By I, MyriamLouviot, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2532799
As the global landscape undergoes rapid transformation, driven by technological advancements, climate change, and shifting economic paradigms, it is imperative that young people are equipped with the necessary skills and competencies to navigate these challenges and seize emerging opportunities. The Hamburg Sustainability Conference (HSC) highlights the importance of preparing younger generations for the future, emphasising sustainability and inclusivity as key pillars of global economic development. This blog post explores the critical steps required to empower youth for the labour market.
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The current debate on the Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement could be very consequential for the World Trade Organization (WTO) although it is not part of the official calendar of next week’s 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi. (mehr …)
Knowledge cooperation—specifically science cooperation—is a precondition of coordinated efforts for combatting global crises from climate to finance, and from food to public health. Cloud server storage and satellite-based internet connectivity are key technologies to reducing to zero the time and distance necessary to exchange knowledge across the planet. Science could be an effective means of international cooperation towards combatting global crises, but knowledge is currently not shared freely. Consequently, calls for scientific knowledge to be freely accessible and open to participation by everyone are ever more present.
“Open Science”, the term under which the discussion is led, comes with enormous potential to address global challenges such as climate change or pandemics. It has been embraced by international organisations and major science associations around the world. Most recently, in February 2023, the UN’s 3rd Open Science conference, uniting UN bodies with international science institutions and associations made a clear statement: Open Science is necessary for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, and further, it is an instigator of positive digitalisation in the combat against global crises. Despite these promises, its implementation remains limited. The current science paradigm, political will, technical limitations, and a narrow understanding of the concept constitute key obstacles. Following our previous calls for Open Science action, we identify that G20 countries can build upon initiatives by UNESCO and the EU to implement Open Science and materialise its impact soon.
The Open Science concept benefits from technological advances, as it calls for scientific knowledge to be freely accessible and open to participation by everyone. Its most popular tenets are Open Access, Open Data, and Open Source software, which seek to make publications, data and software code as findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) as possible. The practice of public participation and collaboration in research (citizen science), incorporation of indigenous knowledge, open educational resources, open notebooks, preprints and transparent peer review processes are all aspects of Open Science too.
The current science paradigm
A main obstacle to the full implementation of the Open Science objectives is the current science paradigm, which enforces stratified and hierarchical access to scientific knowledge by creating barriers between citizens and the channels through which knowledge is accessed. Many of those barriers are capital and affiliation-based, with most scientific publications locked behind paywalls, including Article Processing Charges (APCs). The UNESCO Science Report 2021 notes that “five commercial publishers are responsible for more than 50% of all published articles and about 70% of scientific publications are still unavailable in open access.” Other ‘rights to access’ are restricted by intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes, in which private companies and individuals have ownership over the data and production of scientific research. In the name of innovation and economic incentives, IPR are vociferously protected by commercially-driven governance regimes, including private sector lobbyists. The production of COVID-19 vaccines provides an illustrative example of how privatising innovation can conflict with the global common good.
In its Recommendation on Open Science, published in November 2021, UNESCO called for policy implementation at the national and regional levels in order to transform the way that science is conducted and thought about in each UN member state. The Recommendation called for a paradigm shift away from the institutionalisation of science as a tool for profit (or war), and towards the tenet of Article 27 of the Declaration on Human Rights, which defines science as a public good for the common good.
Digital technologies are key instruments for implementing a global Open Science platform, as most scientific knowledge is shared via the internet. However, ubiquitous and open access to scientific knowledge requires that each person has access to the internet, the digital tools which provide the access, and the skills to navigate the online world (digital literacy). Digital technologies are not only an adult tool—they enter the hands of the youngest generations. This means that digital literacy education needs to integrated alongside of ‘traditional’ literacy education of reading and writing. Therefore, the UNESCO Recommendation declares that governments and international institutions need to invest public finances in education, science and digital infrastructure. These public investments are intended to make a clear statement that the right to science and access to the internet are fundamental human rights; they are essential for inclusion and equality, for economic growth and cooperation, for an informed and democratic citizenry, and for connecting humanity to a global pool of knowledge for social advancement and combatting global crises.
Despite remaining problems of connectivity and access, and the tenacity of the “closed” science paradigm, Open Science is gaining traction. The European Commission’s Open Research Europe platform is a model for implementing Open Science policies cross-nationally. Open Research Europe is the European Union’s one-stop-shop for its Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe research funding programmes. It is not only a repository for publications and their datasets, like Zenodo, but it is also a collection of journals, a transparent peer review platform, and a publishing house all in one platform. Metadata from all uploaded materials is organised in an index which makes preprints, publications and datasets as FAIR as possible. Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe research is publicly funded; and whereas Horizon 2020 piloted Open Science policies in an optional Open Research Data Pilot (ORDP), Horizon Europe mandates Open Science policies in the grants that it awards.
Whereas Open Research Europe can be understood as a model and part of the solution, it is limited to the research conducted under the European Union’s public financing regime. This regime (Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, etc.) is, not exclusively but, predominantly focused on research by European institutions. We need an ‘Open Research Global’ approach, which not only takes on the roles of being a host of journals, a publishing house, a data repository and a knowledge index, but also acts as a research and innovation investment instrument that incentivises cross-border flows of knowledge and knowledge cooperation in all dimensions. UNESCO is uniquely situated to spearhead an Open Research Global platform. UNESCO cannot pass a policy for the creation of a global and equitable digital infrastructure, but it can establish scientific partnerships between public and private research institutes which incentivize the construction of an adequate digital infrastructure intra- and internationally.
What can the G20 do?
Here the Group of 20 can make a significant contribution. According to a 2020 report from Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information, G20 countries accounted for 86% of global research papers in the Web of Science index in 2019. This position comes with the power to promote a global science community in line with the Open Science ideals. The G20 should therefore support initiatives spearheaded by UNESCO and other relevant international bodies in establishing an Open Research Global platform, for sharing scientific knowledge globally and increasing international and economic cooperation. The group could answer the call of the S20 (Science outreach group of the G20), which led up to the last G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia in 2022, that “G20 governments [should] strengthen the nexus between data, research, policy and practice” by making long term investments in scientific research and open science infrastructures. On this basis, the G20 could employ the Open Science concept for achieving the mandates of the UN 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development by including more voices (and eyes and ears) in science, technology and sustainable development discourses.
When rolling-out Open Science globally with the support of the G20, policy-makers will have to address concerns that are already on the G20 agenda, such as free flow of data, data localisation, and privacy concerns. In an Open Research Global instrument data and research results would be centralised in a global repository and indexed to be accessed in a FAIR manner, while also requiring that the research be stored locally in interconnected national or regional repositories and indexes. Open Research Global could follow data storage models, such as the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC), which exchanges and keeps copies of data between regional servers. This protects the free flow of data in case of an uptick in data nationalism in one nation or region.
A digital Open Science with a focus on sustainable development would mitigate concerns of constricting a nation’s ability to prosper from the data its institutions produce and reinforce the sentiment that knowledge is to be shared, openly and equally. To illustrate, a G20-supported Open Research Global approach could advocate for community building projects. Citizen science and indigenous knowledge could be brought into the mainstream science discourse, creating pathways for schools and coding communities to access and develop open educational resources and open source software. The values and skills of digital citizenship and digital literacy could be embedded into primary and secondary school education. The sustainability orientation could thus promote science as an enterprise through which we all participate, shaping our world towards the solutions for common challenges.
Governments across the world, politically supported by the G20 and in line with the recommendations by international organisations such as UNESCO, need to invest in digital infrastructure, science and education. Reliable internet connections must be thought of as basic, essential infrastructure for enhancing science, education and community building, and for growing the economy. Science must become a public good, open to participation by all citizens in all places. Laws concerning for-profit knowledge protectionism, such as IPR regimes, need to be rewritten so that innovation is fostered by scientific knowledge with a high public impact. Open Science is a concept that should serve as a guiding star to materialise the full potential of inclusive, globally shared knowledge.
This blog is published jointly with the blog Digitalización Inclusiva, hosted by Instituto Mora, related to the PRODIGEES project.
The EU has long prided itself on being a leading supporter of international democratic change. Its development cooperation budget for the period 2021-2027 has allocated €1.5 billion for a dedicated ‘Thematic Programme on Human Rights and Democracy’. The EU has also joined forces with several of its member states to pursue a Team Europe Initiative on Democracy to strengthen the collective visibility, effectiveness and impact of their various democracy support programmes.
In her last annual State of the Union address to the European Parliament, European Commission President von der Leyen called for a rethink of the EU’s foreign policy agenda. Reflecting on the global implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she considered that “this is the time to invest in the power of democracies”. Although “our friends in every single democratic nation on this globe” form a core group of like-minded partners with which the EU seeks to shape global goods, von der Leyen also recognised the need to engage beyond the EU’s democratic partners – including through its Global Gateway infrastructure investment initiative. The EU’s efforts to become energy-independent from Russia underlines the need for a broad engagement, but also highlights the challenge of doing so in a way that is consistent with its democracy promotion commitments. One example of this tension was von der Leyen’s presence at the opening of the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria pipeline that enables direct gas imports from Azerbaijanregime has been accused of carrying out an extensive crackdown on civil and political liberties in recent years. The EU’s credibility and effectiveness as a democracy promotion actor requires awareness of this tension between its commitment to democracy and its economic interests.
Notwithstanding its tensions with other policy fields, the EU’s democracy support itself often inadvertently contributes to enabling authoritarianism. In the Southern and Eastern neighbourhood regions, for instance, the EU’s democracy support had the unintended effect of strengthening illiberal reform coalitions. In the South-Caucasus region, political incumbents used EU-supported anti-corruption projects to discredit their political opponents, which in turn weakened the EU’s legitimacy among liberal-minded voters. Research on EU democracy support in Sub-Saharan Africa describes how authoritarian regimes have acted to counteract international democracy support, e.g. in Ethiopia where the authorities further restricted the space for civil society.
Moreover, other than failing to prevent undemocratic actors from taking nefarious counter measures, the ways in which EU democracy support is delivered may work against the very “democrats” it seeks to support. For example, international democracy support has sometimes eroded the transformational potential of civil society organisations. Dependence on external funding, implementation requirements (e.g. logframes and reporting) and the increased exposure to being labelled as foreign agents that both encompass has often contributing to these organizations prioritising more depoliticised, “tame” forms of democracy support.
Also, despite a self-proclaimed “turn to resilience”, EU democracy support often risks impeding the very structures that make a society resilient. For instance, analysis of the EU’s democracy support in the Acholi region in Uganda shows how the EU’s prioritization of youths risks causing further generational tensions among an already fractured society. Rather than engaging with different local imaginaries of what is considered “freedom” or “justice”, the EU assumes that poverty and lack of skills prevent these local communities from sufficiently imagining and claiming political rights and civil liberties. Consequently, the EU’s support is predominantly targeted at empowering Acholi youths in terms of individual entrepreneurship, particularly in the most remote rural communities. Yet, many of those communities understand such emphasis on the individual as well as the exclusion of other important members of society, i.e. the elders, to represent a fundamental corruption of Acholi society and its values, and to be disconnected from their needs and concerns. In addition, it should also be noted that such international support as provided by the EU does little to curb the power of the authoritarian government over this region, on the contrary. Since the government increasingly emphasises the need for privatisation and job creation, any effort to engage these youths in terms of business development is likely to appease an important section of society with which the authoritarian Ugandan government increasingly struggles to create legitimacy.
These examples underline that EU cooperation initiatives are introduced in complex multi-actor settings and as such are inherently political. While international development policy debates are continuously looking into how to improve and apply frameworks and approaches that are sensitive to the contexts in which these interventions are made – e.g. “Thinking and Working Politically” – such sensitivity nevertheless often prioritizes consideration of how the local context might affect the external interventions concerned, rather than vice-versa. These frameworks also tend to too narrowly focus on project implementation, without allowing to assess the intended and unintended effects of the EU’s wider engagement in the country and regions concerned.
Beyond satisfying academic inquiry, analysing and acknowledging the (un)intended effects of EU democracy support within the wider context of its external action brings two potential gains. First of all, it will allow us to learn more about the effectiveness of the specific budgets set aside for democracy support abroad. Secondly, such a broad inquiry will both allow us to learn more about how the EU is perceived by its partners – who generally look beyond individual projects when forming such appreciations over time – and also signal the EU’s willingness to learn from its international cooperation efforts. The latter would be a key condition to practicing in international cooperation what it funds in partner contexts: promoting open and responsive societies.
Authors: Niels Keijzer (German Institute of Development and Sustainability) & Nathan Vandeputte (Ghent Institute for International and European Studies, Ghent University)
About: This blog was developed in the context of the MORDOR project, an education and research project that looks into authoritarianism and EU democracy support, co-funded by the Erasmus Plus program of the European Union. More information: https://mordorproject.eu/
Early in the morning of Saturday 19 November 2022, Frans Timmermanns, the EU’s climate chief, appeared in front of the press at COP27 in Sharm-El-Sheikh with the 13 EU ministers still present. He had a clear message to convey: “All ministers, as they have told me — like myself — are prepared to walk away if we do not have a result that does justice to what the world is waiting for.“
The EU collectively decided to make this unorthodox intervention after the Egyptian presidency presented a draft of the cover decision that, in the EU’s view, would have been tantamount to forfeiting the 1.5-degree objective of the Paris Agreement. Timmermanns also announced that the EU had one final offer to make: it was willing to support the creation of a „Loss and Damage Fund“ which it had previously rejected, if this fund was targeted at the most vulnerable countries and if the base of contributors was broadened to include today’s big emitters and major oil- and gas-exporting countries like China and Saudi Arabia. The EU also called for more ambition when it comes to reducing emissions (with a peak of emissions in 2025) and expected all countries to stand by their commitment to a 1.5-degree pathway as agreed upon in the Glasgow Climate Pact at the previous COP. Yet, no country of the G77 & China group of developing countries openly declared its support for the EU’s position. On early Sunday morning, when the final decision was accepted by all parties, it was clear that the EU had only been moderately successful – perhaps because few would have expected the EU to have actually walked away.
The EU can however claim an important role in breaking the deadlock regarding Loss and Damage (L&D), in no small part due to Germany’s persuasion on the matter. Indeed, the co-chairing of the negotiations on L&D by Jennifer Morgan, State Secretary and Special Envoy for International Climate Action in the German Federal Foreign Office and her counterpart, the Chilean environment minister María Heloísa Rojas Corradi, proved conducive to a constructive outcome on this highly controversial agenda item. Ultimately, the Sharm-El-Sheikh cover decision includes the establishment of a L&D fund and a process to develop commensurate funding arrangements for supporting the most vulnerable countries to address the costs of extreme weather events caused by climate change, with details to be agreed on at COP28. This is a substantive result that was far from certain during negotiations. It is in itself a major success for developing countries and only became possible once the EU reconsidered its initial, year-long resistance to any such fund.
The L&D breakthrough was also the reason the EU decided against walking away from an otherwise sobering and underwhelming outcome of COP27. Notably the EU’s efforts to include a mitigation work programme that would tighten climate targets by industrialised countries with annual reviews by high-level government officials were in vain. Timmermanns openly addressed his disappointment and the EU’s inability to achieve more: „The EU has come here to make sure we agree on strong statements and we are disappointed that we have not been able to do that“. Yet, he also indicated the moral dilemma the EU was facing in not signing an agreement that included the L&D fund breakthrough for vulnerable countries. In a way, the EU thus found tables turned from the Glasgow COP when climate vulnerable developing countries had only grudgingly accepted a cover decision that appeared ambitious on mitigation, but lukewarm on adaptation and, crucially, without progress on L&D.
Could the EU have done more?
So the question remains if the EU could have done more. Or could it have engaged differently to achieve a more ambitious result of COP27, in particular with regards to reducing emissions or international climate finance? During the first week of the COP, the EU’s climate diplomacy was remarkably silent and was not yet present at Sharm-El-Sheik with a strong negotiating mandate or bold announcements of new initiatives. As the EU’s main climate representative, Timmermans was instead preoccupied with internal EU climate action negotiations during the first COP week, during which the EU made progress in increasing emissions reduction targets for member states (effort sharing) and legislation on carbon sinks. This, in theory, would allow the EU to increase its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) from a 55% to a 57% reduction by 2030 compared to 1990. Timmermans presented this option of an update of the European NDC at the COP, yet this change to the EU’s NDC still has to go through a formalised process where the Commission proposes it to the member states, who would then have to adopt this change with a qualified majority. With a decision on that still open, the EU was hampered from fully capitalizing on actually ‘walking the talk’ in its decision-making.
It also didn’t help that the EU had no ‚fresh money‘ to offer with regards to climate finance, as a request by the European Parliament to dedicate 10% of the EU’s Emission Trading to international climate finance was rejected by the Council. The EU thus remained largely inward-looking and ‚reactive‘ at COP27, without strong ideas of how to globally become more ambitious with regards to limiting global greenhouse gas emissions and to living up to its self-proclaimed leadership aspirations on global climate governance. While India’s push to call for a „phase-out“ of all fossil fuels and not just coal in the cover decision failed to attract sufficient support, many observers did not perceive the EU as a leading voice among the 80 countries that supported building on the ambitions agreed in Glasgow.
Yet, it is also questionable how credible the EU can currently ‚sell‘ such a phase-out, in view of some member states’ ‚dash-for-gas‘ in other parts of the world, including Africa. European leaders portray energy diversification as an intermediate step to become less dependent on Russia while intensifying investments into renewable energies. Others blame the EU for double standards and hypocrisy given its push at COP26 to phase out fossil fuel-oriented external investment (including in Africa) while continuing to allow such investment within its own borders and for adopting a ‘taxonomy’ that risks facilitating greenwashing. On balance, the EU’s international credibility and role as a leader on climate has seen tremendous damage, when trust and credibility are key ingredients to forging alliances and mobilising support for positions.
Lessons for COP28 in Dubai – act first and demonstrate resolve to rebuild trust
Key lessons for the EU as it prepares for the next rounds of global climate negotiations, including COP28 in Dubai, is to act decisively in the months ahead, to enter the negotiations in good time and to demonstrate resolve on key issues, now including L&D. This requires the EU to dedicate more time and energy into its climate diplomacy and to live up to its announcements and pledges with commensurate resources politically, technically and, indeed, financially.
One can hardly accuse Timmermans for lack of passion and conviction. Yet, his portfolio in managing the European Green Deal’s implementation domestically while also representing the EU in global climate diplomacy may be too demanding a combination. German foreign minister Baerbock‘s decision to appoint a dedicated, high-profile State Secretary for climate diplomacy certainly helped in Germany’s global climate representation and visibility. Much the same could be said of John Kerry’s role as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate of the US State Department. The EU could consider a similar approach and nominate a senior political representative with the role of EU global climate envoy, who would still work under the leadership of Timmermanns but could dedicate more time and capacity into global climate diplomacy than Timmermanns actually can in his dual role. This mandate for EU climate diplomacy should include both the global representation of the EU and the ‘internal’ negotiations with the EU’s 27 member states to bolster the EU’s position and engagement in multilateral climate politics.
Either way, the EU with its forthcoming stance on the establishment of a dedicated L&D Fund has positioned itself to rebuild trust among developing countries. It will now need to follow up on this move with credible action and contributions to prepare and launch the process that settles the details of the prospective L&D fund and corresponding funding arrangements. Sustaining that momentum will require to swiftly operationalise the fund, ensure it has a broad financing base, and a significant financing volume to boot.
Moreover, and especially in the light of COP27’s blatant failure to deliver on an ambitious mitigation work package, new and additional alliances with countries willing ‚to do more‘ are also urgently needed. Just Energy Transition Partnerships, like the one recently agreed on with Indonesia, can be promising stepping stones, especially in the context of the G20. Broader alliances seem also feasible and could help to build international momentum for a phase-out of all fossil fuels, for instance in the context of the Climate Club initiative of the German G7 Presidency or a reinvigorated High Ambition Coalition among progressive Parties to the UNFCCC. Being seen to walk the talk with ambitious domestic reforms and the implementation of its European Green Deal should enable the EU to resume a leading role in such alliances and, indeed, global climate governance.
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