ICSU Foresight Analysis, International Science in 2031 – Exploratory Scenarios Free

A succinct, pre-scenario outline is the work of the very serious International Council for Science, since 1931 a global NGO incorporating all scientific disciplines outside the purely medical domain. Once based in Rome, the International Council for Science, or ICSU, has had its headquarters in Paris since the 1960 s. Preparatory to its first centenary in 2031 – and now that the UN's Millennium Development Goals have been largely met by the target year of 2015 – ICSU is taking a hard look at what developments to anticipate in the next two decades. These should steer investigators towards the most societally beneficial research efforts¹.

To do this, the Council asks two fundamental questions:

1. Which key drivers will influence international science over the coming 20 years?

2. How can scientific collaboration best be supported to help science move forward for the benefit of society?

Answers to these questions constitute ICSU's own foresight analysis, a look-ahead involving two cycles. The first comprises the mapping of the scientific landscape, accompanied by the identification of megatrends in the world of research and their key drivers. The second cycle embraces development of a success scenario and identification of ICSU's role within this scenario.

Science's landscape, as world-wide as ICSU itself, takes into account the main realities of the research endeavour today. Science is more global than ever before, emphasised in part by the fact that the research world is also becoming multi-polar and ever more connected. Within the world of research, skilled migration continues; it is thus scientists themselves who are the main driver of collaboration in research. This notwithstanding, many “global” assessment and research programmes remain separately managed. The role of the business world in the domains of science, for example, is transnational and growing. Finally, but hardly of least importance, science is proving to be an important factor in international diplomacy.

This portrayal of the scientific landscape is the initial point for reckoning what influences might bring new results from any shifts in this landscape during the next two decades.

The factors that should influence the changing landscape of science over the next 20 years should include:

• Demography – a growing population will have a greater need for space, resources and energy.

• Natural resources' availability – this will be directly a function of population growth, the degradation of ecosystems, and the unsustainable use of finite sources of energy.

• Environmental change – data now available on oceanic, ecosystem, cryospheric and atmospheric change show what they are likely to mean if change continues at present rates.

• Health – increasing population, urbanization, travel; trade too, will add to the prevalence of non-communicable and communicable diseases exacerbated by sedentary life and obesity.

• Technology – more difficult to predict than other megatrends, exponential change and innovation are reasonably forecastable for the coming two decades.

• Information and communication technologies – the ICTs are expected to have continuing impact on science in both the industrialized and emerging economies.

ICSU's Foresight Analysis then proceeds to embellish in somewhat more detail these large-scale trends, adding with judicious hindsight, “[P]rogress in science has helped societies respond to many challenges in the past”, so that science and technology retain their “promise to do the same thing over the coming decades. How the aspiration will turn into real capabilities in the inherently unpredictable economic and political context of the future remains to be seen […] In the long term this world is not sustainable and it can be expected that measures will be implemented to avoid and/or respond to undesirable consequences”.

The megatrends being thus reassuringly predictable until 2030-1, there exist none the less factors likely to influence strongly science at the international level. These are:

• States and markets – they range from free market-based approaches to strong intervention by states. New socio-economc models should emphasize sustainability, well-being.

• Global agendas, arenas – expandingly complex, as non-state actors influence political and policy agendas. International science will engage and inform decision makers more and more

• Sovereignty, regionalism, globalism – the future of global policy makers (e.g. the UN) remaining largely unknown, state-sovereignty models are likely to be challenged by growingly strong entities.

• Science and society – how science will continue to obtain its “mandate” from society, and then feedback to society.

• Private industry/military science – research will be shaped by the extent to which science is contradicted by the market economy and the military advantage.

• Integrity and self-regulation – both will be important for generating confidence and trust in scientific research.

• Spatial organization/conduct of science – emerging “science nations” and new collaborators will alter the research landscape.

• Collaborative infrastructures – the what and where of these entities presume an ongoing commitment to such structures.

• Epistemic organization – consortia of researchers, and firms or emerging hybrids of both, may replace today's universities and public research institutes; the seats of learning are evolving.

• The scientific record – open-access publishing has much momentum, but the peer-review process and journals themselves may be transformed significantly.

• Ethos of beliefs and values – how science will rationalize controversial developments with the public interest will affect further the relationship between science and society.

• Education and skills – the paths of scientific education and training may be strongly affected by emerging technologies.

• Careers in research and teaching – one's place and evaluation in the focus and conduct of science could change significantly.

Finally we come to specific queries about science in the years to come. How will foresight guide ICSU's diverse members – the geological scientists and space researchers, the astronomers and cosmologists and the chemists' and physicists' professional unions, the microbiologists and ecologists, the hydrologists and earthquake/tsunami experts – plan or prioritise their investigations? The second phase of ICSU Foresight seeks to make this as explicit as possible.

Part 2 was completed in late September 2012, a 20-page document that largely reiterates and confirms the first, exhorting at the same time a strengthening of the Council's active membership in order to enhance its leadership and guidance of the member scientific unions. In what follows, we encapsulate the report's executive summary, which employs as tense of future-historical.

In ICSU's centennial anniversary-year of 2031,

ICSU 's perception of what global research and innovation should be two decades hence concludes with the remark that the Council's “foresight exercise is only the start of an ongoing and iterative process. We may only be able to judge the full implications of this in 2031 in a world that will surely be quite different to anything that we can imagine now”.

These two reviews of future strategy applied to the complex enterprise of research and innovation reflect a remarkable likeness in the reports analysed.

Pierre Papon's book could also serve as a guiding manual for the BRICS and other industrializing economies busily engaged in how to convert laboratory results to useable technology. ICSU's analysis reflects the sober consciousness of the world of research concerning the projected state of the planet and an endangered climate that needs the good sense and the succor that science and technology are equipped to provide – and which the citizen assumes that governments, industry and the service sectors will make every effort to exploit.

Jacques Richardson, formerly associate publisher of the French scientific monthly La Recherche, is a member of foresight's editorial board. He can be contacted at: jaq.richard@noos.fr