The latest issue of Science includes a couple of very interesting articles about the state of nanotechnology research in the developing world. Chunli Bai, executive vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, gives an overview of the growing importance of nanotech research in China, and its current emphasis on nanomaterial production; the article helps explain just how China has come to have the third largest nanoscience budget in the world. But it’s "Small Things and Big Changes in the Developing World," by Mohamed Hassan, executive director of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, that is the most striking.
Hassan argues that the pace and pattern of nanoscience
and nanotech research in the developing world increasingly
mirrors that in the North, and that there are good reasons
to believe that significant breakthroughs could come from
laboratories in the developing world. As noted, China spends
a very large amount of money on nanotech research (perhaps
as much as $600 million total between 2003 and 2007), and
India, Brazil, South Africa and a variety of other
less-developed nations are also funding nanoscience
relatively well. Hassan argues that this reflects both a
recognition of nanotechnology's potentially critical role in
developmental leapfrogging and an embrace of the larger
notion that science is a fundamental engine of development.
At the same time, this could hasten the onset of a
"South-South" divide even greater than the "North-South"
divide with which we're familiar:
First, having closer ties between
scientists and technologists in the North and South
increases the chances that the research and development
agenda will be dictated by the North. Nanoscience and
nanotechnology raise many intriguing questions from a
research perspective. At the same time, they have many
potentially valuable societal applications for poor
people, including the creation of more efficient
filtering systems for producing clean drinking water
(through the creation of filters that prevent viruses
and toxins from entering the water supply) and the
provision of cheap and clean energy (through more
efficient solar cells). But there remains the
possibility that the majority of resources and expertise
(in the North and South) may be applied to products and
services that hold the most promising market potential
in the North where the richest consumers live.
Such a South-South divide is an inevitable consequence of
a world in which some developing nations adopt leapfrog
technologies and practices, and others do not (whether by
mistaken choice or by circumstance). The issue isn't whether
the nano-leap countries will have a developmental
improvement compared to the stragglers, but how that
improvement is applied. That is, do the leapfrog nations
work to meet the demands of the developed world consumer
market, or do they use these technologies to improve the
conditions for those in poverty, both within their own
borders and in their region as a whole?
Hassan's position on this choice is clear:
To avoid this pitfall, governments
throughout the developing world must focus on and
support national policies that address critical social
and environmental concerns in their own countries.
Specifically, the governments of
those developing countries now investing heavily in
nanotechnology should avoid "hitching" their research
and development programs to those in the North. To
prevent the creation of a South-South nanotechnology
divide, such developing countries should devise
broad-based strategies that include ample investments in
South-South cooperation. In the long term, this could
advance the use of these technologies worldwide and spur
progress on many of the Millennium Development Goals.
We've argued here for
quite
a
while that
nanotechnology can and will play a big role in helping to
meet the Millennium Development Goals. Last April, we
linked to an article
in PLoS Medicine showing precisely which of the MDGs
would have the most to gain from nanotech research. The
question isn't whether nanoscience will be of value to
development, it's whether it will be applied in a way to
benefit the greatest number of people.
Here's where the free/open source model takes on an even
greater role. We've
noted before
that nanotechnology bears a closer resemblance to software
development than industrial engineering;
as
with
biotechnology,
the free/open source concepts can be readily and
successfully applied to work done in the realm of
nanoscience. This does not mean that researchers in the
developing world should turn their backs on the undoubtedly
huge global market for commercial nano-goods; rather,
researchers in both the developed and the leapfrog nations
should be willing to contribute to open projects to expand
the broader field of knowledge, and to make sure that those
technologies of greatest use to people in need (even if not
those with the greatest profit potential) are developed and
distributed.
The
Tropical Disease
Initiative can be a model here: an open effort by
biomedical specialists, often in the employ of commercial
firms, to discover and deploy treatments for the kinds of
diseases afflicting those regions least able to pay for
cutting-edge pharmaceuticals.
As the leapfrog nations join the hyperdeveloped world in
the nanotech age, we may well need to see a Developmental
Nanotech Initiative as a guarantee that the benefits of this
revolutionary technology are distributed as widely as
possible.
IEET Blog