Science and Technology for development

Statement by Prof. M.G.K. Menon, Member of Parliament on October 11, 1999 in the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) of the United Nations.

Mr.Chairman,

We wish to associate ourselves with the statement by the G-77 & China on this agenda item No.98(d): ‘Macroeconomic Policy Questions: Science & Technology for Development. We have read with interest Secretary General’s report, as also the report of the Commission on Science & Technology for Development.

The era of globalisation, which has seen the emergence of global markets in goods, services and increasingly financial flows, is also an era of technological globalisation. Fundamental and far reaching innovations in information, communications and bio-technology are not only improving productivity and lowering costs, but are creating radically new ways of doing previously unimagined thins. The fusion of computing and communications technologies, especially through the internet, has diluted the traditional constraints of costs, time and distance, launching an era of global information networking. In bio-technology, the ability to move genetic material across species types has broken the bounds of nature creating totally new organisms with enormous but unknown potential and ethical imponderables.

These technologies, with far reaching implications for mankind, are in many ways propelling globalisation. It is increasingly apparent that they are replacing traditional and familiar avenues as the path to economic power. Indeed, the key to economic growth and prosperity in the next millennium will clearly be based on the access to and the ability to harness scientific and technological development.

We are already witnessing the manner in which access to and ability to tap these technologies is reshaping the global map to forge ahead. Internet users, for example, have risen from less tan 100,000 in 1998 to over an estimated 143 million within a decade. Exponential growth will continue. The advantages of this communication revolution, particularly as it turns digital, is unquestionable, promising as it does communications at lower and lower costs. As the Human Development Report this year has graphically pointed out, a 40-page document sent from Madagascar to Cote d’Ivoire would take a week to reach by courier and cost US 75/-, by fax it can be sent in 30 minutes and cost US$ 45/-. By e-mail, the same document can be sent in two minutes for less than 20 cents and can be repeated to a hundred others at no extra cost. Apart from speed and low cost cf communication, this technology has enormous potential in providing education through distance learning and tele-conferencing for developing countries which lack the resources to build up the more traditional repositories of knowledge, such as libraries, and enable them to keep abreast of latest developments.

The choice, therefore, is clear, but the real question is, ‘Do the developing countries have these choices in any real and meaningful manner?’ The question we need to ask ourselves is that if such access and ability to use scientific and technological developments is the key to fast track growth and provision of certain social services like education, to what extent have the developing countries been able to exercise these choices? A widely accepted measure of basic access to telecommunication is a tele-density of one for every hundred people. Ironically, as we enter the next millennium, a quarter of countries still do not have even this basic tele-density. It has been estimated that it would take some LDCs upto at least 2050 to achieve the tele-density of Germany and Singapore today. Beyond basic landline communications, the disparities are even more stark. In mid-1998, industrial countries which reflect 15% of the world’s population had 85% of internet users. North America alone, with less than 5% of all people, had more than 450% of internet users. By contrast, South Asia, which is home to over 20% of the world’s population, has less than 1% of the world’s internet users. Similarly, just 55 countries account for 99% of global spending on information technologies.

As an eminent commentator has noted, the central challenge before the global community, is that of mobilising global science and technology to tackle and deliver on the "crises of public health, agricultural productivity, environmental degradation and demographic stress confronting developing societies." In part this will require that the wealthy governments enable the grossly underfinanced and underpowered United Nations institutions to become vibrant and active partners of human development. The problem is that, for myriad reasons, the technological gains in wealthy countries do not readily diffuse to the poorest ones. Research and development of new technologies are overwhelmingly directed at rich-country problems. To the extent that the poor face distinctive challenges, science and technology must be directed purposefully towards them in today’s global set-up, that rarely happens. Currently, the international system fails to meet the scientific and technological needs of the world’s poorest. The result is a profound imbalance in the global production of knowledge: probably the most powerful engine of divergence in global well-being between the rich and the poor."

The computing/communications revolution has certainly swept through geographical boundaries, but we need to recognize the new barriers are emerging in their place. In an increasingly seamless global market place, two societies will now co-exist unless we remedy these disparities – a world of the privileged with high income, education, literacy, internet communications, accessing information and technology at lower costs and higher speeds, and others lacking access to even basic telecommunications as also the means to send and receive information electronically.

We in the UN need to take stock of these emerging disparities and seek to address this marginalisation through a pro-active policy. The Human Development Report this year points out that "the greatest danger is the complacent belief that a profitable and growing industry will solve the problem by itself." But the market will only make global citizens of those who can afford it unless we work to redress this situation. We have a unique opportunity in the UN to devise a framework that will facilitate the establishment of the necessary infrastructure in developing countries so as to enable them to be part of the technological revolution. The Human Development Report this year has made an innovative proposal for a bit tax on the data sent by e-mail. It has suggested that a marginal tax of one cent on hundred e-mail which contain a 10 kilobyte document each, would in a single industrial country, yield a revenue of ten billion US dollars annually. Global revenues, even calculated on e-mail traffic three years ago have been estimated at 70 billion US dollars. This is more than the total Official Development Assistance in any single year in this decade. This is an interesting proposal that has triggered controversy and while there may be significant operational difficulties, it raises valid prospects that we need to examine if we are to be credible in centrestaging development and in finding the financial resources, through international cooperation, to ensure that the benefits of science & technology are diffused equitably and harnessed for all humanity. Innovativeness in benefit should be in keeping with technological innovation itself on how to convert this new phenomenon into a truly global public god. Creativity is needed to bridge the huge chasm between human needs, scientific effort and market returns and interesting ideas are merging on approaches to long-term finance for international public goods, such as buy-back guarantees to the products of vaccine research enabling investments to be made.

Equally significant are the developments in bio-technology, particularly genetically altered crops, so-called GMOs/LMOs, which can inter alia reduce the need for polluting herbicides and pesticides dramatically, enhance food production and also possess vast potential for pharmaceuticals. Here again, far more work needs to be done. On the one hand, we need to collectively examine the long-term implications on the environment, particularly bio-diversity and on human wealth. On the other hand, we need to recognise that much of this technology is often derived from the bio-genetic resources and indigenous traditional knowledge in developing countries. It is ironic that at a time when the world has endorsed and seeks to enforce Intellectual Property Rights, we pay scant attention to the bio-piracy that is defrauding developing countries of financial resources that are rightly owned to them. It has been estimated that if just a 2% royalty were charged on genetic resources that had been developed in the South, in terms of indigenous knowledge, developed countries would owe more than 300 billion US$ in unpaid royalties for farmers’ crop seeds and more than 5 billion in US$ in unpaid royalties for medicinal plants. This is a conservative estimate for even as we speak, companies have agreed to 10% royalty rates for the right to bio prospect Yellow Stone National Park in the U.S.

There are several concrete examples of bio-piracy, one of which we can cite from my own country’s experience. In 1995, two researchers in the University of Mississippi Medical Centre were granted a US patent for using turmeric to heal wounds. The healing properties of turmeric are well-known and well documented in ancient classical texts and practised for thousands of years by ancient healers. Our historic heritage and documentary evidence ensured that we were successful in having the patent repealed but others may not be as fortunate, particularly where indigenous knowledge is enshrined in oral traditions.

It is imperative that we in the UN take stock of this situation and provide some direction to the debate that is taking place on these complex issues, both in the context of Convention on Bio-diversity, the Bio-safety Protocol, as also the review of TRIPS in WTO. If we value and seek to put a price on scientific and technological innovation, then we should not permit the silent theft of centuries of knowledge from developing countries.

Technological globalisation is undoubtedly revolutionising a range of economic activities from food production and pharmaceuticals, etc. to communications, but if globalisation is to be meaningful, our challenge in the UN is not to stand by as the market sets off a race to lay a claim to these technological and scientific developments but to fashion a viable international technological architecture that rewards and encourages innovation and technological advance, but not at the cost of marginalising the poorest, most vulnerable or enhancing disparities between nations.

We in India have recognized the crucial importance of science & technology as the critical determinant of development and long-term growth and are seeking to ensure that we remain on the fast track to knowledge based growth. Our booming software industry and exports reflect potential that the sector holds for developing countries. To be able to keep pace with scientific and technological globalisation, we have attempted a holistic policy seeking to overcome constraints of infrastructure. The focus of our efforts has been directed at improving the quality of science & technology, education and training at all levels, provision of fiscal incentives so that research is conducted out, by and within the production and service sectors, encouraging research in traditional occupations and, above all, implementation of programmes in the socio-economic sector which have a direct impact on the people. Our investment in R & D has increased over the last five decades from Rs.20 crores (US$ 2 million) in the early 60s to Rs.20,000 crores (US$ 2000 million) during the period 1996-97.

However, our efforts, as indeed those of other developing countries, are a minute fraction of our needs and requirements. It is imperative that such efforts at the national level be complemented by international rules of the game that take into account needs of developing countries for access to a broad spectrum, particularly state of the art technology in crucial areas of the social and economic sectors. Equally significant are the terms of such access. It is a matter of concern that, on the one hand, the cost of technology transfer to developing countries through the Intellectual Property Rights regimes has risen sharply and access constrained while, on the one hand, bio-genetic resources are being pirated with no effort to recognize similar rights and flowback of benefits to developing countries.

We also need to examine the inequities of a system where, in the 54,000 patents filed in 1997 with WIPO, industrial countries held 97% of all patents worldwide. It has been further estimated that more than 80% of patents granted in developing countries belong to residents of industrial countries. It should be a matter of global concern that the high cost of technology, through such regimes, is now serving not only to impede further innovation and technological progress with a greater local or national relevance in certain key sectors, but that further research and technological innovations are now hostage to the concerns of a few. To cite only one example, technological innovation leading to patents in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry has focussed increasingly not on the major health risks facing the world, but on cosmetic drugs or slow ripening tomatoes. Only 2% of health related research is devoted to pneumonia, diarrhoeal diseases and tuberculosis, although these account for18% of the global disease burden.

Another area of concern is that new technology regimes are being established unilaterally or plurilaterally. Developing countries increasingly face obstacles in accessing state of the art technologies with export restrictions on high technology being put in place by exclusive clubs of technology owners on the grounds of possible dual use. It is imperative that we address such exclusion and technology denial regimes and measures, since, in a knowledge intensive global economy, access to technology on reasonable terms determines whether countries can take advantage of technological globalisation. In this context, the Human Development Report this year has an innovative suggestion of a small levy on patents filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization. They have estimated that a levy of just US$100/- on each patent could have raised US$ 300 million in 1998 alone, generating resources which could be ploughed back into developing countries and facilitate creation of the necessary infrastructure, as also access to some of the vital technologies in areas such as health on reasonable terms.

It is from this perspective that we would urge that this year, in the biennial resolution, we attempt to move beyond the descriptive rhetorical exercise we find ourselves trapped in and make an effort to address far more meaningfully the real challenges in the area of science & technology and seek to harness this for our developmental concerns, which we all share. The recent World Science Conference organized by UNESCO was an important first step that we commend.