|
|
|
|
CIAO DATE: 04/05/07
Nano-Diplomacy
by Peter Singer, Abdallah Daar, Fabio Salamanca-Buentello, and Erin Court
Innovations in science and technology have a critical impact in fields related to sustainable development, such as health monitoring, energy management, agricultural productivity, pollution control, food processing, and sanitation upgrades. Calestous Juma, chairperson of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Science, Technology and Innovation emphasized that “it is inconceivable that the UN Millennium Development Goals can be achieved as planned by 2015, or even that significant gains can be made in meeting health and environmental concerns, without a focused policy for science, technology, and innovation.”1 The most recent addition to our science and technology toolkit is nanotechnology, the study, design, creation, synthesis, manipulation, and application of functional materials, devices, and systems through control of matter at the nanometer scale—that is, at the atomic and molecular levels.2 However, despite rapid advances of nanotechnology in fields such as consumer electronics and cosmetics, there is no coherent program linking nanotechnology to global developmental challenges.
Nanotechnology, if exploited appropriately, can bring tremendous benefits to developing countries. Our group at the Canadian Program in Genomics and Global Health has extensively studied the role of nanotechnology for the developing world. In collaboration with an international panel of experts, we conducted a foresight study in 2003, which identifies and ranks the ten nanotechnologies most likely to benefit developing countries in the 2003-2013 period.3 To evaluate the impact of these ten nanotechnologies, we mapped them to the UN Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight quantifiable development targets that all UN member states have committed to achieve by 2015.
The successful application of nanotechnology toward sustainable development challenges depends upon the skillful collaboration between nations, in particular between developed and developing countries, which we refer to as nano-diplomacy. This article will show that nano-diplomacy must go beyond international treaties and conventions in order to create bottom-up collaboration between governments, industries, civil societies, and academia in both the developed and the developing world. The success of linking nanotechnology to development applications also depends on how effectively developing countries address the issues of safety standards, intellectual property, and public engagement.
Local Responses to Nanotechnology. To address local needs, developing countries need a policy that is focused on technology innovation, and not merely technology transfer. As Forbes Magazine publishes another year’s “Top Ten Nanotech Products”—featuring foot warmers, golf balls, and personalized skin care—developing countries need their own nanotechnology innovation systems to create products most responsive to local priorities.
Local nanotechnology initiatives present an encouraging picture. Our survey of nanotechnology activity in developing countries highlights many cases of successful partnerships between local industries and scientists and researchers to develop locally relevant nanotechnology products.5 For instance, nanotechnology has been a priority of the Chinese government since the late 1990s. Its national nanotechnology plan has strong funding from programs like the National 863 Hi-Tech Research and Development Plan and the Knowledge Innovation Program. China has also established numerous national centers for nanotechnology research and development, including one currently under creation at Tsinghua University, located near the Tsinghua Science Park.6 This Science Park is a national “innovation model” that links industry and researchers in order to accelerate and sustain innovation in strategic core technologies, including nanotechnology. As a result of its focused efforts, China has over 800 nanotechnology-related companies, and the country is a patent leader in this field.7 South Africa has also adopted a national nanotechnology strategy to address industrial and social priorities in the areas of health, water, and energy through a focus on nanotechnology applications.8 Thailand’s National Nanotechnology Center, located in the Thailand Science Park in Pathumthani, is an autonomous body under the government’s National Science and Technology Agency and aims to apply nanotechnology for economic and human development.
Some have wrongly argued that nanotechnology will upset developing-country export markets that rely heavily on agricultural products and raw materials like rubber, since the demand for these primary commodities will decrease as nanotechnology produces cheaper laboratory- created substitutes. The result will be that nanotechnology will displace poor agricultural, factory, and mine laborers, among others.10 On the contrary, advances in science and technology have inevitably brought about the automation of manual tasks. Thus, the decrease in manual labor is a natural consequence of any technology, not just nanotechnology. In both developed and developing countries, the workforce has necessarily adapted to the changes derived from successive waves of technology. Local innovation offers the best approach to maximize the benefits of nanotechnology for the developing world, and these potential gains warrant a more appreciative outlook toward nanotechnology’s role.
Peter Singer is Sun Life Financial Chair in Bioethics and Director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics.
Abdallah Daar is Director of the Program in Applied Ethics and Biotechnology at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics.
Fabio Salamanca-Buentello is a Mexican physician and a member of the Genomics and Nanotechnology Working Group of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Science, Technology, and Innovation.
Erin Court is a research assistant in the Canadian Program in Genomics and Global Health and a member of the Task Force.