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Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Development

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    • Beyond the debate between "specialists and activists"
      • The ethics of scientific communication rest on the relationship to experience - William C. CLARK

The ethics of scientific communication rest on the relationship to experience - William C. CLARK

Knowledge and action in the service of development need to be linked more efficiently because, although we often have pertinent data, it is often badly disseminated or poorly understood. To accomplish this, the scientific community needs to highlight the Pasteurian style of work, integrating in the same labs fundamental research and practical efforts to grapple with problems of great social importance.

Today, much of the debate on what science and scientists need to do for the world implies a false dichotomy between "basic" and "applied" research. Both of these have much to offer. In addition, however, there is a great need for a third approach, the "use-inspired basic research" pioneered by Louis Pasteur. Like Pasteur, we need today to focus the most fundamental and original scholarship we can muster on the great practical problems of the day. This necessarily implies a dialogue between scientists and activists. On the subject of sustainable development, it is commonly accepted that its advancement depends not only on the accumulation of technical, scientific and technological knowledge, but even more so on learning to adapt behaviour to utilize that knowledge. We do know many things that are pertinent in the field of development, but much of this is not well distributed or has not been at all well integrated. Obviously, expertise from all fields must be recruited to research development, but lessons for practice require that laboratory knowledge be taken experimentally into the field, as has been the case for international agricultural research. Some such "knowledge systems" are more efficient than others, as is demonstrated by the example of agriculture compared to education. In fact, the technology of education has not progressed as quickly as it should have.

More generally, we should be more systematic in our attempts to relate knowledge and action. There is not sufficient empirical research on the solution of specific problems, or of systematic comparisons of experience bearing on universal problems. There is a need to encourage greater interaction between producers and users of knowledge. Pasteur was extremely successful along those lines. Dialogue is necessary from beginning to end of a project, and our research institutions must establish this kind of dialogue. For example, the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction is trying to associate users to their programmes. This is also what the International Agricultural Research System is doing. Risk taking is encouraged by such institutions. This is needed to protect innovators from the various kinds of bureaucratic and disciplinary interests that threaten them. However, if risk taking is encouraged, then tar-gets, objectives and means of evaluation must be found, so as to put a stop to what is not effective or not appropriate. Like Pasteur, we need to build institutions committed to learning from the interaction of science with practice.