and modern - d ay need for

finding direct solutions to problems that stat einstitutions have n ’t resolved conclusive l y.

D u ring turbulent times, A f rican chiefswould often gather tribe members to talkabout problems, and thus hopefully preve n tu n r e s t . In practice though, these gat h e ri n g swere often tense and could erupt into vio-l e n c e .When President Alpha Oumar Konaréassumed power in 1992, he picked up thetradition of consulting with his subjects byholding open house on Fri d ays when peoplecould come to set forth their problems to theg ove rn m e n t . It is thought that EID was then atural offspring of these meetings, w h i c h ,i ncontrast with the tribal gat h e rings of ye s t e rye a r ,were always peaceful and sometimes helpedthe new president shape his gove rn m e n t a lp o l i cy.

To d ay, once a year all Malian citizens arei nvited to present their complaints beforep rime minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita andhis entire cabinet. For ordinary Malians, i t ’stheir one big chance to make sure their vo i c e sare heard.

Because only one out of eve ry five adultMalians can read, a d ve rtisements for the EIDare not only run in newspapers but also on

radio and T V.Ads are in all 13 of the country ’so f ficial languages and in 1998 269 peoplesent letters with their complaints.The relat i-vely low letter response may be due in part tothe fact that a trip to Bamako is too expensivefor any but the richest Malian to contem-p l at e .Another factor hindering part i c i p at i o na p p e a rs to be that many ve ry poor, i l l i t e r at eMalians have no access to letter-wri t e rs.M o r e ove r , despite new roads,more electri c i t yand other positive signs since the change ing ove rnment early this decade, m a ny poorerp a rts of the country have hardly been touchedby Konaré’s administration and thus may besceptical as to whether any contact at all withthe gove rnment might be of use.

A 15-hour sessionThe complaints at the most recent EID ran

a gamut of problems, from birth control torights for the elderly. A young man hadendured deplorable prison conditions;a fat h e rof four couldn’t afford the U.S.$15 per childrequired for school enrollment; a medical stu-d e n t ,while on a scholarship in Prague,was for-gotten by his country and left to fight for hislife with skinheads;victims of traffic accidentswondered if the roads would ever be safe; aman was fired due to a sexual harassmentcharge filed by a visiting A m e ri c a n ; h a n d i-capped persons hoped that bu i l d e rs wo u l done day take their needs into account; firs tw i ves spoke about rights granted to others(up to four wives are allowed in this mainlyMuslim country ) . Almost eve ry sector ofg ove rnment was addressed.

Although complaints are limited to fiveminutes each,e ve ry year EID goes on long intothe night and is broadcast live on ORT M ,the country ’s only television stat i o n .The 1998EID lasted 15 hours.R i n ging mobile phones,o u t bu rsts of cheers and jeers and interm i s s i o n swith songs and skits help keep spectat o rsawa k e . Most interventions are voiced inF r e n c h ,but because the option to speak in anyof the 13 languages is offered,some of the mostemotional pleas are voiced in the country ’smost widespread language, B a m b a r a .

After all complaints were heard,g ove rn-ment officials filed to the front of the Chines e -built Hall of Congress to present their res-p o n s e s.Unlike the many citizens who came incolourful bu bu s , and were often barefoot,

Once a year all Malians get a chance to take their tro u b l e ss t raight to the government in an event built on tra d i t i o n .Some call this forum a democra t i cp i l l a r. Critics beg to differ

* Journalist based in Paris

M a l i ’s direct Dietlind Lerner*

A palaver tree painted by the Senegalese artistMbor Faye.



most male ministers stuck to European-styleu n i f o rms of grey suits and ties.The two femalem i n i s t e rs (in the domains of communicat i o nand the family) turned up in traditionalcolourful dresses. One by one the ministersresponded to the complaints addressed totheir sector of gove rn m e n t .The gove rn m e n tpromised former Sergeant Coulibaly that itwould look into the request for compensat i o nfor his period of forced labour.

Each minister had received a copy of thel e t t e rs addressing their sector well before theEID began, and their responses frequentlysounded perfunctory.Often laws were invo k e dand details cited that only a legal expert couldf o l l ow.But responses were officially recordedand it is possible to review them in the year fol-l owing the EID.

After reviewing the promises made bythe ministers at the 1997 EID and at the pro-gress made in handling them six monthsl at e r , last ye a r ’s honorary jury felt sat i s fied thato f ficials were paying more than lip service toE I D. The 1997 jury had made 12 recom-m e n d at i o n s , including changes to inheri t a n c e

l aws to benefit wo m e n .EID seems to have hadat least an indirect impact on effecting changein several instances. For example, the gove rn-ment has committed itself to legal and othersteps aimed at doing away with excision, o nthe heels of complaints at previous EIDsabout female genital mutilat i o n . At a morep e rsonal leve l , m a ny individuals who com-plained about lack of electricity have hadtheir demands met. At an even more basicl e ve l , a man who complained earlier that hisradio had been stolen had the object return e dto him.

An international juryL e a d e rs of Mali’s opposition parties refuse

to attend the EID which they joke stands for“Espace d’Intox i c ation Démagogi q u e ”( Fo rum for Demagogic Intox i c at i o n ) .O p p o-sition part i e s , r a n ging from prominentMarxist-Leninist cells to ultra-conservat i vegr o u p s , claim that only answerable com-plaints are invited to Bamako and that mostm i n i s t e rial promises are not kept.This oftenhappens because of lack of money—Mali isone of the wo r l d ’s poorest countri e s. For theo p p o s i t io n , the EID is an expensive publicr e l ations ploy used to hide alleged gove rn-

mental corruption and attract outside approva lto the gove rnment (foreign assistance accountsfor 20 per cent of Mali’s national bu d g e t . )The letter from the 144 T i m buktu airp o rte m p l oyees was the second they’ve sent to theEID with the same complaint.

Laurence Ndadaye ,w i d ow of Buru n d i ’sslain President,C h ristine Daure-Serfat y, P r e-sident of the Intern ational Prison Observat o ry,political science professors from Pa ris andL o n d o n , a researcher from Germ a ny ’s MaxPlanck Institute and representat i ves of theI n t e rn ational League for Human Rights we r eamong those who sat together with Malianr e p r e s e n t at i ves of Muslim, P r o t e s t a n t ,C atholic and wo m e n ’s groups on the hono-r a ry jury. The jury ’s duty is to listen to allcomplaints and responses, and then retire tomake recommendat i o n s. I n 1 9 9 8 ,10 recom-m e n d ations were made including a requestt h at the education and health budgets bei n c r e a s e d ,t h at application of the laws againstexcision be speeded up and that more effortbe put into improving the penitentiary system.

Many individual promises go ignored,often due to the lack of money in this,oneof the poorest countries in the wo r l d .As oneminister put it:“We are a very poor but ave ry proud country.We ask that our citizenshave patience with us—that they put thegood of the country before the good of theindividual.” n

d e m o c ra c y

A togu na or “house of the spoken word ” in Mali.Carvings on the wooden pillars of this villagee l d e rs’ meeting place re p resent ancestors.



nIn the early 17th century, a Po rt u g u e s eCatholic missionary, Father Mariano,made strenuous efforts to convert the

people of the small kingdom of Sahadia, o nthe west coast of Madagascar, n o rth ofmodern-day Morondava. Despite lengthyexpeditions to the area, h owe ve r , he didnot succeed.

One of the main reasons for his fa i l u r e ,he noted in a letter, was the kingdom’s poli-tical system.“If the king at least had somea u t h o ri t y,” he wrote,“ we could have hopedfor some success. But the king only controlsthe area around his home town,he is poorand not feared,and his subjects do as theyplease without his daring to complain. Infa c t , the people form a kind of republic.Whenever a big local issue comes up, eve-ryone gathers to discuss it in a council.”

Father Mariano was talking about thefo k o n o l o n a, an ancient tradition which has tosome extent surv i ved in Madagascar to thisd ay (see the UN E S C O C o u ri e r, March 1999).But it is also found elsewhere in A f ri c a ,where it is known as the palaver.

A key socio-political institution of pre-colonial Africa, the palaver is an assemblywhere a variety of issues are freely debatedand important decisions concerning thecommunity are taken. Its purpose is tor e s o l ve latent and ove rt conflicts in cert a i nhighly specific situations.The participantsusually gather under a “ p a l aver tree” w h e r ee ve ryone has the right to speak and air theirgri e vances or those of their gr o u p. Acomplainant may opt to be represented by

The palaver is a traditional African institution of debate and consensus whose democratic potential has been overshadowed by modern political systemsa griot (a poet, storyteller and traditionalsinger), or some other spokesman.

The status of women in these assem-b l i e s , where the elders try to reach ac o n s e n s u s , va ries from region to regi o n .Among some peoples, women actively takep a rt in the decision-making.Among others ,they settle for advising their menfolk outsidethe assemblies.

One form of the palaver is theEthiopian d e b o, a mutual aid systemwhere the men of the community gettogether to help a neighbour (the abadebo, “father of the debo”) carry out amajor task. The group chooses a leader,who in turn designates a walle to do thetalking. He has to be eloquent and have agood voice because his job is to lead thesinging while the work is being done andprovide words of encouragement in parti-cularly arduous moments. He alsodefends the interests of the workers befo-re the aba debo and reports back to them.

Wider participationby women

Pa l ave rs operate in va rious way s ,e . g .t od e l i b e r ate about a marriage or a sale, s e t t l ea dispute, look at the circumstances of ac rime and then decide how to find andpunish the culpri t . But the underlying pri n-ciple does not change. This is one of thed e m o c r atic institutions of traditional A f ri c a nsocieties which many African intellectualsfeel could be used in the transition to am o d e rn political system, as long as it opensitself up more to women.

In his autobiogr a p hy, Long Walk toFreedom, South African President NelsonMandela stresses the part these assembliesp l ayed in his political career. “My lat e rnotions of leaders h i p,” he wri t e s , “ we r eprofoundly influenced by observing theregent and his court . I watched and learn e dfrom the tribal meetings that were regularlyheld at the Great Place.. . . Everyone whowanted to speak did so. It was democracy in

its purest form .There may have been a hie-rarchy of importance among the speakers,but everyone was heard. . . . As a leader, Ihave always followed the principles I firsts aw demonstrated by the regent at the GreatPlace.”

However, such institutions are usuallydismissed by A f rican politicians as old-fa s h i o n e d .A f rican leaders “tend to distru s tthe palaver and prefer a superficial legals t ructure imported directly from the We s t ,”s ays Cameroonian philosopher Je a n - G o d e-froy Bidima.

Since political independence in the1 9 6 0 s , young A f rican elites trained in“ w h i t e ”We s t e rn ways have encouraged theadoption of We s t e rn models, including legalcodes which are largely unsuited to A f ri c a nconditions. Even today, rural Africans findit ve ry hard to accept that a “ c u s t o m ”f r o moutside can override sacred customs inhe-rited from their ancestors.

“This is why bush people don’t bringtheir grievances to the courts (which onlyexist in the capital) and prefer to settle theirdifferences using traditional stru c t u r e s ,”s ays Ethiopian scholar Béseat KifléS é l a s s i é1. “So-called modern institutionsin Africa are like make-up on an old lady’sface: it only beautifies the surface.It’s liket rying to modernize a building by cleaningup the façade and doing nothing to renovat ethe inside.”

And so in Africa where, as the Malianscholar Hampaté Bâ once said,“differentworlds, different mentalities and differenteras are superimposed on each other,” thep a l aver is “a kind of parallel authori t y.”Mali is the only A f rican country where it hasbeen integrated into the modern politicalsystem. n

1 Editor of Consensus and Peace, UNESCO, 1980,and author of a study on “The palaver inEthiopia” published in the UNESCO quarterlyCultures,Vol.IV, No. 3, 1977.

In the shade Jasmina Sopova *

of the palaver t r e e


Long discussions are sometimes needed before aconsensus is reached.Here, a village meeting inSenegal.

Soaps witha Latin s c e n t


C O N N E X I O N S

nD u ring Ramadan last Ja n u a ry, s o m eof the mosques in Abidjan decided tob ring forward prayer time. T h i s

thoughtful gesture saved thousands of thefaithful from a painful dilemma—whetherto do their religious duty or miss the latestepisode of Marimar, a Mexican TV melo-drama which has turned the whole countryinto addicts of t e l e n ove l a s, soap operas madein Latin America.

“At 7.30 sharp in the eve n i n g, w h e nM a ri m a r comes on, e ve rything stops inCôte d’Ivo i r e ,” the evening newspaperI vo i r ’ S o i r noted a few months ago. T h e

p r o gr a m m e , which has attracted more localfans than the 1998 World Cup, arrived inA f rica after being a similar hit in Indonesiaand the Philippines. In 1997, its female starwas received in Manila like a foreign headof state.

M e a n w h i l e , on the other side of thep l a n e t , hundreds of thousands of Yu g o s l av shold their breath so as not to miss the tiniestdetail of the Venezuelan soap opera Kas-s a n d ra. “ We know Kassandra’s innocentand we want her trial stopped,” the towns-people of Kucevo, in southeastern Serbia,wrote to the Venezuelan government, witha copy to Serbian President Slobodan Milo-sevic.This is just one of many examples of

h ow fiction can invade real life and howfar people come to identify with it.

M a ri m a r and K a s s a n d ra are classicsamong the thousands of soap operas LatinAmerica has turned out over the past 40years at the rate of about 100 a year.Theyare love stories which have plenty of sub-plots and move along at a brisk pace.T h e i rc h a r a c t e rs overcome countless obstacles—social class, family ties, c o n flicts of interestand so on—to finally win through despite allthe ambushes of fat e . In all of them, m o r a-lity and goodness triumph and the bad guysget punished in a happy ending where eve-ryone is reconciled. In this respect they areve ry different from Anglo-Saxon soap

Actress Patricia Pillar, heroine of the Braziliansoap opera Rei do Gado (“The Cattle King”).

C h a rged with suspense and fantasy, Latin American soap operas are pouring off the production lines into living rooms all over the world

Araceli Ortiz de Urbina and Asbel López*

* UNESCO Courier journalists


C O N N E X I O N S

operas,in which conflicts get solved in thec o u rse of a few virtually self-contained epi-sodes, which means they can be broadcastin any order.

The plot of a Latin American telenovelaincludes a strong dose of suspense. Eachepisode has a dramatic ending to make surev i e we rs watch the next one.This tactic pro-duced a new way of making some pocketmoney when Kassandra was shown in theB a l k a n s. People in Bulgari a ,where the soapwas running 10 episodes ahead of Yu g o-slavTV, would tell their neighbours acrossthe border what was coming up next—inexchange for 10 dinars ($2).

The worldwide success of these soapssuggests they might be something morethan just a carefully-engineered collectionof dirty deeds and superficial emotions.Their hackneyed themes don’t oftenamount to anything of great artistic value,but the scripts aren’t always puerile andthe dialogue and characters are less pre-dictable than one might expect. Telenovelas

have accumulated 40 years of experienceand professionalism and turned into ani n d u s t ry which can buy the best actors ,s c ri p t w ri t e rs and directors in Latin A m e ri c a .

Urban violence and politicalcorruption

Since the 1970s, p r o d u c e rs have alsotried to go beyond classic melodrama andh ave adapted the works of wri t e rs like Mari oB e n e d e t t i , M a rio Vargas Llosa and Jo r g eAmado. In recent years,authors,directorsand scri p t w ri t e rs in the Latin A m e ri c a nfilm industry have brought new life to thegenre by broadening its range of subjectsand bri n ging it closer to real life. T h e s e“ n e w - wave ” t e l e n ove l a s dig straight intoissues like police corru p t i o n , i n f l u e n c e -p e d d l i n g, urban violence, impunity and therole of mafia money,as in last ye a r ’s Colom-bian production La Mujer del presidente(“The President’s Wife”) and, the ye a rb e f o r e , Nada pers o n a l (“Nothing Pe rs o n a l ” ) ,which was made in Mexico.

Soaps like this have sparked off sociald e velopments which in the past would havebeen unthinkable.Ve n e z u e l a ’s Por estas calles(“Through These Streets”), screened in1 9 9 2 , was about the decline of a corrupt andp owerful ru l e r , who reminded many vie-we rs of President Carlos Andrés Pérez, t h ec o u n t ry ’s president at the time. A n d r é sPérez was caught up in a corruption scandalwhich drove him from office two ye a rs lat e r“because of this soap among other rea-sons,” says its producer,Alberto Giarroco.In Brazil, O Salvador da Pat ri a ( “ S aviour ofthe Fat h e r l a n d ” ; 1989) was accused, o nthe other hand, of favouring the presiden-tial campaign of Inácio Lula Da Silva ,s i n c eit closely mirrored his life story as a half-lite-r ate peasant who rose to be a powerful tradeunion leader and presidential candidat e .“Lula”,however, was not elected.

A multi-million-dollar industry

This new trend, which is very popularwith Latin American audiences,shows thevitality of the soap tradition, which canaffect politicians and adapt to curr e n te ve n t s. The t e l e n ove l a, s ays Colombians c ri p t w riter Fe rnando Gaitán, has become“the continent’s main channel of commu-n i c at i o n ,d r awing larger audiences than thecinema, novels or the theatre.” But as wellas being a firmly-established regional crazewhich has now spread all over the world,itis also a multi-million-dollar industry.Thebiggest production companies—in Brazil,Mexico and Venezuela—present their wo r k

A world m a r ke t“Although selling telenovelas on the inter-

national market is a major cultural

i n d u s t r y, its economics are less important than its

cultural impact,” says researcher Daniel Mato,

of Ve n e z u e l a ’s Central University. “ They’re pri-

marily produced for the home marke t , where it is

hoped returns will recoup production costs.”

Mato found that advertising during soaps was the

main source of income for TV stations, while ear-

nings from foreign sales were only a tiny per-

centage of the income from advertising in the

home market (8 per cent in the case of Radio

Caracas Televisión and Ve n e v i s i ó n , in Ve n e z u e l a ,

5 per cent for Televisa de México and 2.5 per

cent for Brazil’s TV Globo).

Income from foreign sales per episode is much

less than the cost of production, which runs at

between $15,000 and $100,000, and only comes

in after the soap has become a success at home and

sometimes only many years later. A l s o, the sale

price varies from country to country, according to

the number of TV sets per head, p e o p l e ’s purcha-

sing power and especially the amount spent on

a d v e r t i s i n g . Last year, says Mato, the price of soap

operas sold abroad ranged from $7,000 to $9,000

per hour of air time in Spain, $2,550 to $5,000 for

Hispanic stations in the U. S. and between $1,200

and $1,500 in Hong Ko n g .This compares with the

U. S. soap D y n a s t y,which sells for $20,000 an epi-

sode to British stations, $1,500 to Norwegian ones

and for only $50 to Zambian and Syrian televi-

s i o n .

Mato admits that despite being economi-

cally just icing on the cake, “the soaps that Tele-

visa de México sold abroad in 1997, for example,

earned about $100 million,” only a little less than

the BBC earned from selling its own programmes,

and a respectable figure next to the $500 million

earned from such sales by each of the transna-

tional TV giants Warner Brothers, Paramount and

Universal.

The advance of globalization has boosted

worldwide distribution of soaps and opened up

new markets in Asia and the Middle East. T V

Globo says the economic crisis in Asia has gene-

rally increased demand there because imported

goods are cheaper than home-made productions.

But the field is increasingly competitive. C o u n-

tries which until now were just importers, l i ke

S p a i n , G r e e c e, Tu r key and the Philippines, a r e

starting to turn out their own soaps and challen-

ging Latin A m e r i c a ’s hold on the marke t . To hang

on to their position, the Latin American firms are

looking for new partners. Currently in the works,

for example, is a co-production by China and

Brazil about a young Chinese man who falls in

love with a Brazilian girl and goes to Brazil to woo

h e r.And so begins another episode in the history

of the soap opera. n


C O N N E X I O N S

at international television trade fairs andh ave sales offices in Miami and Europewhich distribute their products over two-thirds of the globe (see box).

Prime time productions

Brazil’s TV Globo is perhaps the mosttypical of these firms and has sold teleno-velas to 123 countries, according to itsi n t e rn ational sales director, O r l a n d oMarques. The TV Globo telenovelas arescreened from six in the evening on andtheir 160 or so episodes cost between$50,000 and $60,000 each to make. Thelocal viewing audience is around 80 mil-lion people. A 30-second pri m e - t i m eadvertising spot when the soaps are onthe air costs $60,000 or so.TV Globo hasfour recording studios and a script-wri-ting staff of about 1,500.While the soap isshowing, polls and discussion groups areheld in several cities to gather viewers’opinions and suggestions. Telenovelas wereresponsible for almost $1.6 billion inbillings for 1996, 60 per cent of BrazilianTV’s ad billings. “Without telenovelas, TVGlobo might not exist,” says Jorge Adib,the company’s former international salesdirector. This is true of Latin Americantelevision overall.The soap opera industryhas helped train professionals and highlyspecialized technicians, while also encou-raging the emergence of a Latin Americanstar system.

L atin A m e rican soaps really took offworldwide in the 1980s when, after conque-

ring the European market, they began tointerest A r a b ,A f rican and Asian countri e s.N ow they are as much a symbol of Lat i nA m e rica as salsa and football. Some are tre-mendous hits, like the Brazilian soap E s c l avaI s a u ra in countries as different as China(where it was shown for the first time in1980 in Mandari n , and again in 1983),Poland and Cuba. O t h e rs , like Ve n e z u e l a ’sC ri s t a l, which has been shown seven times inS p a i n ,n e ver seem to lose their populari t y. L o sRicos También Llora n (“The Rich Cry To o ” ) ,a Mexican production, p r oved a real tear-jerker in Russia, where two-thirds of Mos-c ow ’s impove rished inhabitants saw thatmoney doesn’t always buy happiness.To p a c i o( “ To p a z ” ) , from Ve n e z u e l a , has been soldto 45 countri e s.

What’s the secret of their success? Dogr owing demand and low production costsexplain their extraordinarily wide distri bu-tion? Or is it, as some believe ,t h at Latin exo-ticism and emotional exuberance draw theviewers? “It’s a fact that stories with lots oflocal colour, showing typical Latin Ame-rican scenes and people,are most popularin the rest of the wo r l d ,” s ays researcherDaniel Mato.

The current success of Brazil’s Rei doGado (“The Cattle King”), set in the 19thcentury during the war between landow-n e rs and landless peasants, a n dC o l o m b i a ’s Café con Aroma de Mujer(“Coffee with the Scent of a Woman”)which tells a love story amid the ups anddowns of big players in the coffee indus-try, seems to confirm this. Some, likeH e n ri N’Koumo, a journalist on theAbidjan newspaper Fraternité Matin, sayTV soaps are popular “because theytouch very deep chords. Despite culturaldifferences, people feel very comfortablewith these tales. They prefer them to theFrench ones which they find too intellec-tual.”

Filipino columnist Conrado de Quirosa gr e e s. “Filipino soaps are too fa m i l i a r.American soaps are too alien. Latin Ame-rican ones are neither,” he say s.They do notfall into the ove r - s o p h i s t i c ation of A m e-rican super-luxury or the intellectualismof European productions, but still allow

+ …l Robert C. Allen (editor), To Be Continued...

Soap operas around the world , Routledge,London and New York, 1995.

l Daniel Mato, Telenovelas: Transnacionalizaciónde la industria y transformaciones del género(“Telenovelas:transnationalization of theindustry and trasnformation of the genre”) inN. García Canclini, Industrias culturales eintegración latinoamericana (“Culturalindustries and Latin American integration”),Grijalbo publishers, Mexico, 1999.

l Nora Mazziotti, La industria de la telenovela,Paidós publishers, Buenos Aires, 1996.

people to escape from a humdrum exis-t e n c e .The Manila Daily Inquirer n e w s p a p e rs ays M a ri m a r o f f e rs relief to Filipinos“ t rying to escape from the ugliness of theirs u rr o u n d i n g s , the ugliness of their pove rt y,the ugliness of their public officials.”

A real senseof complicity

All t e l e n ove l a s are built around topicswhich “ h ave existed since the beginning ofhuman society,” s ays Arquímides Rive r o,one of the founders of the genre in Ve n e z u e l a .These unive rsal situations and the feelingof identific ation with a story inspired by reallife without being a carbon copy of it explainsthe popularity of soap operas with such aneclectic range of audiences. V i e we rs livethrough the sufferings and misfortunes of thec h a r a c t e rs and develop a real sense of com-plicity with them.

“ W h at I like about M a ri m a r,” s ay sLigaya Magbanua, who works in a Manilarestaurant, “is that she has the same pro-blems as we do. S h e ’s poor like us. H e rhouse was burned down.They mistreatedher.They degraded her. She’s almost Fili-pina.”

Perhaps the main reason for this successis to be found in the rationale and ethics ofm e l o d r a m a . Researcher Nora Mazziottis ays viewe rs follow for months the mishaps,i n j u s t ic e s , d a n g e rs and threats which thec h a r a c t e rs endure before savo u ring with themthe ultimate triumph of love and justice—o b s e rving that in the make-believe wo r l d ,and maybe nowhere else, t h e r e ’s justice.T h at ’s something to be happy about. n

Lucilia Santos and Rubens de Falco in a scene from Esclava Isaura(“Isaura the Slave”).

‘ What I like about Marimar is that she has the same problems as we do. S h e ’s poor like us. Her house was burned down. They mistreated her.They degraded her.S h e ’s almost Filipina.’


T A L K I N G T O …

Like many or your generation,you trace your political awakening back to the UK miners’ strike of 1984-85. But surely it stems back to yourchildhood, growing up in a working classfamily but attending an elite school on a scholarship. You were part of the“deserving poor”, deemed worthy of a first-class education.

This kind of experience gi ves you a ve ryrapid education about class. . . . All yo u rm ates at home think yo u ’re posh and all thepeople at school think yo u ’re common. S oyou find yo u rself caught in the middle. Ithink you’ll find that many comedians, in par-t i c u l a r ,h ave this sense of being an outsider.

Two heroes of mine were both outsiders :Oscar Wilde,an Irishman who lived in thecream of English high society, and DaveA l l e n , a brilliant comedian in a similar posi-t i o n .Allen did this wonderful routine whichI think sums it up.

H e ’s on stage in London and say s ,“ We l l ,I tell Irish jokes. And I get in trouble for tel-ling ’em. But I think ‘sod it! If you cannotlaugh at yo u rs e l f, w h at ’s the point?’A roundof applause from the studio audience.

So he starts telling Irish jokes.“ Two pad-

dies leave Dublin to go to work in London.The collective IQ of Dublin halves ove r-n i g h t .”A big round of applause.“ Yo u ’ ve gotto be able to laugh at yo u rs e l f, h ave n ’t yo u ? ”he say s. Another big round of applause.

Allen goes on. “When the two get toLondon, the IQ there doubles overnight.”Smaller round of applause. “I thought weagreed that you’re supposed to be able tolaugh at yourself.”

This catches the audience completelyu n aware of their own bigotry. T h at ’s theeye of the outsider.

Your brand of stand-up comedy seems tomean getting up on a soap box todenounce wrong-doing. Why?

My tour manager always used to say,“ I t ’s in the genes, m at e .”You see my dad wa sa lay preacher and my gr e at gr a n d fat h e rwas a Baptist preacher which I think isfunny. I’ll start to worry about it if my sondecides to be a stand-up.

Seriously, do you have to focus on politicalissues in your work?

Every single thing that anyone says onstage belies their world view. It’s a political

decision to believe that people just want agood night out without having to think.The person on stage who tells jokes por-t r aying women in a certain way has made apolitical decision to reinforce stereotypesinstead of challenging people to think other-wise.That performer is saying,“I want theeasiest ride possible. I want mass adula-tion on the back of you (the audience) nothaving to think.” The difference is that Iwant mass adulation on the back of peoplehaving to think.

How do you design a TV comedy show tomake people think?

We look at the series as our own “stateof the nation”broadcast.It’s our interpre-t ation of where Britain is and where we arein relationship to the world.

We try to get in a position where wecan ask questions that will illuminate then ature of power in that situat i o n .With Sel-l a field nuclear processing plant, the firs tthing we did was to prove contamination(see box) by having samples of earth fromaround the site analysed. We could thena s k , “Is there a problem with the trainsrunning through that area to transport the

British TV comedian Mark Thomas uses pranks and stunts to expose questionable government and business pra c t i c e s. Thomas says this is democracy in action, b u this victims don’t always agre e

Mark T h o m a s :method andmadness of a TV c o m i c


plant’s nuclear waste? Or is there a widerproblem? Is the site irr a d i at e d ? ”The autho-rities wo n ’t answe r. This is a bri l l i a n ts i t u ation in which we really get undern e at hthe mask of public relations.The officials’silence actually says that they’re fri g h t e n e dof the answer.

In the last three years, you’ve evolved frommerry prankster to political satirist andnow you’re an information junky. Whathappened?

In the begi n n i n g, the show was about ustaking ri s k s — t u rning up at a cabinet minis-t e r ’s home at a quarter to seven in the mor-ning in a tank asking if he could help use x p o rt it to Iraq. Or turning up in Yo r k-shire during a drought with a tanker filledwith water as a “ gift from the people ofE t h i o p i a ” after Britain pri vatized the wat e rwo r k s.We were drawing out the stupidity ofthe situation.

But the next year, we wanted to refinethe show.There were bits which I was veryproud of but it wasn’t mature or rigorouse n o u g h .There wa s n ’t enough inform at i o n .So in the second year, we really wanted tobe factually accurat e .N ow in this last ye a r ,we wanted to go a step further and do sto-ries that people have n ’t heard about

elsewhere. So we’ve ended up being acci-dental journ a l i s t s.We didn’t intend for thisto happen. But now that it has, we quite likei t . Do bad for good—that ’s basically theethos of the show.

Nine times out of ten,I think the mosti m p o rtant thing is to actually ask the ques-tion and get it into the public domain.Noam Chomsky, A m e rican linguist anda c t i v i s t ,d e s c ribed it ve ry succinctly when hesaid that the media reflect the dominantinterests in the political climate. . . . Whoowns the media? What are their interests?W h at are the interests of the ruling elitet h at they’re working with? How are theysetting the political agenda? Look at anytelevision programme that deals with sup-posedly serious political news and yo u ’ l lfind interviews with gove rnment spokesmenor women on an initiat i ve or piece of legi s-l ation that they’ve creat e d . M aybe they’lladdress an issue the gove rnment is beingattacked about. But nearly all the interv i e w swill be done with politicians, in studios withr e p o rt e rs who have to come back to thosesame officials the next week for more news.

If they decide to actually question therelationships of power instead of focusingjust on the intricacies of elite policy, thent h e y ’re quite often going to run into trouble.

But in staging the event, aren’t yousacrificing objective and balancedreporting?

If you take the ideas of objectivity,balance and impartiality to their logical


“It’s like brain surgery with a hammer,” aproducer once said when describing MarkThomas’ television show, a mix of filmedstunts and improvisation before a studioaudience. Recent highlights include:

m Menwith Hill Military BaseThis sprawling complex of what looks likegiant golf-balls has been reported by Britishbroadsheet newspapers as the world’s largestelectronic monitoring station.It is owned bythe British defence ministry but reportedlyoperated by the U.S. National Security Agency.Since 1996,members of parliament andconcerned citizens have raised questions aboutactivities at the base. Officials, citing securityreasons, have been tight-lipped.Access to thebase is limited to officials with the highestsecurity clearance. But Thomas discovers thatthe air over the base is not restricted.So hetakes a tour in a hot-air balloon and laterinvites 500 or so fans for guided visitsscheduled to lift off this July 4th.

m British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL)Local residents call Thomas when they findtrains used to transport radioactive waste fromthe nearby Sellafield nuclear processing plant(owned by BNFL) parked too close to home forcomfort. Thomas decides to investigate.

As a conductor leaves the train to open agate at a level crossing, Thomas and 40camouflaged friends pull up in armoured carsand a helicopter as “the People’s Nuclear TrainMilitia”pledging to protect the train fromterrorist attack.

Next,the team don white suites to collectsamples of earth along the tracks surroundingSellafield which are analysed by a scientist atthe University of Manchester who finds tracesof radioactive materials. BNFL officials refuseto meet with Thomas, who they maintain has“trivialized”a serious subject. Thomaslaunches a “telephonathon”,with journalistsand members of parliament barraging BNFLwith questions, essentially asking if the allegedcontamination is due to leaky containers in thetrains or wider problems with the nuclearplant.In a letter, BNFL maintains that alloperations are carried out in strict accordancewith UK and international standards.

m Defendory InternationalThomas and team set up a stand at this majorarms fair held in Greece under the guise of apublic relations firm with the theme: “Are youready when Amnesty International comesknocking on your door?”As various high-ranking officials visit the stand, Thomasvideotapes their discussions to offer anunusual look at the men behind the armstrade. A man who identifies himself on tape asZimbabwe’s Minister of Information,for

High j i n x

The owners of Bradley House wereexempted from paying capital taxbecause their estate was supposed tobe open to the public. Mark Thomas leda campaign to make sure that it was.

The making of a TV t ro u b l e - m a ke r



conclusion, then I believe you shouldhave the right to reply to every singleadvertisement. Every time an advert bypetroleum companies like Shell or Essocomes on television, then one and a halfminutes should be reserved for someonefrom the public to say what they thinkabout those companies and their environ-mental records.

The idea of objectivity doesn’t exist inmedia—just the veneer of it. One of thegr e atest quotes came from the British fil m -maker Ken Loach over a film he did aboutunion bosses and how often they betraythe wo r k e rs.There was a big row about thisfilm, with critics saying “You’ve got to bei m p a rt i a l ” and the union bosses say i n g,“ We demand the right to reply.” Ken Loachturned and said,“I am the right to reply.”

In most of the media, impartiality justmeans not being too critical of the preva l e n truling class perspective.

So your priority lies in being factuallycorrect.Impartiality is not a concern?

We are the balance. I don’t know manypeople who have done television pro-grammes about the pri vat i z ation of thenational healthcare system aside from iso-lated reports. On the case of the American

n Even the briefest sketch of Mark Thomas would

not be complete without a parenthetical guide

for those readers unfamiliar with the linguistic

subtleties of south London.

In short, Thomas discovers his first love—

stand-up comedy—at the age of 12 and begins to

produce and star in his own school productions.B u t

j o ke-telling veers towards trouble-making as

Thomas assumes the role of the herbert (slang for

a rebel without a cause, prone to drinking) when

he wins a scholarship as part of the “ d e s e r v i n g

p o o r ” to study at an elite school in Sussex.The snub

of upper class students is partially offset by the

wisdom of a drama teacher who helps to transform

t h e herbert into half a r t y - b o y (drama student

convinced of his god-given talent) by exposing

him to the works of Bertolt Brecht.

At Bretton Hall drama college,Thomas takes an

extracurricular course in political realism with the

miners’ strike of 1984-85. L i ke many of his genera-

t i o n , he is shocked into activism by the violence

and emotion of the strike, dividing his time bet-

ween picket lines and benefit shows for the Labour

m o v e m e n t .

After completing his studies, he works with

his father as a painter in London while building

a reputation as a stand-up comedian in clubs

before breaking into radio and television. Th r e e

years ago, he launches his own programme,“ Th e

Mark Thomas Comedy Product”, on Britain’s

Channel 4, a public TV station whose remit

requires it to cater for minority interests unde-

represented by other TV companies. He claims the

title of meeja hor (media whore) meaning

“someone who will do anything to be on the

t e l l y ” . The title is like an ironic wink to the

a u d i e n c e, alluding to the comic’s unease with his

role as “Channel Fo u r ’s pet rebel”.The station has

won a slew of awards for innovative program-

m i n g , b u t , says Th o m a s, the chase for ratings

has also brought a steady flow of imported sit-

c o m s. So when the critics howl, executives point

to Th o m a s.

With rising fame and salary,Thomas has moved

back to his old south London neighbourhood of Cla-

pham with his wife and young son.At the age of

3 5 ,t h e h e r b e r t has found a mission: “do bad for

g o o d ” . n

example, is recorded saying he gets “better at

lying every year”while another man who

identifies himself as the Deputy Commander of

the Kenyan Army says that “wife-beating is a

way of expressing love.”

In a mock workshop on “winning the war

of words” (dealing with the media), Thomas

videotapes a man who identifies himself as an

Indonesian general who admits to the use of

torture. The general was apparently so

impressed by the workshop that he later sent

a colonel from Jakarta to London to meet with

Thomas (incognito) and discuss the possibility

of offering a six-week media training course in

Indonesia. Both officials later deny statements

concerning torture and the use of UK military

equipment to violently quash civilian protests.

m Lie of the land

Under the UK’s Conditionally Exempt Land and

Building Scheme, owners of historic homes are

exempted from paying capital taxes if they offer

public access to their estates. But as Th o m a s

points out, i t ’s impossible to find out where

these homes are because all information

concerning an individual’s tax affairs is

c o n fid e n t i a l . So he launches an investigation in

Oxfordshire to uncover “ p u b l i c ”e s t a t e s, a n d

then traipses through with a bus full of visitors.

On March 3, 1 9 9 9 , the National Audit Offic e

recommended a review of the monitoring

arrangements for exempt estates.

m Do-it-yourself referendum

In the battle to save local hospitals from

closure under a government privatization

scheme, Thomas unearths an obscure parish

council law which obligates local authorities to

pay for and run a referendum on any issue. The

referendum is not binding but, says Thomas,

represents a powerful tool for local

communities to make their voices heard.After

explaining the details of this law on his TV

show, Thomas reports receiving 5,000 calls

within five days from people interested in

organizing their own referenda. The first has

taken place in Wakefield,a town in northern

England where local hospitals face the threat

of privatization.Over 80 per cent of those

people voting flatly rejected all privatization

schemes. The local organizers are now

launching plans for a national movement. n

High j i n x ( c o n t i n u e d )



spy base at Menwith Hill (see box), therewas absolutely no public accountability—hardly anyone knows that it’s there. Wewant the authorities to reply. I t ’s not a ques-tion of the programme having balance butthe programme having balance in relationto all the other stuff going around—the PRc a m p a i g n s ,a d ve rt i s i n g, g ove rnment links tobu s i n e s s , media collusion and so on.B e s i d e s , when yo u ’re doing a show onhuman rights abuse, for example, I reallydon’t see how you can give a torturer theright to reply.

But maybe the lack of information isn’t so much linked to a conspiracy butsimply a consequence of commercializingnews and treating information likea commodity?

N e w s , especially on television, is a com-modity packaged into the agenda of thosepeople (business and political elites) andtheir interests. But it shouldn’t be. Infor-m ation or “ n e w s ” is really about things thattouch your life, t h at shape what you do andh ave in the wo r l d . You have the right toimprove yourself through access to infor-m ation—this isn’t an affordable right ava i-lable to some people but not others.This isabout people’s natural ye a rning to aspire toa better life and to educate themselve s. A s kkids what they want to do when they grow

up and they say “Astronaut!”No one says,“I want to work in a toilet.”

To treat this inform ation as a commodityis to turn democracy into a joke. If demo-c r a cy is only about putting a cross on aballot paper once eve ry five ye a rs , then it’sa joke. D e m o c r a cy is not this rigmarole inwhich a politician puts on a public relat i o n svision on how much you need this person tobe elected. It is not about giving someonet h at you don’t know a mandate to do whatthey wa n t . D e m o c r a cy is about beingi nvo l ved in your community and having thei n f o rm ation to decide “this is what we wa n tand this is how we want to get it.”

Some people criticize this view and say

that if you take it to the final degree, you’llh ave committees on how to run your street.I do not have a problem with that.

In your shows, there is always a very clearlydefined “bad guy” or “evil empire.” Whenwill you turn the spotlight on theaudiences’ own contradictions? The Britishgovernment is now recognizing that thereis institutionalized racism in the policeforce, for example. Yet people continue toinsist,“We’re not racist.This isn’t ourproblem.”

Yo u ’re ve ry right to say that . It is withouta doubt that a majority of people in Bri t a i n ,at some leve l , are racist. But as a whiteman, do I then say, “Right, I’m going tochallenge my own preconceptions on stage.”

I don’t see it as my role as a comedianto dredge my psyche to bring these thingsto the fore. Also if you have a culture ofracism, the lead has to be taken primarilyfrom the top to stop it. The relat i o n s h i pb e t ween racism and power is immenselyi m p o rt a n t . So instead of doing a showa s k i n g, “is my next door neighbour racist?”,it would be more important to focus onthose people who pretend to be accoun-table, but aren’t fully accountable.

What do you think of the criticism that theshow attacks the status quo but fails tooffer an alternative?

At the end of about half the show s , weoffer a way of joining in the protest.W h e nwe did the show on the referendum to save

t wo hospitals from pri vat i z ation (see box ) ,we ended with an offer to help people inother communities by giving them thei n f o rm ation to organize their own refe-r e n d a . F i ve days lat e r , we received 5,000c a l l s. This isn’t just about challengi n ga u t h o rity because we have the budget to dos o — w h i c h , by the way, is ve ry small int e rms of television. I t ’s about giving peoplei n f o rm at i o n .T h at ’s the starting point forc h a n g e . As far as I’m concern e d , i t ’s a

Mark Thomas and camouflagedfriends hold up a train transporting radioactivewaste.

‘ D e m o c racy is not this rigmarole in which a politician puts on a public relations vision on how much you need this person to be elected. It is not about giving someone that you don’tknow a mandate to do what they want. D e m o c racy is aboutbeing involved in your community and having the information todecide “this is what we want and this is how we want to get it”

* The Export Credit Guarantee Department is a British government department whichfacilitates UK exports by making available export credit insurance to British firms engagedin selling overseas.



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major achievement to get people to unders-tand something like the export credit gua-rantee scheme* in which the gove rn m e n tw rites off the debt of va rious regimes to keepthe profitability up of British companies dea-ling in arm s. People care about issues likea rms deals, nuclear pollution or A m e rican lis-tening bases.They want change.

We ’re also say i n g, n e ver get nicked,n e ver get arr e s t e d . So when we produce as h ow, e ve rything is done legally. If I geta rr e s t e d , I’m a TV mart y r. I ’ ve got Channel4 (see box) law ye rs backing me up to theh i l t . But if someone is arr e s t e d , t h e y ’re int r o u b l e .T h at ’s not what this show is about.We are not saying that to get invo l ved yo uh ave to be “ s p e c i a l ” . For example, we ’r egoing to have between 500 and 1,000people coming on July 4th for a balloontour of the Menwith Hill base. And it’s alll e g a l .The idea is to get people to join in andtake this protest as far as we can.

Doesn’t this work bring a new set ofresponsibilities?

Aaahah! May b e . A lot of people write ina s k i n g,“can you help?”You think,“Hell! Myheart bleeds but there’s nothing I can do.”Someone wrote in asking for help to gett r a f fic lights installed in the neighbourhood.It’s an absurd world when people have tow rite to a comic for help. But I think the res-ponsibilities are to the team and to myselfto keep our integrity.

Do you find yourself becoming self-righteous?I’m very aware that I now get paid reallywe l l . I’m a perform e r , so I’ve got an ego thesize of London. But the programme is notjust about my gr at i fic at i o n .I t ’s about doingsomething of worth. To avoid getting tooself-righteous, we kind of undermine thep r o gr a m m e ’s wo rth by laughing.We ’re nothard-nosed journalists. But somewhere inour wo r k , there is truth or part of the tru t hor a truth.And that’s important to us. Butat the end of the day, we ’re TV monkeys get-ting paid.

I don’t think we take ours e l ves toos e riously but we do get obsessed by thewo r k .When we did the show about ColonelHalim Nawi [an Indonesian military at t a c h éwho came to London to consult T h o m a swho was posing as a PR specialist, see box ] ,I was absolutely obsessed with all the detailsin the sting. After the interv i e w, my wifeasked “ W h at did he admit to?” It was incre-d i b l e , I said—he admitted to using UK mili-t a ry equipment, to tort u r e , to the death often students and so on. My wife just satthere and said,“Those poor fa m i l i e s.”At thatm o m e n t , I realized that in all the details I’dlost sight of what was really at stake.

How do you get people to care aboutissues that may not touch them directly?Human rights groups invest in majorcampaigns with giant posters of maimed

and starving children. But rather thanengage people, this often makes them turnaway.

It has to relate to people’s live s. Fo re x a m p l e , we went to the arms fair in Greecedisguised as a public relations firm (seeb ox) not to just bring back general fa c t sabout the numbers of weapons sold. Wewent to bring home inform ation say i n g,“these guys are tort u r e rs and they’re usingUK equipment.” We are licensing arm sabroad which are used for murder, r a p e ,genocide and torture and yo u, the tax-p aye r , h ave paid for it.Yo u h ave a choiceh e r e .

A lot of the human rights groups don’ttake this approach of making people res-p o n s i b l e . Unless you engage people at theirl e vel without being pat r o n i z i n g, you’ll neve rbe ve ry effective . Instead you’ll have a lot ofh a n d - w ri n gi n g .And there’s enough of thatalready.

Yo u ’ re like a plague politicians try toa v o i d . But if the show’s success continues,a politician with a bit of public re l a t i o n ssavvy could start to ask: “why hasn’tMark Thomas come and interviewed mey e t ? ”When that time comes,my wife has firm ins-t ructions on how to use the handgun.Phooom! n

Interview byAmy Otchet

L I S T O F S A L E S A N D S U B S C R I P T I O N A G E N T SSubs cr ipt ions can be paid to the subsc ript ion agent in y our cou ntry who wil l supply rat es i n local currenc y on re q u e s t

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Photo albumbilingual , 82 pp.58 black and white photos 29.7 x 21 cm135 FF (US$24)

Women speak up against war. Thisbook supports their voices.Photographs from all corners of the world and short commentsby key spokespersons of the peace movement illustrate women’srejection of war and violence.

In Women Say No to Warthe camera is used to catch theimpact of war on women, to observe their courageousresistance and, above all, theirdesire to live in peace.

Preface: Federico MayorIntroduction: Ingeborg Breines and Breda PavlicConception and iconographical research:Dominique Roger

In the next issue

The UNESCO Courier is available on the Internet:

www.unesco.org/courier

D o s s i e r :Megacities of the South: the art of survivaln Streetwise in lawless Lagos

n Jakarta: speculation, expulsion, reconstruction

n Brasilia: a spreading siege mentality

n Delhi: self-managed middle-class neighbourhoods

n Shanghai’s millions of temporary residents

n Towards urban apartheid?

Features include:

n Madagascar’s undaunted street children

n SOS Space

n From Lascaux to Picasso: art’s universal rules

n Rural schools: Colombia’s new export

n Developing world debates Terminator seeds

n World literature on the Web

n Interview with Indian agronomist Gurdev Singh Khush:science for a famine-free world

Documents

The UNESCO courier; Vol.:52, 5; 1999unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001158/115858e.pdf20 1 . F r om science to innovation 20 Regina Reszka’s double life Manfred Ronzheimer 20 The