UNESCO SCIENCE REPORT

UNESCO SCIENCE REPORT
The danger is that, in the race to improve national
competitiveness, countries may lose sight of the old adage
that ‘without basic science, there would be no science to
apply’. Basic research generates the new knowledge that
gives rise to applications, commercial or otherwise. As
the author of the chapter on Canada puts it (Chapter 4),
‘science powers commerce – but not only.’ The question
is: what is the optimal balance between basic and applied
research?
The Chinese leadership has become dissatisfied with
the return on its wider investment in R&D. At the same
time, China has opted to devote just 4–6% of research
expenditure to basic research over the past decade. In
India, universities perform just 4% of GERD. Although India
has created an impressive number of universities in recent
years, industry has complained about the ‘employability’ of
science and engineering graduates. Basic research not only
generates new knowledge; it also contributes to the quality
of university education.
In the USA, the federal government specializes in
supporting basic research, leaving industry to take the lead
in applied research and technological development. There
is a risk that the current austerity drive, combined with
changing priorities, may affect the USA’s long-term capacity
to generate new knowledge.
Meanwhile, the USA’s northern neighbour is cutting back
on federal funding of government science but investing
in venture capital, in order to develop business innovation
and woo new trading partners. In January 2013, the
Canadian government announced its Venture Capital Action
Plan, a strategy for deploying CAN$ 400 million in new
capital over the next 7–10 years to leverage private sectorled
investment in the form of venture capital funds.
The Russian Federation has traditionally devoted a large
share of GERD to basic research (like South Africa: 24% in
2010). Since the government adopted an innovation-led
growth strategy in 2012, a greater share of its appropriation
for R&D has been oriented towards the needs of industry.
Since funding is finite, this readjustment has occurred to
the detriment of basic research, which dropped from 26%
to 17% of the total between 2008 and 2013.
The EU has made the opposite calculation. Despite
the chronic debt crisis, the European Commission has
maintained its commit-ment to basic research. The European
Research Council (est. 2007), the first pan-European funding
body for frontier research in basic sciences, has been
endowed with € 13.1 billion for the period 2014–2020,
equivalent to 17% of Horizon 2020’s overall budget.
The Republic of Korea increased its own commitment to
basic research from 13% to 18% of GERD between 2001 and
2011 and Malaysia has followed a similar path (from 11%
in 2006 to 17% in 2011). These two countries now devote a
comparable share to that of the USA: 16.5% in 2012. In the
Republic of Korea, the government is investing heavily in
basic research to correct the impression that the country
made the transition from a poor agricultural country to an
industrial giant through imitation alone, without developing
an endogenous capacity in basic sciences. The government
also plans to foster linkages between basic sciences and
the business world: in 2011, the National Institute for Basic
Science opened on the site of the future International
Science Business Belt in Daejeon.
The gap in R&D expenditure is narrowing
Geographically, the distribution of investment in knowledge
remains unequal (Table 1.2). The USA still dominates, with
28% of global investment in R&D. China has moved into
second place (20%), ahead of the EU (19%) and Japan
(10%). The rest of the world represents 67% of the global
population but just 23% of global investment in R&D.
GERD encompasses both public and private investment
in R&D. The share of GERD performed by the business
enterprise sector (BERD) tends to be higher in economies
with a greater focus on technology-based competitiveness
in manufacturing, as reflected in their higher BERD/GDP
ratio (Chapter 2). Among the larger economies for which
adequate data are available, the BERD/GDP intensity has risen
appreciably in only a few countries such as the Republic of
Korea and China and, to a lesser extent, in Germany, the USA,
Turkey and Poland (Figure 1.2). At best, it has remained
stable in Japan and the UK and receded in Canada and
South Africa.
Given the fact that almost one in five human beings is
Chinese, the rapid progression in BERD in China has had a
knock-on effect of massive proportions: between 2001 and
2011, China and India’s combined global share of BERD
quadrupled from 5% to 20%, largely to the detriment of
Western Europe and North America (see Figure 2.1).
Figure 1.3 highlights the continuing concentration of R&D
resources in a handful of highly developed or dynamic
economies. Several of these advanced economies fall in
the middle of the figure (Canada and UK), reflecting their
similar density of researchers with the leaders (such as
Germany or the USA), yet lower levels of R&D intensity.
The R&D or human capital intensities of Brazil, China, India
and Turkey might still be low but their contribution to the
global stock of knowledge is rapidly rising, thanks to the
sheer size of their financial investment in R&D.
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