30. A new vision

Through the Platform for International Education (PIE), Dutch universities and applied universities (‘hogescholen’) aim to support and coordinate their activities directed at higher education in developing countries. Last Tuesday (June 22), the Platform organized the seminar “Knowledge for Development”. It was a step on the way towards a “new vision on knowledge capacity building in higher education for development.” The background paper of the seminar explains that the need for a new vision arises from the fact that the realities of knowledge and higher education are changing and that the old concepts of commitment to development are under pressure. Giving support to scattered projects is no longer seen as adequate.

The relevant changes in the world are mainly described in terms of increases. Globalization increases, and so does mobility, the development of global networks and partnerships, the demand for higher education in developing countries (which the paper describes as not just increasing, but exploding), the intensity of knowledge and innovation, IT and access to knowledge, commercialization of knowledge and education, competition between institutions of higher education, the tension between knowledge as an instrument and knowledge as Bildung. Increasingly, also, new innovations and new knowledge originate in and are aimed at developing countries. This is “bottom-of-the pyramid” innovation and if this trend continues, it may deeply change our views of innovation. As Luc Soete explains in International Research Partnerships on the move, the old idea that innovation is the outcome of new technology is losing its dominance. Innovation increasingly needs to be seen as the ability to re-use and recombine existing pieces of knowledge, which is sometimes referred to as “innovation without research”. Bottom-of-the-pyramid innovation also importantly involves social innovations, such as micro-credits.

Given the complex web of trends and changes, increases and (implicit)decreases, it may seem close to impossible to find the right leads and elements for a new vision on knowledge and development. But I think that, on the contrary, the core of what is needed is simple: it is to adopt a global policy perspective on knowledge, innovation and higher education. Knowledge-for-development will be integrated automatically in such a perspective. In other words, I think the AWT report I discussed earlier (# 26, 27, 28), which recommends such a global policy, points the way.

Regarding knowledge and innovation from a global perspective is radical as well as simple. It means that, on the overarching level, the gap between “we” and “they” (see # 3) vanishes, as any “we” is embedded in a global whole. Valorization takes a global instead of a national perspective.  Yet the implication is not that self-interest disappears, but “only” that the interests of others are added. The crucial moral distinction is not between self-interest and other-interest, but between self-interest-combined-with-other-indifference and self-interest-combined-with-other-interest, as I argued earlier (# 27 & 29). Such “enlightened” self-interest amounts to the search for win-win policies that is advocated by the AWT report.

The AWT report had a prominent place in at least one of the workshops of the PIE-seminar, the one which concentrated on the theme of “key areas”. Concentrating international cooperation on key areas of Dutch expertise, in partnership with specialised institutions in developing countries, is a clear road to benefit for both sides, the AWT report recommends. The discussion illustrated that this recommendation comes with dilemmas. For example, such an approach threatens to leave out groups and institutions that want to support educational capacity building in a more general way. It was also feared that it leads to intractible difficulties in the appointment of key areas. Paul Diederen of AWT, (co-)author of the report, defended the key area approach, and a bottom-up approach to key areas, but also admitted that the AWT-frame leaves many questions open. 

Many more difficult questions are inevitable in the elaboration of this approach. For example, finding themes and questions which are both challenging for researchers in developed countries and helpful for developing countries can be very hard. The Ghana-Dutch Health Program and Bart Knols’ evaluation of malaria research (see # 8 ) illustrate this difficulty.

But such difficulties do not affect the core of the shift that is needed to overcome the 10-90 gap in genomics.  That core is not located on the level of genomics itself (see # 22, 24, 28). It consists of an overall policy shift to a globally oriented perspective on science and innovation.

29. Esteem and morality

When people are in competition, and their self-esteem depends on the outcome, the battle will absorb a large share of their energy and attention; and to that extent they cannot afford real interest for others. I think that the pervasiveness of the need for esteem should not be a reason for moral cynicism; it is an urgent reason for an accepting attitude, and for the moral heralding of mixed motives. I wrote this in post # 27, and I will now argue it more extensively.

Esteem and reputation are basic human needs and it can be argued that these needs are at the heart of the phenomenon of eternal scarcity: people are in perennial competition for the scarce good of esteem. The Dutch philosopher Rutger Claassen takes this perspective on scarcity in a very interesting book: Het eeuwig tekort (“the eternal deficit”) of 2004. He starts his analysis with economics, which has introduced a view of scarcity as a fundamental and generalized phenomenon (as opposed to a view of scarcities as concrete and temporary). Basically, our wants and needs are boundless. Utilitarianism and liberalism have contributed an enthusiastic appreciation of these boundless needs and wants. In a liberal anthropology, this basic human drive comes from the inside; it originates in the desire to develop one’s capacities and talents. This is a one-sided view, since it neglects that desires also have a social origin. The need for power or reputation is a separate, basic and powerful driver of personal development and this in turn is an important reason for competition, since these “positional goods” are inherently scarce. Liberalism acknowledges competition, and takes a sunny view on it; competition is cherished because it stimulates the flourishing of human talents and excellence. But the darker sides of competition are neglected, because scarcity is neglected: scarcity goes underground in liberalism, as Claassen expresses it. In order to understand the scarcity, and to find ways of dealing with it, we need an anthropology which acknowledges the social backgrounds of what we desire, and which therefore includes the notions of mimetic desire (stemming from Girard) and of competitive desire for the scarce goods of power or esteem (stemming from Hobbes, Rousseau, Adam Smith…). When we take these concepts into anthropological account, the shadow sides of competition easily spring to the eye: rivals are so absorbed in fighting each other that they cannot afford real interest for others. Competition for esteem results in indifference and instrumentalization towards those who are not in the battle. This leads to physical, psychological, moral and spiritual misery for everyone: exhaustion and loneliness for those who battle; neglect, poverty and lack of esteem for the others.

If the drive for esteem is really basic and ever-present in human beings, we find ourselves in a universe in which pure disinterested motivation is very rare. Is this a morally bleak universe? If behaviour is seen as morally good only if it is completely unselfish, only the Mother Teresa’s of this world will qualify. In other words, if we equate moral behaviour with moral purity we will be structurally disappointed, and cynicism towards what parades as moral behaviour looks inevitable. This was the view of Bernard Mandeville, who saw moral behaviour as resulting from the drive for esteem, or vanity, and therefore said that “publick virtue” arises from “private vice”.  

Claasssen is also cynical, but in a less generalized way. What he objects to is selfishness that masquerades as unselfishness: “In reality we see that the ambition of many cosmopolitan do-gooders knows no bounds: the flags and edicts of rich people, rich countries and rich companies parade proudly on schools and hospitals in the third world” [my translation]. Such show-off, in his eyes, amounts to “cynical misuse”: unselfish behaviour becomes an instrument in the battle for esteem. His cynicism it not directed at our need for esteem, but at our denial of that need.

I think that Claassen is right in criticizing this denial, as it indeed means that the shadow sides of the need for reputation go “underground”. But if our need for esteem is so basic, I think that we should take a milder and more compassionate attitude towards it. Cynicism, even selective cynicism, is not the most helpful attitude. It neglects that these do-gooders who are so eager for moral recognition may also be motivated by real concern and the desire to help, and that this is really and significantly different from a situation in which the competition for esteem leaves room only for indifference towards others. 

Human behaviour stems from a mixture of motives. If the presence of the selfish need for esteem in this mix is a reason for moral cynicism, then the prospect for morality is indeed bleak. Expectations of disinterested purity make us reject as immoral everything that is not purely disinterested. But such a conclusion easily turns a blind eye to the very real differences that can be present in the rest of the mix, and in the (meta-) way we deal with our need for esteem, societally and individually. This blind eye is serious, because if the need for esteem is unavoidably, our hope should precisely be on how we deal with it and with which other motives we combine it.

28. (In)coherence

Developmental policy is the subject of a specific governmental domain, yet what happens in other domains is often just as relevant. For instance, while developmental aid works in one direction, the effects of agricultural subsidies go in different directions. The problem is known as the challenge to attain policy coherence for development. The Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), in its recent report on the evaluation and revitalization of developmental policy,  recommends the search for coherence as one of the two main roads towards improvement (the other one is becoming more specific and professional). Such coherence is not easy in a world full of policy instruments directed at national levels and at very different goals. The problem is one of heterogeneous goals, and also of a lack of effective global governance mechanisms.

In this situation, initiatives of funding, allocating and governing are important, and unavoidably experimental. With regard to genomics, Adèle Langlois evaluated two such experiments a few years ago: the proposal for a Global Genomics Initiative (GGI) of the University of Toronto, and a series of declarations by UNESCO on genomics, genetics and bioethics. In her paper, The governance of genomic information: will it come of age?, she notes that both initiatives, which do not refer to each other, are aimed at more or less the same goals: overcoming global inequalities in health, overcoming the 10/90 gap. The GGI wanted to operate outside of the UN-context because that road was seen as too slow; the GGI was set up as a more heterogeneous network, involving industry, academia, civil society and government. In her evaluation, Langlois skeptically notes that the GGI itself is very slow in coming off the ground. She regrets the lack of synergy; a collaboration between these initiatives could enhance the effectiveness of both, she thinks.

There is more skepticism towards the GGI: its emphasis on genomics as crucial to the future of healthcare is open to the criticism that there are more immediate, poverty-related remedies: clean water, adequate nutrition, sanitation. Langlois mentions this “contested” issue without explicit comment, as a suggestive but unresolved dualism in the heart of the paper. I think that the AWT approach I discussed in recent posts implies a way out of this returning paralysis. If genomics is not set apart, but taken up in a globally oriented general R&D policy, which makes explicit room for the complex multidimensionality of global inequalities, the dualism between the frontiers of science and a broader approach loses its force, at least within the contribution of knowledge. This in turn implies that an independent genomics initiative is not a good idea: genomics needs to be embedded in a more general orientation of science policy. A lesson learned, as I see it.

The phenomenon of overlapping and competing global initiatives continues. In post # 7  I mentioned Thomas Pogge’s Health Impact Fund, which aims to provide incentives for drugs for neglected diseases by rewarding producers for the global health impact of new drugs (which they are to deliver at cost price). Pogge travels around the world to try to interest the wealthy and the powerful and to promote the initiative more generally. He spoke in the Peace Palace in The Hague recently. To the question what he considers as the largest obstacles to the fund he answered that, apart from the short term orientation of states, there are so many initiatives that donors don’t know with which one to go.

A working group of the WHO indeed notes in a report of December 2009 that “more than 90 proposals” for new sources of global financing and/or managing health research are in circulation or have been implemented. The working group distinguishes between financing mechanisms, allocation mechanisms and efficiency proposals and tries to make a first shift, but also adds new promising approaches (including the Health Impact Fund). Clearly, experiments continue, and it is not surprising that the working group recommends a follow up in the form of an in-depth review of proposals. But its recommendation-in-bold refers to an underlying need: the need for public research policy choices all over the world: “build on and promote in countries the adoption of locally relevant public policy choices to bring together the technological capabilities of the public and private actors, in order to generate missing knowledge and create incentive structures to stimulate research and development for appropriate technologies of interest to the developing countries”.  

Global goals and global governance instruments are in an interactive and experimental phase.

27. Mixed motives

Either-or framings are perpetually seductive for human thought. In moral reasoning, one of the forms it takes is that either we are unselfish and good, or we are selfish and bad. In such a conceptual climate, there is no room for mixed motives, or rather: mixed motives, because they cannot be counted as purely good, fall to the domain of the bad. Since motivation in human beings is seldom pure, the good becomes very rare, and a cynical view of human beings may easily result. In order to make room for lots of good, mixed motives should not just be tolerated, they are absolutely essential.

When it comes to the morality of science policy, it may likewise seem that there are two diametrically opposed moral options: our goals are either directed selfishly at the benefits of our own country or unselfishly at the much greater needs of the global poor. But mixed motives are again essential, this time for real attention to global issues. The important differences are not dichotomic, they are matters of framing: if and how are our personal, institutional and national perspectives embedded within a global perspective?

The AWT report I discussed last week argues for mixed motives. It recommends a global and developmental perspective for science and innovation, and it also discusses how such a perspective can be good for the Netherlands. The challenges in developing countries are so great, says the report, that they offer excellent opportunities for innovation, and for a deeper and broader growth of our knowledge than the Western situation, where the potential gains in knowledge are often more marginal. For example, Dutch water research projects in Bangladesh are useful for the Dutch as well, because they can learn so much from the very different situation and the urgent problems there, thus strengthening their own expertise.

Innovation is an increasingly interactive process, the report notes, and this implies numerous potential benefits for western countries as well. Base-of-pyramid marketing (see post # 5) is one; another is that such “democratization” of innovation is a counterforce to the so called Matthew-effect, a feed forward mechanism that leads to ever more fame for famous scientists, and a clustering of research in a few highly developed urban areas. (The name refers to the parable of the talents in the gospel of Matthew: “For the one who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough. But the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.” Matthew 25: 29). 

Once you take this perspecive, it quickly becomes clear that strengthening of (knowledge-) capacities in developing countries is something that Western countries can gain from in very many ways. In this process, the advice for the Netherlands is to focus on those “key areas” where it already has a leading international position, such as water management and agriculture. The country not only has much to offer in these areas, it also has much to gain and to learn from the big innovation challenges in developing countries in these fields. Thus, the proposed approach combines demand from developing countries with selective offers from Western science.

A new research centre that seems designed to fit within this approach of mutual benefit was opened yesterday: the Wageningen UR Centre for Sustainable Development and Food Security. During the opening it was proudly stressed not only that after a period of neglect, agriculture is fully back at the centre of development priorities, but also that it is one of the Dutch key areas. There was awe for the complexity of the issues the centre will encounter (Africa not only needs seeds.. Who will supply electricity? Who will build the roads? Where will the required medium sized companies come from?). The minister of agriculture, Gerda Verburg, therefore emphasized that different policy domains should be involved and aligned, while Rudy Rabbinge, the “father” of the Centre, stressed the need for a broad and multi-disciplinary approach (here Rabbinge praises the importance of enlightened self-interest, in Dutch.)

Don’t these perspectives of mutual benefit look too good to be true? In post # 8, I wrote about the Ghanaian-Dutch health initiative, a demand driven research experiment. From the perspective of Dutch medical researchers, the program was not a success; they all quit, as they found no challenges for their specific areas of expertise, and thus no oportunities to publish. Ghanaian realities required much innovative effort, but hardly any frontier science. Against this background, the WUR centre (and similar initiatives) seems to require great flexibility and a great pool or network of different kinds of expertise, not all of them at the frontiers of science and technology. Governing such heterogeneity looks like a challenge in itself. And, as I suggested earlier and will keep coming back to, publishing incentives are not adapted to such complex research situations. If, in cherishing our mixed motives, our R&D system is to gain from such cooperative effort, it will certainly require changes in various ways.

26. A global system

A few weeks ago, the Dutch Advisory Council for Science and Technology Policy (AWT) issued a report called Knowledge without Borders (Kennis zonder Grenzen), about science and innovation in a global perspective. Starting from the observation that global challenges and the global nature of science are increasingly in tension with the national focus of science policy, the council has clear recommendations to make. Dutch policy needs to come to terms with the fact that science and innovation are part of a global system. It needs a more international focus, it should use (“valorize”) knowledge from all over the world, and the big global challenges should be its leading agenda. The Report specifically focuses on relations between the Netherlands and developing countries. It argues for an integration of developmental policy and science policy, based on a combination of global compassion (a billion people on the world lack any credible hope) and enlightened self-interest: a continuation of inequalities will destabilize the world and ultimately lead to disaster. Given the focus on collaborative relations, the emphasis is on activity “there” as well as “here”.

In order to gain a good perspective on knowledge as a public good, the council stresses that knowledge should not only be seen as a product. It is also crucial that people, organizations and infrastructure are able to recognize, absorb, combine, develop, use and translate relevant knowledge, which is to say that knowledge should also be approached as a capacity. In the present situation, advanced knowledge is not really public, because many countries lack the necessary capacities. Knowledge-as-capacity should therefore be strengthened in developing countries: these countries need a basis of access to global knowledge and they need to develop their own innovative and collaborative potential.

Innovation in developing countries will often differ from innovation “here”: needs are specific for local contexts and may involve the re-use and combination of existing knowledge. The Council gives the example of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), an example of a low tech innovation that originated in Madagascar. Though low tech, SRI is a radical innovation; its method of cultivation differs enormously from traditional methods. It therefore took some time to be taken seriously by scientists, the Council suggests. Let me add that, since at is an example of an “agro-ecological” innovation, SRI can still count on opposition from people who associate biological science and innovation with the frontiers of genetic technologies, e.g. Robert Paarlberg. (See post # 24, and also post  # 22, where I briefly referred to SRI and to Norman Uphoff of Cornell Univeristy, who did much to make SRI scientifically credible.)  

AWT identifies two major obstacles to this scientific-developmental agenda, but also immediately points at directions for overcoming them. First, brain drain from poor countries, which in some cases takes extreme forms, could be changed into brain circulation. The Council mentions the so called sandwich PhD’s at Wageningen University as a good example: the PhD student is employed by an organisation in the home country, but spends some time at Wageningen University at the beginning of the trajectory (for training and writing a research proposal) and again at the end (for writing the thesis). The second obstacle is that intellectual property rights have become a barrier for diffusion of knowledge, and thus for the use of knowledge in developing countries. Innovation should become a more collaborative undertaking, in a reformed system with more limited protection of intellectual property. The council mentions breeders’ right as an inspiring guide, a familiar recommendation for readers of last week’s post.

I find the Council’s overall view very inspiring; it looks like a proposal for science policy in the spirit of Philip Kitcher (see post # 4). The view is expressed in the first set of recommendations: Let science and innovation policy be internationally oriented. Drop the existing focus on national production and valorization of knowledge. Instead, let international knowledge centers and networks, which aim to contribute to the solution of global problems, be established and strengthened. The Council adds various recommendations to support this view. For example, it wants to stimulate attention to global issues in scientific education as well as research agendas, and it encourages Dutch scientific institutions to form partnerships with knowledge institutions in developing countries, and to encourage knowledge circulation. And there is more. But the basic good news is that global problems are given a main place as sources of scientific significance.

25. Not cast in stone

In November last year (see post # 16), I wrote about an IP clash on plant breeding in the Netherlands. The Dutch plant breeders association, Plantum, had opposed the growing influence of patents in the world of plant breeding, and was in turn opposed by big companies, united in Croplife. Plantum opted for Plant Breeders’ Right, which affords commercial protection for new plant varieties, and at the same time allows other breeders to use the protected variety for research into new varieties, through the so called breeders’ exemption. The patent system contains no such exemption. Besides, what a patent protects is much more variable than a new plant variety; it may be as broad as the workings of certain genes in many species of plants. The right to do research on patented stuff must be bought through licenses, and these can be expensive, so that it becomes hard for smaller firms to remain active in research. The issue thus directly touches on the more general question whether the huge amounts of patents in the life sciences have turned into impenetrable patent thickets, and have therefore become counterproductive for innovation, the very purpose of the patent system. A study on the matter for the Dutch Government, conducted by Niels Louwaars of Wageningen UR, was to be expected soon, I wrote.

The study, Veredelde Zaken, was indeed finished soon thereafter, but it took till some weeks ago for the ministries to make it public (the English version can be found here.) Niels Louwaars and his team of advisers come to the conclusion that the patent system threatens the diversity of companies as well as, indeed, the innovative power in the plant breeding sector. The first point is easier to prove than the second. The report contains tables on the development through the years of global fusions, takeovers and the volume of trade in seed companies. They show that in 1985, the top 4 companies represented 8 % of the volume of trade, while in 2006 this percentage had risen to 30 %. Number 1, Monsanto, is now twice as big as number 2, DuPont-Pioneer, which is almost twice as big as number 3, Syngenta.

That the patent system has become a brake on innovation is harder to prove because it is impossible to point at what is NOT happening. Nevertheless, the report suggests that the patent thicket has indeed become a threat to innovation. The broad scope of many patents, a symptom of “strategic” patenting, is especially troublesome. The problems may not be impenetrable if you are a company with sufficient lawyers to clear a path through the patent bush; large companies now reportedly spend more on lawyers than on R&D, the report notes (p. 58). But smaller companies face serious obstacles and frequently experience a lack of freedom to operate. This is bad for innovation, because small companies are presumably better innovators than large ones. The report here points to the pharmaceutical sector, where innovation mainly comes from small companies (p. 50). The message is that as long as there are enough new start-up companies, the system may work, but this is not the case in plant breeding, where almost no new companies have been making their appearance since the second world war. (The brief section on the comparison with the pharmaceutical sector raises many new questions, for me at least, but they must wait.)

IF we want an innovative plant breeding sector with a diversity of companies, the report writes (making its normative basis explicit in 7 points), then something is to happen: either the scope and power of plant patents should be limited, or a breeders’ exemption is to be introduced in the patent system. The report characterizes the breeders’ exemption as an open innovation device avant la lettre.

The question now becomes what will happen in the political arena. In their letter to the parliament of April 19, 2010, the responsible ministries agree that genetic material must be as accessible as possible for plant breeding purposes, given the need for innovation for food security. Since new elections are upcoming, policy decisions are postponed. Meanwhile, they point at various developments. One of them is the Raising the Bar project of the European Patent Office, which aims for a stricter judgment of patent applications. Another is the desirability of a code of conduct for the plant breeding sector, with an emphasis on reasonable licensing terms.

Back to the report for a moment. It contains hints to some of the trends and (under-)currents that are going on with respect to IP. For example: one of its tables (p. 39) shows that in the US, the percentage of patent applications that comes from universities and other public sector research institutes has gone down sharply from the late 1990’s onward. The reasons are not entirely clear, but one reason may be that universities are not making much money from their patents, the report suspects. The trend is less marked in Europe, where subsidizers of research such as NGI (the Netherlands Genomics Initiative) are still very much encouraging valorization of research through patenting and licensing (see also post # 3 and a paper on valorization by Bram de Jonge and Niels Louwaars). Clearly, obtaining patents and licenses may serve other purposes than earning money, such as freedom to operate, and being an interesting business partner. Nevertheless, Niels Louwaars was no doubt right when he said in a talk at Wageningen University, last Tuesday, that the patent system is not cast in stone. Will it turn out to be cast in kneadable clay? Or is it stony but being corroded by restless underground currents that destroy the stoniest rocks in the long term?

24. Dualism again

Rich countries are very different from poor ones in many more respects than their consumption and ecological footprints. In his book Starved for Science (2008), Robert Paarlberg gives data on agriculture. Here are some: in the USA in 2005, farmers planting maize harvested 9.3 tons per hectare on average, in Kenya, this was 1.6 tons, in Malawi 0.8 tons. The industrialized world uses on average 117 kg of fertilizer per hectare, sub-Sahara Africa 9. In the UK, there are 883 tractors per 1,000 agricultural workers, in sub-Sahara Africa 2.

Etcetera. Paarlberg convincingly illustrates that African agriculture is in a dramatic state of very low productivity. Other parts of the world have seen their agricultural production increase and hunger diminish in the course of the 20^th century as a result of the outcomes of agricultural research. In Asia, for example, new plant breeding techniques brought the Green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. But Africa lags far behind. What Africa needs, according to Paarlberg, is agricultural science, specifically in its most advanced and powerful form: genetic engineering. Yet surprisingly, most African countries have rejected GMOs. Why is this, he wonders in his book. And why this close identification of science with GM, I will wonder subsequently.

From the perspective of Europe, and rich countries in general, rejection of GMO’s is quite understandable, Paarlberg argues. These countries don’t need production growth—not hunger but obesitas has become their primary food problem. Rich countries are fed up with ever more industrial forms of farming, and besides, the first generation of GMO’s brought benefits for big farmers and big companies rather than consumers. So it makes sense that consumers don’t like GMO’s and that more generally agricultural priorities have changed form production growth to things such as animal welfare, landscape concerns, food quality and ecology.

Paarlberg shows that Africa has been rejecting GMO’s under the influence of European considerations and organizations. Among others he points at the role of NGO’s who favoured organic agriculture and objected to a scientific approach. What all these groups failed to acknowledge is that in Africa, things are different. Production growth is needed desperately. Though for Africa, too, the first generation of GMO’s are not especially helpful, Paarlberg puts his hopes on drought resistant maize, which is now being developed through conventional as well as genetic engineering breeding efforts in joint collaboration partnerships involving The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Monsanto, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Buffet and Rockefeller Foundations, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF).

While it is convincing that African agriculture needs to become more productive, and that science can and should help, it is remarkable that Paarlberg so closely identifies science with GM. In this framing, agro-ecology, say, is associated with anti-science: “In the international NGO community, the strongest criticism of science-based farming usually comes from European and North American organizations dedicated at home to organic farming and agro-ecology, environmentalism, and anti-corporate populism.” (p. 100) Paarlberg here chooses the well travelled road of dualism, where discussions on the role of science tend to become discussions of GM versus organic farming. He neglects many questions on how other forms of science, as well as its long existing results, may help. For example, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), which I mentioned in post # 22, is an important fruit of agro-ecological research. When Paarlberg recently lectured at Wageningen university, Eric Tollens, an emeritus specialist in world food matters from the University of Leuven, responded. He mentioned the need for tractors, soil fertility, the problems of weed, the availability of seed, access to markets and transport problems as far more urgent than the availability of transgenic seed.

Paarlberg’s overall argument, in his book as well as in his Wageningen talk, is about Africa’s need for science, but genetic engineering dominates the book as well as the discussions following the book. The defense of GM is understandable enough as a response to rigid rejections. But again, I cannot help but mourn this situation in which we find ourselves, where pro-contra controversies surrounding the frontiers of science continue to consume so much of our attention.

23. Prosperity and growth

“Ecological footprint” is a measure for our relation to the earth: an estimate of the amount of land that we each require to provide for our consumption. The figure below, which I took from Wikipedia, indicates that in 2005, 2.1 global hectares were available per person. It also shows that not everybody’s footprint is equal. A list of countries gives more precise data: in 2006, the USA footprint per person was 9 global hectares, Spain 5.6, The Netherlands 4.6, Thailand 1.7, Malawi 0.6, just to give some examples.

 

For 2006, humanity’s total ecological footprint was estimated at about 1.4 the capacity of the planet. So people consume more than the earth allows, or rather people in the rich countries do. Therefore, one way to address the 10-90 gap is through research into the question how to reduce the ecological footprint in prosperous countries. In column # 20, I mentioned in vitro meat as a potential contribution of biotechnology. Today, let me place that approach in a wider context. 

In Prosperity without Growth?, published as a report as well as a book in 2009, Tim Jackson questions, for rich countries, the basic assumption that economic growth is necessary for prosperity. The query is possible on the basis of the increasingly confirmed observation that once basic needs are fulfilled, material wealth does not add to happiness. Yet economic growth continues to be seen as an absolute necessity for social stability. Market economies have a central engine that keeps this growth going. Jackson calls it “the iron cage of consumerism”, in which the restless desires of consumers are the perfect complement for the restless innovation of entrepreneurs. In order to preserve such growth in a finite world, much hope is now invested in “decoupling” environmental effects from growth. But Jackson argues on the basis of empirical data that the hope is vain: even ambitious “New Green Deals” will only lead to a relative decoupling. As long as growth is imperative, any absolute decline of harm is a myth.

Work in at least two directions is needed, according to Jackson. First, there is an urgent need for macro-economic models as a guide to economic stability without growth. Although the early economist John Stuart Mill (as well as “Keynes himself”) acknowledged the possibility of a steady state economy, there is at present no macro-economic model for sustainability, he argues.

Second, the “social logic of consumerism” is in great need of change. Jackson argues for the development of new approaches to flourishing, which can take leads from nascent unhappiness with consumerism, and from the data that suggest that after a certain level, material prosperity and happiness are not synonyms, sometimes not at all. Nevertheless, the required change is a deep one in a system that is built on ever-increasing consumption. Simplistic exhortations to resists consumerism are doomed to failure, as long as the imperative of economic growth makes all the social messages point in the other direction. New ideals of human and social flourishing are necessary, which enable people to “downshift” while at the same time participating meaningfully in society. Perverse incentives for status competition must be dismantled, and new structures should be developed that provide capabilities for people to flourish.

Jackson’s book strongly suggests that new technologies are not enough; they have to be embedded in new ideals of economic success and of human flourishing. But an even stronger relativizing of technology is implicit in the book: the imperative of technological innovation is part of the problem, since it is strongly associated with the central engine of growth. I suspect that a more sustainable attitude to technology is a pragmatic one, which is just as happy with traditional and simple solutions to global problems as with new and high tech ones.

This conclusion is exactly the same as last week’s. Apparently, when the starting point of thought is not technology but the problems of the world., it is my inevitable conclusion.

22. A normal tool?

New technological developments, especially when they promise to have a breakthrough nature, are sources of great hope and expectation. One important reason is that technological innovation is considered to be a main force in economic growth. The search for sustainability has reinforced the call: for societies that are built on growth in a finite world, innovative technology is a (perhaps the) chief source of hope.

From the 1970’s onward, genetic technology has been a field of innovative hope. What happened next is a long and familiar story: the technology did not just come with great expectations—great worries were the other side of the coin. Controversy and debate has accompanied genetic technology from the start, and it persists in food applications, where the dualism of great expectation and fierce resistance is continuing. The battle, which has been shifting from safety issues to intellectual property issues, includes the role of gene technologies in fighting hunger and poverty. This high-profile pro-contra framing complicates an evaluation of the value of genetic technology in overcoming the 10-90 gap. It is a frustrating idea that for years the conflict has been absorbing huge amounts of time and energy, which were therefore not available for (other) practical solutions for poverty and hunger. Genetic technologies dominate many agendas, but often in a troublesome way.

Thoughtful people have been searching for middle courses. Ronald Herring, in the introduction to Transgenics and the Poor (2007, also published as a special issue of the Journal of Development Studies), points out that developmental professionals have increasingly agreed on a narrative of consensus in which transgenics is one tool among many in the big toolkit of agricultural science. The middle course comes with the hope that GM develops into a normal tool, and that it depends on considerations of efficiency in solving hunger and poverty which tools will be used.

When you wonder about the best tools for a job, the question is what is in your toolbox and what you compare with what. Within a broad box of approaches to hunger and poverty, Herring’s observation is almost inevitable: genetically improved seeds, whether they are seen as miraculous or as devilish, cannot carry too much of the load when the primary causes and solutions lie in structural forces and political choices. This is a familiar warning against technofix as well as technophobia: don’t overestimate technology. Within science, the prominent position of genetic technologies as hopeful tool is also ciritized. Norman Uphoff, in the same book and special issue as Herring, argues that an agro-ecological strategy has been extremely successful in raising rice yields, but that the preoccupation with “genocentric strategies” has been causing a neglect of agro-ecological research opportunities. Gaëtan Vanloqueren and Philippe Baret make the same comparison in a paper in Research Policy, arguing that incentives in agricultural research encourage the development of genetic engineering, while “locking out” agro-ecological innovations. They pay particular attention to publishing incentives. Characterizing the two research fields as “paradigms”, they notice a great difference of academic prestige between the paradigms, which is reflected in the impact factors (IF) of the journals in these fields. The journals in which agro-ecological research is published do not score higher than 4.5, while genetic engineering is in journals with IF “as high as 29.3”. They see the high academic value of specialization as an important underlying reason; genetic engineering fits in perfectly with it, while agro-ecological research is often interdisciplinary and therefore held in lower academic esteem.

These examples may give some credibility to the idea that the great amounts of attention for genetic technologies within science come with a neglect of other potentially helpful areas of science. In a dualistic field, this may look like an anti-GM concusion. But what about the goal that the choice of tools with which to fight poverty be a pragmatic one, with genetic technologies as normal tools, and interdisciplinary cooperation as a normal habit? The deeply entrenched pro-contra framing remains an obstacle to such normality.

21. Towards answers

How to overcome the 10-90 gap in genomics research? This blog is dedicated to that question. In the first ten columns I explored the gap in several directions. After a summer break, my exploration continued with a second series, now with some focus on publication incentives. The winter break came with a change in my job situation, which made the break longer than foreseen. I think it is time now to turn to answers. Today, let me give the global direction of my thoughts, which I intend to fill in and adjust in the columns to come.

The global direction will not be surprising: more research directed at the needs of developing countries is needed, and incentives to that end are needed in turn. That’s the first part of my answer. Actual trends are going in different directions.

Worrisome directions on the one hand. In agriculture, much innovative focus is on genetic modification. GM research is expensive, due to the existence of huge numbers of patents and to the existence of extensive biosafety requirements. Because of these costs, GM research is overwhelmingly done by big companies, with few incentives to prioritize the requirements of the poor. While pharmaceutical research is comparatively neglects diseases of the poor, agricultural research likewise comparatively neglects the poor, which results in “orphan crops”:  tropical maize, sorghum, millet, banana, cassava etcetera. In his report to the General Assembly of the United Nations of July 2009, the special rapporteur on the right to food has therefore called it vital that the capacity of public research centers be increased or that incentives be developed to reorient R&D in the private sector (p.13). Or both, we may add.

Hopeful directions on the other hand. Many public and private initiatives have been and are being launched. For example, it is a guiding principle of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to focus research on the most neglected issues, and it is doubtful whether malaria should still be called a neglected disease. In agriculture, much genetic research is conducted on drought tolerant maize for African small farmers in partnerships of the Gates Foundation, Monsanto, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center CIMMYT and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF). Also, an Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) was established in 2006, to achieve a “smallholder-based African Green revolution that will enable Africa to be food- self sufficient and food secure.” It is chaired by Kofi Anan and it depends on partnerships, e.g. with the Rockefeller and again the Gates Foundations. And Thomas Pogge’s proposal to establish Health Impact Fund for pharmaceutical companies is one of the many ideas to change the system of research incentives for private companies.

The second part of my answer focuses on the kind of innovation we need. It is not accidental that my research project specifically mentions genomics research: the reason is that genomics, and genetic research in general, including genetic modification, is at the frontiers of science, where it may provide breakthrough technologies. Frontier research receives special social atention because it is the expected source of innovation. For example, in his book Starved for Science, Robert Paarlberg argues that African agriculture needs more science, and comes close to identifying science with GM research. Drought tolerant GM maize is his big example of what Africa needs. The question is whether breakthrough technologies in general, and GM and genomics in particular, deserve this very special place. The frontiers of science certainly come with a lot of expectation. They also come with lots of reflection and controversy. And they offer the best opportunities for publication in high impact journals. They are thus devouring attention and money which cannot then be spent on other research. The second part of my answer will focus on the need for a more pragmatic approach to innovation, in which developments at the frontier of science and technology are not our all-purpose hope. Agro-ecological research is an example of neglected research. An integrative, multi-disciplinary and comparative perspective to global innovation should be strengthened… e.g. through changes in publication incentives.