Science and Technology in
United States Foreign Affairs

Copyright © 1999
by Robert G. Morris


CHAPTER 14. The United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development (1979)
 

"A nation's...scientific activities are not mere  national property; they are international   possessions..."
Havelock Ellis


Science Conferences
The first treatment of science and technology for development at a UN conference was at Geneva in 1963, at the Conference on Science and Technology for the Benefit of Less-Developed Areas.9  Results were so meager that another conference was set for 1979 in Vienna, at the tail end of the United Nations' own campaign of science and technology for development, and was called UNCSTD (pronounced UNK-STEAD): the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development.  It was at UNCSTD that the United States presented the last of its initiatives of the 1970s.  The United States made long and detailed preparations for the conference for nearly three years.  Special personnel were appointed.

One hundred and forty-two countries attended.  While many scientists worldwide were generally sympathetic with developing countries' needs, and many participated in exchange programs and journeyed to developed countries to teach and perform research, the aims of the conference were political; that is, they were to convince developed countries to provide "access" to their science and technology, which sounded harmless until this was defined to mean in some cases free access to proprietary technology, including patents and know-how, and particularly in biomedical technology and pharmaceuticals.  The official U.S. response to this main LDC agenda was that it was willing to provide "access," but at a cost.

At the conference developing countries from Africa made the claim that technological knowledge, like space, the high seas, the deep seabed or Antarctica's minerals, is the "common heritage of mankind."  Developing-country politicians did themselves a disservice by emphasizing the political aspects of the conference rather than reaching out to the willing hands of apolitical scientists and scientific organizations over much of the world who wanted to work with their colleagues in developing countries to improve science there.

There was little discussion of science at the science conference, either developed countries' ability to provide it or developing countries' scientific needs.  What delegates might have accomplished is unknown but imaginable.  The universality of science was submerged by the universality of politics.  Science lost and politics did not win.

The report of UNCSTD, along with the paper describing the U.S. positions on the major points, are dreary documents.  Reserves, or reserved positions, on innumerable paragraphs by the United States frequently included the recommendation "drop" from the final document.  To underwrite their research and development the LDCs proposed a four-billion-dollar fund of which they also wanted control in the United Nations.  The fund ended up in the United Nations Development Program with a target for voluntary contributions of $250 million.  The fund attracted about $40 million, none from the United States. The United States, on the other hand, had its own initiative for UNCSTD to take the place of the fund.  This was the Institute for Scientific and Technical Cooperation (ISTC).

Institute for Scientific and Technical Cooperation
This institute would have been a U.S. federal agency dedicated to affording access to U.S. S&T knowhow and expertise.10  Proposed early in the Carter administration, ISTC was actually related to an earlier U.S. initiative, the proposal for the International Industrialization Institute (III) developed by the National Academy of Sciences-National Academy of Engineering (Chapters 11-13).  The NSF also participated in the design.  Early versions of ISTC had other names, such as the Foundation for International Technological Cooperation.

Its genesis and development were rocky; ISTC drew criticism in its various forms from budget officers, from scientists, from politicians, from bureaucrats, from the private sector.  But Congress authorized its creation in 1979 in time for it to become the centerpiece of the U.S. position at UNCSTD.  After this build-up the ISTC died shortly afterward when the U.S. Senate failed to fund it.  The residue of ISTC ended up in AID with $10 million to be disbursed by two officials annually, funding perhaps sixty grants a year for research and development in LDCs.  Support also went to Israel for financing cooperative research between that country and LDCs.

End of chapter 14.


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