Diversity of Science

Organiser:  Claudia Neubauer, Fondation Sciences Citoyennes, France

Speakers:
Angelika Hilbeck, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Tirso Gonzales, University of British Columbia, Peru / Canada (Indigenous knowledge programme)
Michael Reinsborough, Queens University Belfast, Social Anthropology, Northern Ireland
Brandon Ballengée, Green Museum, New York, USA

Outline:
In Europe, the Americas and Australia, the diversity in science and scientific approaches to the development of both innovative technologies and solution options for environmental and agricultural problems declined dramatically since world war II. Leading circles of society, mainly scientists (from private and public institutions) and governments, identified certain technology options as most promising which in turn received the biggest portion of investment (public and corporate) designated for research and development. Since decades, world budgets spent for military, biotech, aerospatial and nanotech research are incomparably higher than research budgets spent on environmental and public health issues, sustainable agriculture and fishery, toxicology, and social questions. A further problem of research is its mercantilisation (increasingly bringing commercial strategies into research, large patent systems, scientists being pushed to a behaviour of competition rather than to cooperation, etc.)
The consequences of these development decisions affected the entire world. Cases in point are the post-war decisions to focus on the industrialization of agriculture as the only means to increase its productivity and the use of fossil fuel (and nuclear energy) as the main (if not the only meaningful) energy basis for rebuilding and restructuring post-war (western) societies. Other potential solution options and alternatives for achieving the same goal - in particular if non-technological/non-industrial – were almost entirely neglected and corresponding research suppressed or marginalised. Today, our societies are highly dependent on fossil fuels as basis for energy and industrial materials in all sectors of society and chemicals for agricultural production. Both have led to globally desastrous environmental and human health problems with only limited alternatives available.
The global human society threatened by growing social injustice and, as stated in the Millenium Ecosystem Report, the “intense vulnerability” of our ecosystems is facing today its biggest and most complex challenge to its continued existence: How to curtail and adjust to the inevitable consequences of the most devastating of all global consequences of the above two case examples: the warming of the global atmosphere and the changing climate. Again, singular solution options are proposed by the scientific and political elites of western societies – for example: converting food and feed into ethanol with, again, potentially devastating global consequences for the remaining global resources for human survival like food and water.
This workshop on ‘Diversity of Science – diversity of society’ seeks to explore the reasons for this serious lack of existing alternatives (lack of innovative capacities), identify potential sources for diversity in science, propose strategies for how to increase the innovative and creative capacities of science again and suggest alliances for strengthening the role of society in determining the science agendas for the public good.