Why city resilience will be an issue at Rio+20

[Abu Dhabi] Once, the word of the moment was sustainability, and within years sustainable development became a widely-used to concept. Now, the popular term is “resilience”, and the resilience of cities to environmental and social pressures is seen as a major issue for governments and peoples around the world.

This concept underlay many of the events at the Eye on Earth Summit in Abu Dhabi (12-15 December), culminating in a panel discussion, “Innovative Cities: Designing for Resiliency and Change”, in which the role of technology, green building and access to information were highlighted.

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Q&A: Achim Steiner on expectations for Rio+20

SciDev.Net speaks to UN Environment Programme executive director Achim Steiner at the Eye on Earth Summit (12-15 December) about next year’s Rio+20.

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Is Arab democracy essential for quality Arab science?

KAUST: an example of successful top-down science

There was lively debate, at a special session on the governance of science within parliaments at the World Science Forum yesterday (19 November), on whether democracy is essential for science to flourish in Muslim countries.

Scientists and parliamentarians attending the session, co-organised by UNESCO (the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and ISESCO (Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), heard that there was a correlation between the levels of human rights indicators and science, technology and innovation indicators in Muslim countries.

Levels of investment in science are much higher in relatively democratic Malaysia and Turkey, compared with those in Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, said Adnan Badran, president of Al-Petra University in Jordan.

But this was challenged by the chair of the session, Mustapha El Tayeb, president of Future University in Sudan, who said that Tunisia, where the Arab democracy movement started, already had, before the revolution, one of the highest investments in science in the region.

Badran replied that statistics without analysis can be misleading, and that in countries such as Tunisia, high investment in science can happen with a top down approach – which prioritises what the government needs and wants to do, not people or the scientists.

“The right political environment is needed to unleash the minds towards the unknown – this is research,” Badran said. He added that research and development need freedom of expression, the ability to talk, speak out, and think freely to fulfil its full potential.

Moneef Zou’bi, director-general of the Islamic World Academy of Sciences, from Jordan, said the Arab spring was a “failure of politics” and their “top down approach” to policymaking. But he admitted there were exceptions, where top-down initiatives have been successful, such as the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, and Education City in Qatar.

Mićo Tatalović, deputy news editor, SciDev.Net

 

Namibia science academy takes shape

Elmo Thomas, on the left.

Efforts to set up a Namibian academy of natural and social sciences started in earnest this year.

Elmo Thomas, deputy director in the Namibian ministry responsible for science and technology policy development, told me that a steering committee is busy working on the structure of the academy. The steering committee includes academics, higher education officials and other stakeholders.

“Obviously one of our first priorities is to promote networking, within Namibia and the world at large,” said Thomas.

He said the process to establish the academy will go through three phases: the first being the ground work, the second being the establishment of the academy and the third getting it working on projects. He hopes that the first phase will be completed early next year.

For him, the ASADI meeting is a learning experience. “At this meeting we have academies at various stages of development, academies that are two and those that are five years old – it is an opportunity to learn.”

Namibia’s academy may be some time to come – a similar initiative in Ethiopia launched in April this year took almost two years to get off the ground from concept to execution.

The Namibian project is being supported by the Germany Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of South Africa, the Namibian government and the Network of African Science Academies.

Munyaradzi Makoni, freelance journalist for SciDev.Net