While the United States, Europe, and Japan (known as the Triad) may still be leading the global research and development (R&D) effort, they are increasingly being challenged by emerging countries. This is one of the findings of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) 2010 Science Report, launched at the Organization’s headquarters on November 10, 2010, World Science Day.
The UNESCO Science Report depicts a rapidly changing landscape. While investment in R&D is growing globally (in volume), emerging countries are clearly gaining strength in science and technology. This can be seen especially in terms of Asia’s share of gross domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD).
Led mainly by China, India, and South Korea, Asia’s share increased from 27% to 32% between 2002 and 2007. Over the same period, the Triad has registered a decrease. In 2002, almost 83% of R&D was carried out in developed countries; by 2007 this share had dropped to 76%. This trend is even clearer when industry’s contribution to GERD is considered. Between 2000 and 2007, the private sector share of R&D spending, as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP), saw a sharp increase in Japan, China, Singapore, and especially South Korea, while it remained stable in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom and even saw a slight decrease in the Russian Federation and the United States.
“The distribution of research and development (R&D) efforts between North and South has changed with the emergence of new players in the global economy,” said UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova in her foreword to the report.
The proportion of researchers in developing countries increased from 30% in 2002 to 38% in 2007. Two-thirds of this increase is due to China alone. Today, Europe, the United States, and China each contribute 20% of the world’s researchers, followed by Japan (10%) and the Russian Federation (7%).
The developed countries have also seen their share of scientific publications drop from 84% in 2002, to 75% in 2008. During this period, China’s share more than doubled, increasing from 5.2% to 10.6%, even if the citation rate of its articles lags behind those in the Triad. The number of articles published by researchers in Latin America has also increased, mostly from Brazil.
This transformation is being helped by the extremely rapid development of the Internet, which has become a powerful vector for disseminating knowledge, particularly evident in emerging countries. “The rapid diffusion of Internet in the South is one of the most promising new trends of the Millennium,” said the report.
While the emerging economies have been content, until now, to carry out R&D activities outsourced from the developing countries, they have now moved on to a process of autonomous technological development and applied research. China, Brazil, and India have thus initiated simultaneous catching-up processes in industry, science, and technology. This has also meant the arrival on the world scene of multinational firms from emerging countries in sectors such as automobile manufacturing, consumer goods, and high-tech industries like aircraft manufacturing.
However, while more researchers and scientists are being trained in developing countries, they are not necessarily finding jobs in their country of origin. India, Turkey, some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and Southern Asia are particularly faced with this problem. At least one-third of African researchers were estimated to be working abroad in 2009.
Finally the report stresses the need to intensify scientific cooperation, particularly between countries in the South.
“I am convinced that, more than ever, regional and international scientific co-operation is crucial to addressing the interrelated, complex and growing global challenges with which we are confronted,” said Bokova in the foreword to the report. Increasingly, international diplomacy will take the form of science diplomacy in the years to come. “In this respect, UNESCO must and will pursue its efforts to strengthen international partnerships and co-operation, in particular South–South co-operation. This science dimension of diplomacy was one of the original reasons for including science in UNESCO’s mandate. It has fundamental significance for UNESCO nowadays, at a time when science has tremendous power to shape the future of humanity and when it no longer makes much sense to design science policy in purely national terms.”
Copies of the report can be obtained from the UNESCO Web site at www.unesco.org.
