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.

20. New meat

The 10-90 gap is a gap of global research attention. The paradigmatic example (in health research) is that more new drugs are developed for our stomach problems than for the illnesses of which many people die. So to bridge the 10-90 gap, it seems, more research is needed into such things as vaccines for tuberculosis and improved crops in the developing countries. Research for “them”, and preferably by them as well, or at least in interaction with them, in order to avoid paternalism and technofix failures.

But this straightforward and direct road is not the only one. Researchers in rich countries may contribute to the fight against global inequality in different and more indirect ways, for example through research that aims to diminish our consumption. My paradigmatic example for biotechnology is in vitro meat. 

Eating meat is a growing problem in several respects. First, ever more animals suffer in intensive husbandry, where their lives and deaths are subordinated to narrow economic concerns. Second, the impact of meat production on landscape, environment and climate is becoming disastrous. Livestock’s Long Shadow (2006) was the FAO report that called attention to the fact that more than 70 % of all agricultural land is devoted to livestock, directly or indirectly, and that this contributes hugely to pollution, water shortage and climate change… Brazil is deforested to grow soy for animal feed. Third, in countries that grow richer, such as India and China, meat eating goes up. So since the world population is growing and eating more meat, and since raising animals is an inefficient way to feed humans, world food production is becoming less efficient. Rich countries’ levels of meat consumption are extremely unsustainable.

The simple solution is simple only in principle: people should eat far less meat. In practice, making meat from stem cells,  in vitro meat,  is now being researched as a potential part of a solution. With the help of tissue engineering techniques, the goal is to make edible muscle tissue in vitro, that is, outside the animal body. The idea is old, but research just started some 5 years ago. It is being carried out in several laboratories in The Netherlands and it is making progress, though products for the market may still be years away. If successful, in vitro meat could do much good. No animal suffering is involved since no animals are involved: the procedure just needs some of their stem cells, which may then be cultured indefinitely. The production of muscle tissue in factories would be much more efficient and sustainable than raising animals (might the cells grow on algae?), and it could free large areas of land for other uses.

I am involved in a research project on in vitro meat, which will start early next year. In this project, we aim to develop in vitro meat as a coproduction of biological, social and ethical research. We want to know whether and how in vitro meat can be developed into an attractive product. On the biological side, there are still many open questions on how to grow the cells into sizeable and edible pieces of muscle. On the social side, one crucial question is whether people will want to buy and eat it. We are interested in first reactions, including disgust and distrust, and we want to know what happens to these reactions as people learn more and think more. On the moral side, we are interested in normative evaluations of in vitro meat.

In vitro meat is in an early research stage and it is too early to judge it as a product, but it is not too early to judge the desirability of the research. This desirability is usually framed in terms of animal welfare, sustainability and potential reduction of health risks. But research into in vitro meat also has significance from a 10-90 perspective. One very direct effect: in vitro meat could greatly contribute to the availability of food because more land becomes available for crops for direct human consumption.

19. Empathy is not all

Lately I put a lot of time and energy in writing an essay in Dutch, to be published as a booklet by the Dutch Society for Bio-ethics and to be discussed at their yearly meeting. From the point of view of my publication record it was not a strategic thing to do. In some academic departments, publishing in Dutch is explicitly forbidden, since such non-peer reviewed publishing in non-English does not contribute to meeting academic criteria. I should hurry to publish it in English. So I will, beginning today: in this post I will tell you about my essay in so far as it is relevant for the 10-90 gap. This still does not count, of course; English, but not peer-reviewed. As you start to guess, my academic career is bound to end in failure. Yet, this Dutch essay, about biological backgrounds of morality, will be read by far more academic peers than most English journal papers. I pick out one small part of it here: strengths and weaknesses of empathy, especially in a global context.

In the footsteps of ethologist Frans de Waal (e.g. The Age of Empathy, 2009), empathy is being discovered as an inherently good side in our nature. It is at the root of emotional commitment, connectedness, care, compassion and aid, and it can hardly be overrated as a morally relevant capacity. It has deep evolutionary roots: at its basis lies a sensitivity for the emotional state of others, which can be found in all social animals. This sensitivity depends on our senses and therefore requires some form of nearness. And this is why the moral force of empathy is its moral weakness at the same time: since it works through sensual proximity, empathy implies partiality. Empathy with people we don’t know and who are far away is much harder than empathy with people who are close and familiar. On the basis of experiments, Daniel Batson and his co-authors indeed drew this conclusion: “empathy-induced altruism” can conflict with justice. For example, after seeing an interview with a severely ill child, people tended to be carried away by empathy in their determination of aid priorities. Empathy led them to disregard where help was needed most. As the authors rightly note, the phenomenon is a general one. Images of needy people on television often lead to outbursts of aid, but they are not based on an impartial analysis. Only those who are seen can hope to receive empathy-induced altruism, and disasters that are not mediagenic are on the losing side of our attention and empathy. In the resulting media wars, many strive to gain attention, while others, for complementary reasons, are more interested to keep the eyes of the world elsewhere.

Attempts to harness the realities of human nature for the good are increasing. For example, in The Life You Can Save, Peter Singer (2009) devotes two chapters to Human Nature, wondering about the obstacles that keep us from giving, and how a culture to give more can be created. His proposals build on the popular strategy of Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge (2008): use the growing insights in human nature for a “soft paternalism”, which helps us to become happy without taking away our freedom. In an extension of this approach, we can also be nudged to do good. “Putting a face on the needy”, for example through a focus on individual children, is one of the strategies Singer advocates. It “taps into our willingness to help”, although he admits that it comes at a cost: giving money to individual children is not a particular effective way of helping the poor (p.69).

In this age of empathy, it may seem almost morally suspect to be critical about it. But precisely because it is so morally forceful, it does not guarantee justice and effectiveness and becomes a moral liability as well, especially in a global context. It deserves enthusiasm, but thoughtful enthusiasm, and it certainly deserves better than to be manipulated in the free play of empathy wars.

18. Military style

Let me continue last week’s reflection on the need for knowledge-integrating institutions. Maybe we could quickly agree that bridging the 10-90 gap requires all hands on deck, hands which join forces, insights, knowledge, thoughts.  But if a central interfaculty did not really work 40 years ago, why would it work now? To mention just a few obstacles: many philosophers back then thought that this whole idea made philosophy too “scientistic”, while at the same time there was hardly enough interest from the side of the sciences. These problems have not vanished, I suspect.

When the aim is to overcome the 10-90 gap, central interfaculties have an even more serious flaw, one which they share with “slow science” (see post # 9). What would make us expect that central interfaculties are going to help? A broad academic education may be desirable, integrating knowledges may be necessary, but these things are not enough: they are not in themselves drawing attention to the 10-90 gap.

For targeted interdisciplinary approaches, maybe we should look at other and newer institutions: platforms, funds, foundations, networks, institutes, taskforces, schools, consortia…?

Take consortia, they are blossoming.  In 2007, the NIH announced that they were going to fund nine interdisciplinary research consortia “as a means of integrating aspects of different disciplines to address health challenges that have been resistant to traditional research approaches.” They characterized the initiative as a fundamental transformation of the mono-institutional research culture, meatn to encourage unconventional collaboration. The consortia were each directed at a specific problem area. For example, one was to address neurotherapeutics, another problems of aging, etcetera.

So what about a Dutch, or European, Research Consortium for overcoming the 10-90 gap? A consortium that would take up all the challenges and developments that I am constantly overwhelmed by, and much more? Shall I spend the rest of this project to prepare a European proposal?

Or take foundations. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation illustrates how narrow approaches can be overcome through interdisciplinarity. In his recent lecture in honour of Norman Borlaug, the father of the green revolution, Bill Gates announced that he wanted to overcome former onesidenesses, in particular the split between technological and environmental approaches in the struggle against hunger. The choice between productivity and sustainability is a false one, he said. Technology is needed, but at the same time “we try to see our investments through the eyes of small farmers. Will they lead to a better yield, better soil, a better living, a better income?”

Social scientists and funders are not exempted from the narrownesses and blind spots that may be remedied through broad collaboration. In the course of their struggle against technofixes, they have come to develop a fixation of their own: on participatory development. Bart Knols, in the blog that is now part of his new malaria platform (another form interdisciplinary initatives can take), stumbled upon this particular narrowness a while ago. Knols is firmly convinced that history teaches us that malaria cannot be eliminated through a participatory approach; it requires a hierarchical, military-like organization. The historical hero here is Fred Soper, who in the nineteenthirties accomplished the impossible-seeming task to eliminate an African malaria mosquito from Brazil, where it had invaded an area of 54,000 square kilometers, in just 18 months. Soper’s approach, through “motivation, discipline, organization and zeal” is honoured by Malcolm Gladwell in an article of 2001, The Mosquito Killer. I have not yet seen Bart Knols’ new book Mug (Mosquito), but I am certain that it also honours Fred Soper. At his blog, meanwhile, he mentions a confrontation with someone from a funding organization: “Yesterday, a young chap from a major Dutch funding organisation wanted to know why military style campaigns that were so successful in the past were not being undertaken at present. I lost his sympathy when I mentioned ‘Sorry, but it is organisations like yours that force us to set up programmes based on community participation, otherwise we will not get funded’. 

You get the point: the self-evident truths of specialists of all backgrounds deserve a wider perspective. Knols’ point touches on a wider issue, a widespread allergy for authority, which deserves more attention… The issues keep multiplying, while the issue of suitable institutions still remains wide open. I will return to the multitude of targeted initiatives and institutional forms, and the issues of “governance” raised by them.

17. Frontiers of wisdom

The insight that technologies function as part of social and cultural worlds, and so will not work all by themselves, has become widespread. In social studies of science it is typically concluded that what is required is participatory technology development. But apart from the participatory aspect we may focus on knowledge itself. For global gaps to close, knowledge gaps have to be closed as well. What and where are the incentives for integration?

From 1960 until 1987, all Dutch Universities had a Central Interfaculty. It was the institution in which I, coming from biology, encountered philosophy in the 1970s and was encouraged to cherish the connections to my old field. In a paper on the ideas that led to the formation of the Central Interfaculty in 1960, Ido Weijers (Krisis 15/1, 1995; 74-85) emphasizes the underlying conviction that Universities need a centre at which the connections between forms of knowledge as well as between knowledge, growth and wisdom can be nourished. The ongoing specialisation in science, with the accompanying loss of the unity of the sciences and of the old ideal of Bildung, had long been a source of worry for many:  universities had degenerated into loose sets of specialisms. The second world war strongly strengthened this worry. During the war, it was widely felt, the onesided focus on specialised knowledge had made the universities neglect their moral tasks. The general idea was that when science is left to itself, it falls prey to senseless activity and arbitrary societal servitude. Central Interfaculties were seen as a remedy; they were to function as central meeting spaces and should see to it that intellectual education included moral and aesthetic education, and that the gathering of knowledge and the building of character went together. And so faculties of philosophy became central interfaculties.

This move was internationally unique; other countries had long pragmatically resigned to the new realities of an increasing fragmentation of knowledge. The Dutch remedy thus may be seen as tragically outdated from the start, an illusionary clinging to old nineteenth century traditions. Despite the widespread support, those sounds were also heard in the debates. And indeed, as philosophy had in fact long lost its central and connecting position, central interfaculties in most places did not really come to life. Double-chairs (in two faculties) were realized, but they did not acquire central roles and in 1987 the abolishment of the institution went largely uncommented and unmourned (except perhaps in Groningen, where the idea has still not completely died). Central interfaculties became faculties of philosophy once again, free to pursue their own specialist problems.

More than twenty years later, the fragmentation of specialist knowledge is more real than ever. This reality is reflected in publishing incentives. The highest goal is to publish small chunks of new knowledge in journals (see also #9), which in practice have become ever more specialised. Most philosophical journals, too, have become highly specialised. It can be hard to find a place to publish integrating contributions, because they do not fit anywhere. The underlying problem is their valuation.

So the old ideas behind central interfaculties have not lost their relevance, on the contrary. Specialized frontiers are not in themselves frontiers of wisdom. And the question which goals science should serve have not vanished; for example, it is the central issue of this blog.

In my view, inter-knowledge should not just serve our individual wisdom, or integration as an end, but also, and ultimately, global flourishing and  justice.  Making the world a better place is a huge source of scientific significance  (see # 4). The practical problems of the world are different from those that stem from curiosity in that they seldom allow for narrow answers; they require technological as well as social, environmental, economic, moral, cultural, aesthetic contributions. Lessons from history need to be remembered, low tech innovation deserves to be as highly valued as high tech innovation, and the latest technological hype deserves some relativizing, which is not the same as dismissing. Taking a step back to overlook what we have, discover blind spots, make connections work in new ways: such tasks deserve ample resources and credit. What about chairs for the development of the semantic web against poverty? Chairs for the harnessing of art-science collaboration for global justice? Chairs for innovation (high tech and lowtech) for global welfare? So: what about reviving central interfaculties in new forms?