In November 2024, Brazil concluded its G20 presidency with the handover to South Africa. Just one week before the G20 Leaders‘ Summit in Rio de Janeiro on 11-12 November 2024, think tanks and research organisations from around the world gathered for the Think20 (T20) Summit. They took stock of the uptake and implementation of the policy advice they provided to the G20 throughout the year. This blog post provides an overview of key discussions at the T20 Summit with a focus on the priorities under Brazil’s G20 presidency. It analyses to which extent Brazil has continued initiatives of India’s G20 presidency in 2023, and shares an outlook on the potential approach of the South African presidency in 2025. (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.
By Hellosumanjaya – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=110382121
“Recover Together – Stronger Together” is the slogan of the G20 presidency of Indonesia 2022. Formulated in 2021, it was meant as a signal to focus on economic recovery and the global health architecture after the Covid-19 pandemic, combined with sustainable energy transition. In 2022, geopolitical tensions amongst G20 member states and a series of yet more global challenges, including a severe food and energy crisis, place a bold question mark behind literally all components of the slogan. Economies and societies do not ‘recover’ at the aspired pace. The recent drop of the global Human Development Index erases gains of the last five years. The G20 is not ‘together’ and most of the world’s economies cannot be considered ‘stronger’. In sum, global governance is anything but fit to address the “interwoven sustainability emergencies” with a climate crisis at its core. Still, there is hope that the Indonesian presidency marks the beginning of a new era for the G20, and, thus, for the global cooperation system as a whole.
The new era arguably has already begun, even if keeping the G20 alive may turn out to be the Indonesian presidency’s main success under challenging circumstances. We will see a set of four G20 presidencies with a markedly “Global South” identity in a row: India (2023), Brazil (2024), and South Africa (2025) are to follow Indonesia. This comes with great potential in the mid-term for closer cooperation, more continuity in the G20 agenda and a stronger focus on development that works for the South.
The hope for more cooperation and a shift of focus towards development within the boundaries of the earth system crystallised during the recent summit of the Think 20 (T20) in Indonesia. The T20 is an official G20 engagement group that brings together leading think tanks and research institutions to provide research-based policy recommendations. In its final message to the G20 leaders, condensed from more than 130 policy briefs produced in 9 Task Forces and launched during the Summit, the community highlighted five core areas on how to:
foster recovery and resilience,
accelerate the process toward net zero emissions and combat climate change,
govern transformation to the digital society,
make the economy more inclusive and people-centred, and
revive global governance.
Beyond these core points, discussions during the Summit revolved around the role of the T20 and the science and think tank community for international cooperation. In this way, the T20 tried to deliver on the thematic priorities of the Indonesian G20 presidency, while recognising at the same time that at the moment food and energy security are more immediate concerns than green and digital transformations.
A divided G20 faces interwoven crises
In 2022, cooperation in the G20 is both more difficult and more needed than ever. The core challenge of climate change becomes ever more pressing with numerous direct and indirect effects on societies, economies and ecosystems. Other, new challenges have been added, not least manifold implications of the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the Covax initiative and related efforts, worldwide access to affordable vaccines remains a key challenge. Economic recovery is hampered by geopolitical tensions that come with a substantial food and energy crisis, a slowdown of growth for major world economies, a looming ‘stagflation’ period and an excess debt crisis. All of these effects hit less resilient economies hardest and it happens at a time when production and demand were still suffering from the disruption of supply chains during the pandemic. People mobility was reduced because of Covid-19-related restrictions and today harms both economic re-opening and the transnational cooperation between countries in more general terms. To illustrate, the already complex exchange with China has become even more difficult in the face of China’s strict public health measures due to its zero-Covid approach. Within societies worldwide, the pandemic widened the gender gap regarding income and socio-economic security; women were the first to lose their jobs and are the last to return to the labour market. Young generations suffer from “lost years” of education, the real consequences of which are likely to unfold in the next years only. The high share of young people in developing and emerging countries implies strongest effects here. The boost of digitalisation fuelled by the pandemic – occasionally perceived as a modernisation of services – results in more automation, adding an additional disruptive element to the labour market with a likely increase of existing inequalities.
The complexity and urgency of these interwoven challenges call for globally coordinated action. The G20 might be a forum for that, but political disagreement hampers comprehensive cooperation and, thus, increases the risk that the major challenges of our time remain unaddressed. G20 members are divided over their positions on Russia’s war against Ukraine, while its repercussions – including rising energy and food prices – put an additional burden on economic recovery. Additional political and economic uncertainty comes with strong disputes between the US and China regarding Taiwan. Under the Indonesian presidency, the G20 disguises these developments under the notion of ‘geopolitical tensions’ without addressing the elephants in the room openly. However, the absence of trust between various actors constitutes a key obstacle to the formulation of joint positions, and it is not unlikely that President Joko Widodo will have to close the Summit on 16th November without a joint communiqué.
A new era of cooperation in a ‘Southernised’ G20?
Despite these risks, there is hope that the sequence of chairing countries in the coming years bears the potential to initiate a ‘Southernisation’ of the G20 after a period of agenda setting by developed countries with positive effects. The incoming presidencies share similar development challenges and economic and political roles in their respective regions. This background can make it easier for them to arrive at common understandings of global problems – the precondition for joint and, thus, effective solutions. These countries also share the ambition to co-shape world affairs based on a better recognition of global power shifts towards the South. Three of them are members of BRICS, which can contribute to the synchronisation of initiatives. In this way, the sequence of presidencies can bring a stronger development focus and more continuity to the agenda, the lack of which remains a key obstacle to effective cooperation structures. The already established troika system, meant to synchronise the efforts of three consecutive G20 presidencies, could be made to work into the same direction. Initiatives like the T20 Research Forum, established during the T20 summit, may help develop joint understandings and continuous agenda setting, too. Beyond the set of chairing G20 countries, attempts to better integrate G20 views in the G7 process under the German G7 presidency 2022 shows potential for a parallel ‘G20-fication’ of the G7, with prospects for improved cooperation between the two country clubs. Crucially, together, the trends of 2022 – Southernisation of G20, and G20-ification of G7 – may also mark the beginning of a new era of global cooperation, in which Southern leaderships shift the focus to the Global South.
Indonesia is well positioned to keep the G20 alive. Its geopolitical position between major blocks, diverse international economic connections, its strong role in ASEAN and membership in APEC, the approval of the UN resolution ES-11/1 to deplore Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in combination with a non-alignment with ‘Western’ sanctions against Russia, and an overall careful diplomatic approach can help keep the show going when leaders meet for a showdown on Bali in November. However, as agreement on a comprehensive common approach to key crises remains unlikely, regional and thematic country clubs, which share higher ambitions in selected areas, could be a pragmatic means to create dots – within and outside the G20 – that can be connected at a later stage. The four presidencies of emerging powers in the G20 should work together to materialise the potential of a better-harmonised and more continuous agenda until 2025, with shared development and climate questions at the centre.
Here, the role of a cooperative and effective T20 as a “bank of ideas” underpinned by sound scientific evidence is crucial. It can help in setting and maintaining a multiannual agenda, building necessary transboundary bridges and finding common solutions. It remains to be seen in how far the strong T20 efforts under Indonesian guidance can contribute to a successful G20. Arguably, the T20 process can be most important when successful cooperation amongst G20 members is most difficult. While Indonesia’s presidency might not be able to fully live up to the ambition of its motto to have the G20 recover together and stronger in 2022, its legacy could be the preparation of a new phase of togetherness, which allows for better cooperation in the future.
The corona pandemic is becoming the largest global health crisis in decades. The virus does not stop at developing countries either. When the corona virus spreads there, it will have massive negative socioeconomic effects. Most countries in the Global South have already taken strict measures to contain the virus. However, given the local living conditions, these measures are much more difficult to implement than in the Global North. (mehr …)
Diese Website benutzt Cookies. Wenn du die Website weiter nutzt, gehen wir von deinem Einverständnis aus.
© Palácio do Planalto on flickr, Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR
