American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Plenary Lecture

Good evening. I have heard some spectacular plenary lectures at AAAS meetings over the years. The ones that have stayed most vividly in my mind addressed the deteriorating state of our planet and the huge inequalities between our way of life and those of the poor in the world’s poorest nations. Some of you may remember Ismail Serageldin’s lecture of a few years ago.

These are lectures that stir the imagination and the indignation and a desire to “do something.” But for most of us, the impulse passes. It passes because it isn’t really clear what any one of us can do, even with our marvelous scientific training and skills. The problems seem overwhelming. Our lives are busy enough. In the end, we go back to business as usual.

My objective here is to persuade you that it is enormously important that you–as scientists, as members of this country’s extraordinary scientific community–stop going back to business as usual. I will try to tell you why–and I will show you what kinds of things other scientists are doing–and what you can do.

Tom Friedman has attracted a great deal of attention with his declaration that the world is flat. By this, he means that the Internet revolution and globalization have put all peoples of the world on an equal economic footing. A comforting message. But despite the extraordinary increase in our ability to communicate and access information, we all know that the world is far from flat.

There is a profound gap between those with access to up-to-date technology and excellent educational opportunities and those who live in the poorest countries. The technology gap has been called the “digital divide”–more like the chasm depicted here. A great deal has been written about it. Some believe that the problems of the poorest countries are simply solved by cell phones and inexpensive computers that can be used even in places that lack electricity. And surely these are important and make the job possible, if not easy.

But the problems are deep and stubborn. Perhaps the most poignant disparities exist between the countries of the developed world and much of Africa, where climate, disease, soil exhaustion and a host of other problems contribute. In his book titled The Bottom Billion, economist Paul Collier offers an insightful analysis of the many factors that contribute to trapping the poorest nations in continuing cycles of poverty and unrest.

One of the contributing factors, of course, is the generally low educational capacity and level of the poorest nations. For many years, the U. S. has educated talented students from around the world. Today virtually every developed country realizes the value to the economy of the best and brightest students – and actively seeks to recruit them.

But herein lies a paradox: sending the best students to be educated in more developed countries often further exacerbates the country’s problems because the education itself–whether it is a teacher’s certificate, a nursing degree, or a Ph.D.–makes it easier for individuals to find employment and a more stable life in a developed country. This “brain drain” has robbed–and is continuing to rob–many poor countries of their educated people.

These are the people who design, develop and maintain society’s infrastructure–its agriculture, its schools, its clinics, its power and telecommunications networks. And they are the professors and researchers who generate and propagate the knowledge–the science and technology–that are essential in every aspect of life and that are the driving force of today’s successful economies.

I believe that we need a deep paradigm shift in our interactions with the less developed world: from distant aid recipients to partners in building a global future. We need to bring our science, engineering and technology infrastructure and educational system to bear directly and in new ways to create a world in which all people have the opportunities now available almost exclusively in the developed world.

I think this paradigm shift is getting underway–among governments, in charitable foundations, in the business world, and in the academic world. It is driven in some measure by necessity and–perhaps in some measure by the fact that modern communications media make the disparities among the nations of the world harshly and constantly apparent to everyone. I give you an example of such a driving necessity atop a persistent disparity.

Since the introduction of science into agriculture in the late 18^th century, science and engineering have powered enormous gains in agricultural productivity through fertilizer production, plant breeding, and mechanization. In some parts of the world, not one person in a hundred is growing plants or raising animals for food. This frees the rest to make and sell each other houses, hats, and video games, to be scientists and politicians, artists, teachers, doctors, and talk-show hosts. In the countries of the developed world, we buy what we eat in stores, or restaurants, or fast food joints. If you went to the farm, you are more likely to see this (slide) than this (slide). And yet, in many countries, particularly in Africa, the task of growing food is still done by such manual labor and by each family.

Thomas Malthus published his famous Essay on Population in 1798 predicting that humanity was doomed to poverty and famine because the human population was growing exponentially, while mankind’s ability to produce food could only increase at a linear rate.

He wrote at a time when the famous curve of human population growth was way down here (slide). The ensuing science-based increases in agricultural production supported a tripling of the human population. But around the middle of the 20^th century, there was a resurgence of Malthusian predictions of mass famines in the populous countries of Asia that had not yet benefitted from scientific advances in agriculture.

Strikingly, it took just a handful of scientists–principally plant breeder Norman Borlaug–to avert the predicted famines by developing improved strains of dwarf wheat and rice and promoting their rapid adoption, along with improved agricultural practices and increased fertilizer use. The resulting increases in food production were a necessary precondition for the rapid economic development that we are now witnessing in India, China and other parts of Asia.

The population has more than doubled again since the middle of the 20th century and the population experts are expecting another roughly 3 billion people to be added to the planet’s population by midcentury. Here’s a sobering factoid: the amount of arable land has not changed appreciably over the past half century–and isn’t likely to in the future because we’re losing it to urbanization, salinization, and desertification as fast as we’re adding it–possibly even faster as the earth heats up.

And now we’ve decided that our crops must feed not just humans and animals, but our cars as well. Perhaps it isn’t all that surprising that food prices have suddenly spiked.

A New York Times article published last December 18^th reported and I quote: “In an ‘unforeseen and unprecedented’ shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the United Nations’ top food and agriculture official warned Monday.”

Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the World Food Program is quoted thus: “We’re concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world’s hungry.” She said that her agency’s food procurement costs had gone up 50 percent in the last five years and that some poor people were being “priced out of the food market.”

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization was quoted as suggesting that: “…all countries and international agencies would have to ‘revisit’ agricultural and aid policies they had adopted ‘in a different economic environment.’ For example, with food and oil prices approaching records, it may not make sense to send food aid to poorer countries, but instead to focus on helping farmers grow food locally.”

The spike in food prices is also not so good for tropical forests.

According to the BBC, the Brazilian government announced on the 24^th of January that there has been a marked increase in the rate of deforestation in the Amazon over the last five months of 2007, with some 1,250 square miles lost. A spokesman for an institute that provides satellite imaging of the area said the rate of loss was unprecedented for the time of year. Officials say rising commodity prices are encouraging farmers to clear more land to plant crops such as soybeans.

That’s where we are today. Garrett Hardin titled one of his famous essays “Nobody Ever Dies of Overpopulation.” We have famines and failed states, deforestation and desperate poverty, war and terrorism.

So what can science–and scientists and engineers–do?

Through the chilly decades of the Cold War of the last century, scientists in the west continued to communicate with their counterparts behind what was called “The Iron Curtain”–an almost forgotten term. Indeed, many have credited these continuing communications, particularly among physicists, with preventing a flash-over of the Cold War. In the immediate wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, both the US government and philanthropist George Soros invested significantly in the science and scientists of the former Soviet Union, albeit for rather different reasons.

Under the leadership of Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, in 1991 Congress established the Cooperative Threat Reduction program (within the Defense Threat Reduction Agency or DTRA). The objectives were to clean up nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and to find employment for the tens of thousands of Soviet scientists who had worked on such weapons. A number of International Science and Technology Centers were established to employ weapons scientists and engineers in civilian research and development.

In 1992, philanthropist George Soros was persuaded by Russian-born US scientists to donate $100 million dollars to keeping science–and scientists in the Former Soviet Union–afloat through the initial post-Soviet period of instability. He founded the International Science Foundation–or ISF–whose founding board I was invited to join under the chairmanship of the late Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg. To keep FSU scientists connected and funded, the ISF provided personal grants, travel grants and research grants; it had a telecommunications program and a library assistance program, which I headed, to maintain the flow of scientific literature to libraries in universities and institutes. One of my first experiences in active science diplomacy was accompanying George Soros to Moscow to meet with Boris Yeltsin to urge him not to tax Foundation funds.

Curiously, both of these early programs continue–and continue to evolve. Soros’ foundation did not survive his initial gifts, but morphed into the U. S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) which today supports cooperative projects between FSU and US industries–as well as many other international science activities. Senators Nunn and Lugar continue to be involved in the tough task of cleaning up the weapons stockpiles. A part of the original Nunn-Lugar CTR program was transferred to the State Department and continues to supports on-going programs, often through the CRDF.

My office, the Office of the Science Adviser to the Secretary of State, was established in 2000 in response to an National Research Council (NRC) study that highlighted the attrition of scientists from State Department ranks at a time when the importance of science and technology was expanding in every aspect of foreign policy. Under the leadership of the first Adviser, Dr. Norman Neureiter, the number of active scientists in the department began to grow again as he promoted the expansion of the AAAS Science Diplomacy Fellows program. (Parenthetically I’d like to tell you that Norm is the recipient of this year’s Public Welfare Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, in significant measure recognizing his work in the State Department.) Today we have roughly 30 new AAAS Fellows joining us every year for 1-2 years of service. So let me bring this to life by introducing you to a couple of AAS fellows–what they’ve done and what they are doing.

Dr. Jason Rao was trained as a molecular biologist at the Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Rao came to the State Department as one of this wonderful cadre of AAAS Science Diplomacy Fellows and went to work in the Cooperative Threat Reduction Office. As a biologist, Dr. Rao focused on facilities in the Former Soviet Union that had been engaged in producing biological weapons. His Bioindustry Initiative funds large-scale projects in Russia, Georgia, and Kazakhstan to transform facilities previously engaged in producing organisms for biological warfare to institutes that enhance public health capacity in vaccine production, research and development, and disease surveillance. You might not think that all these diverse threads would reassemble, but they do. The Nunn-Lugar funds continue to support some of the programs of the State Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Office and CRDF is involved in their implementation.

Dr. Rao stayed on at the State Department after finishing his fellowship. And increasingly, his efforts are extending beyond “putting out fires”–as one might regard disarming nuclear weapons and redirecting former weapons scientists–to a proactive science diplomacy. Dr. Rao and his colleagues have launched a Biosecurity Engagement Program, whose objective is to interact with public health laboratories in Asia and the Middle East to strengthen their ability to detect and deal with both known pathogens and emerging pathogens, whether of natural origin or as a result of bioterrorism. And at this moment, Jason is in Pakistan for 6 months developing collaborations and training programs with Pakistani biological laboratories. Working together, USAID and CTR have selected a number of joint research projects between American and Pakistani scientists on a wide variety of topics ranging from improving the composition of pavement to control of crop plant disease to creating speech-based telephone interfaces for non-literate users.

Dr. Alex Dehgan joined the State Department as a AAAS fellow, as well. Dr. Dehgan holds a law degree from the University of California as well as a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Chicago. Soon after joining the State Department, he found himself in Iraq working to identify and redirect former weapons scientists into civilian research. Dodging bombs and attacks in and out of the Green Zone, Dr. Dehgan helped Iraqi scientists to establish a natural history museum. He quickly realized that with libraries destroyed, Iraqi scientists and engineers were cut off from science.

Returning to the State Department, Dr. Dehgan worked with several others to create an Internet portal through which Iraqi scientists could access the full range of scientific literature. It is known the Iraqi Virtual Science Library. Creating it sounds simple, but it wasn’t. It meant raising the money to develop the software, enlisting software developers, and negotiating with publishers to give deep discounts on electronic journal subscriptions. Funding has been secured for the next several years and the CRDF, once again, has taken on the care and maintenance of the library.

In some measure, Dehgan’s success underscore’s the enormous ability of electronic communications to connect and empower–precisely Tom Friedman’s point about a flattening world. What Dehgan did was virtually impossible 15 years earlier when I was trying to do the same job of keeping scientists connected to the scientific literature in the Former Soviet Union. At that time, most institutions around the world were still receiving print journals, which were just beginning to go on-line. But we received lists of journals from FSU libraries through CERN computers and were able to set up a few centers in Russia where scientists could access at least some of the literature abstract databases electronically. Today tens of thousands of journals are available electronically, yet the on-line revolution has yet to jump the digital divide in the poorest countries.

The State Department’s wider science diplomacy efforts in the Middle East have included sponsoring a conference of women scientists in Kuwait in early 2007 and developing a bilateral science and technology agreement with Libya. Here is the official signing ceremony for the US-Libyan Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement, which took place on the 3^rd of January, 2008. It is the first official bilateral agreement signed since relations were reestablished between the US and Libya in 2004. Under this agreement, the State Department is coordinating a number of collaborative projects including water management, health care delivery, seismic monitoring, solar power and science education to promote the reintegration of Libyan scientists into the global science community. One of the first–and highly publicized collaborative projects–was a NASA-led international gathering of scientists to observe the solar eclipse in Libya on March 29^th of 2006.

But the idea of serving as a science diplomat is only beginning to get on the radar of the average scientist and engineer, whether in academia or in business.

Bill Gates–arguably the most famous technocrat in the world–gave an extraordinary speech during the World Economic Forum last month in Davos. I quote from his speech:

Thirty years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, my focus was totally on how the magic of software could change the world… But breakthroughs change lives primarily where people can afford to buy them…

There are billions of people who need the great inventions of the computer age, and many more basic needs as well, but they have no way of expressing their needs in ways that matter to the market, so they go without.

If we are going to have a chance of changing their lives, we need another level of innovation. Not just technology innovation, we need system innovation…

Gates argues that we need to go beyond capitalism–which works on behalf of those who can pay–and beyond philanthropy and government aid–which are the traditional means of helping those who cannot afford to pay. He says “to provide rapid improvement for the poor we need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.”

Gates cites examples ranging from the development of software for people who cannot read and write to developing vaccines at a price that Africans can afford to pay, concluding that such projects “provide a hint of what we can accomplish if people who are experts on needs in the developing world meet with scientists who understand what the breakthroughs are, whether it’s in software or drugs.”

And he might have added agriculture, as well. Gates is saying that we need to go beyond current concepts of engaging companies with governments and philanthropic organizations–these are called “public-private partnerships” in today’s development lingo. He is suggesting that we need to develop a new business model that would allow a combination of the motivation to help humanity and the profit motive to drive development. He’s calling it “creative capitalism,” capitalism leavened by a pinch of idealism and an altruistic desire to better the lot of others. Scientists play a key role in this concept.

Gates belongs to the business world, while many scientists and engineers find their home in the academic world. Academia has a different reward structure than the business world. In most research organizations and universities, the major measure of success for scientists is scholarly papers published–and the quality of the journals in which they appear. While global engagement is already a central part of what many agricultural and public health scientists do, it is not so common for scientists in the basic sciences and mathematics and engineering. But here's one example.

A team of academic scientists from Texas Tech University has been working with the government of Iraq under the auspices of the State Department to analyze the nuclear contamination in former Iraqi nuclear facilities, as well as to identify the health impacts in the surrounding communities that resulted from the looting of these sites. They are assisting the government of Iraq to establish laws, regulations and procedures needed to dismantle former nuclear facilities. Iraqi scientists visited Texas Tech for training and the Texas Tech team organized an international network to assist Iraqi scientists in the monitoring and decontamination work. The network comprises scientists from Iraq, Jordan, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the US and the International Radiological laboratory in the Ukraine, where samples are now sent for analysis.

My predecessor as Science Adviser, Dr. George Atkinson, created an opportunity for tenured academic scientists and engineers, farther along in their careers than the typical AAAS fellow, to work as science diplomats in the State Department. Jefferson Fellows come to the State Department for a year, funded by their own university, as they would be on a sabbatical leave, with the State Department covering their local living and travel expenses. Fellows then consult for the State Department for an additional 5 years after they return to their home institutions. The Jefferson Fellows program was initially launched with grants from the Carnegie Corporation and the MacArthur Foundation. It is now part of the State Deparment and is administered by the National Academy of Sciences.

This is Professor Osama Awadelkarim, a physcist and materials scientist at Penn State and one of last year's Jefferson Fellows. Dr. Awadelkarim received his Bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Khartoum, Sudan, and his Ph.D. from Reading University in the UK.

His passionate interest in improving science and technology in Africa brought him to the State Department as a Jefferson Fellow where he worked, in part, with the Africa Bureau. In the course of his year at State, he traveled to several African countries to meet with faculty and students, to lecture and talk with science ministers. He is continuing his engagement under his consulting agreement and is currently organizing a science and technology conference in Africa.

This year’s group of 8 Jefferson Fellows is equally remarkable. Among them are two members of the National Academy of Engineering and the disciplines they represent range from engineering and nuclear physics to molecular biology, food processing and forest economics. So what brings scientists of this stature to the State Department? I cannot speak for all of their motivations, but I am deeply impressed with their global breadth of vision. I think that we share several realizations.

· The first is that the rising tide of resentment–and yes, of violence against us around the world is rooted in the deep disparities between our way of life and those of many poorer countries.

· The second is that our science and technology are eagerly sought after, even by countries that have lost respect for our culture and our politics.

· The third is that there is essentially no problem confronting contemporary societies that does not have a scientific and technological component.

Whether it is water for people or water for agriculture, land for food or land for biofuels, we are rapidly approaching the limits of what our planet can support.

The only alternative to fighting over water is working together to distribute it fairly and utilize it in increasingly efficient ways through science and technology. The only alternative to higher food prices and progressive deforestation is to use contemporary science, including molecular modification, to increase the productivity of the land we already farm and decrease its water demands.

Problem-solving is best, of course, when the most up-to-date knowledge and technology are part of the solution. And in this context, there is plenty of room for both science and diplomacy. Those of you who, like me, have engaged in some of the ideological battles over contemporary genetic modification of crop plants know that it takes much more than just the facts to change peoples’ minds and attitudes.

My own appreciation of the importance of science diplomacy deepened after I wrote a book on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in which I sought to explain the science behind the contemporary molecular modification of crop plants. Shortly after it was published in 2004, I received an email from a Foreign Service Officer in the American Embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh asking me to come and speak about GMOs.

Bangladesh is a poor country with a small area of arable land, often submerged by flood waters. Government officials found the differences in attitude between Europe and the U. S. confusing and had not developed a policy toward GM crops. Our embassy invited several speakers to address the scientific basis of GM crops and speak about both the real–and the perceived–risks that they posed.

The conference was attended by government officials, scientists, diplomats and the press. It opened channels of communication between scientists in Bangladesh and scientists in the US and Europe. As well, it opened discussions between scientists, reporters and politicians–an immensely important dialog in moving forward with a controversial technology.

There is little doubt that contemporary molecular methods are needed to achieve the kinds of dramatic increases in productivity required to meet the growing demand for food and biofuels. I remind you that increases in farm land today are largely bought at the cost of our ever shrinking wildlands, particularly in the tropics, where every acre lost takes into extinction species we’ve not yet even identified.

We have the requisite molecular tools: they’ve been used to introduce genes that confer insect resistance and herbicide tolerance on crop plants. Here is one of the insects that attacks cotton and the damage it does (slide)–and here is Bt cotton (slide), cotton containing a bacterial gene encoding a protein that is toxic to insects, but not people. Here in the insect damage done to non-Bt corn and here is Bt-corn (slide).

From 1996 through 2006, the total area planted in GM crops increased 60-fold, today exceeding 100 million hectares in 22 countries. The use of GM or biotech crops has increased yields, decreased pesticide use, and promoted no-till agriculture, markedly decreasing soil erosion. The fears that their widespread use would lead to the rapid development of Bt-resistance in insects and wipe out Monarch butterflies have not been realized. To date, the only unforseen outcomes of their use have been positive: Bt corn shows much lower levels of contamination with mycotoxins, which can be lethal, because the fungi that produce them follow the boring insects into the corn. No insects, no fungi, no mycotoxins.

Yet well-meaning people around the world still believe that GM crops are dangerous, their beliefs fueled by misinformation–even disinformation–on the Internet, from public interest groups and the communications media. Although some European countries, particularly Spain, are growing GM crops, much of Europe, Japan–and most of Africa–remain adamantly opposed to crops improved using molecular techniques. This has resulted in restrictive and costly regulation of such crops or simply banning of their use and import–incredibly, even as food aid. With almost 3 million people at risk of starvation as the result of drought, President Mwanawasa of Zambia refused to accept shipments of corn from the U.S. in 2002 because he could not be sure that the corn was GM-free.

Norman Borlaug, who at 94 still works indefatigably in Africa, grows impatient: “We need sophisticated scientific technology to boost our production," he said at a conference convened in Kenya last summer in his honor. He sums up more than a decade of experience with GM cotton, soybeans, corn and other crops, including papaya, saying “There is no evidence to indicate that biotechnology is dangerous.” Indeed, he is confident that biotechnology is the surest way to ensure food security in Africa and other developing countries.

In sum: there is much work–both scientific and diplomatic–to be done. I hope I have succeeded in giving you a small glimpse of the opportunities available to scientists to serve as science diplomats, both in and out of the State Department. I am optimistic that in the coming years, we will build further bridges directly between academics in developed and developing countries.

To that end, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, together with USAID Administrator Henrietta Fore, are convening a summit of global university presidents on the 29^th and 30^th of April this year to explore innovative ways of connecting the educational institutions of more and less developed countries, with the objective of improving education and research, as well as stimulating innovative approaches to knowledge-driven economic development in the less-developed countries.

The G8 countries have promised billions of dollars to rebuild African universities and establish research centers of excellence, although only a tiny fraction of it has materialized so far. David Skorton, President of Cornell University, has suggested that we need a plan on the scale of the Marshall plan enacted after the WWII, but focused on university capacity building in less developed countries, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. We need all of that–and much more.

I have not spoken here of the need to increase soil productivity, improve access to primary and secondary education, and health care, as well as improve transportation and telecommunications infrastructure–all of these are pressing needs and there is an increasing awareness that they must be tackled simultaneously, as, for example, the Millenium Villages Project seeks to do.

My focus here has been on what science and scientists can do. And even here, I think it will be necessary for universities and research centers in the developed world to go far beyond just helping the universities of the less developed world to deliver education. It will be equally necessary to help them embark on the difficult process of converting research findings into economic drivers, into businesses.

I think that our research universities and institutes, working together with the business sector and using contemporary electronic resources, have a unique opportunity to accelerate the “flattening” of the world, to call on Tom Friedman’s metaphor once again. Can it be done? Yes. For example, Cisco Systems has started literally thousands of Cisco Academies, training centers for IT support specialists, around the world. Art Reilly, a Cisco Systems Senior Director, told me recently that a startling 12% of Cisco Academy graduates in the developing world start their own businesses. Now while network support is good, knowledge generation is limitless.

There is little doubt that American universities are eager to go global. But, according to a recent New York Times article (“U.S. Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad,” February 10, 2008), the most visible and successful outposts have been created in response to invitations from wealthy countries, particular those of the United Arab Emirates, and appear to have the primary objectives of widening the home institution’s income pool and its foreign student base.

The task of assisting much less-wealthy countries to bolster the instructional, organizational, research and technology transfer capabilities of their own institutions is a vastly different proposition. Most academic scientists look to foreign institutions for top-notch graduate students and post-docs to populate their laboratories. The notion of taking time out from a busy and competitive career to teach and develop research collaborations in the least advanced countries most in need of help is just not on the academic radar screen.

And yet science is our best global common language, able to bridge the deepest of political and religious divides. (It’ll get us across the digital divide, as well, no doubt.) There is a growing recognition in every country that it is science and technology that drive–and will increasingly drive–the successful economies of the 21^st century. Our scientists and engineers are still welcome. Input of US science and technology is sought by developing countries on issues ranging from the solution of acute problems of food, water, and health to the longer-term problems of higher education, environment, global climate disruption, and economic development through innovation.

Perhaps we need to recognize, concretely within the reward structure of the academic world, that scientists and engineers have not just a critical, but a crucial, role to play in creating a future in which the citizens of all countries have the educational and economic opportunities that we have. Only when we have equalized food productivity, access to health care, educational opportunities, and economic development among the nations of the world will we have truly flattened the world. I thank you for your attention.