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