Trends in the Global Distribution of R&D since the 1970s: Data, their Interpretation and Limitations

The 1970 ‘Sussex Manifesto’ was one of the earliest global policy reports to use statistical data about R&D that were starting to become available on an internationally comparable basis, though only in a very sketchy form for developing countries. It demonstrated the marginal position of that group of countries as contributors to the world’s R&D, accounting for only about 2 per cent of the global total. It also couched some of its core recommendations about policy in terms of quantitative indicators of R&D, but highlighted several major limitations of such indicators as tools for policy. This Background Paper revisits the global data to review how the distribution of R&D between groups of countries has changed since the 1960s, in particular with respect to the marginal position of developing countries. It reveals mixed trends. The economies that were ‘developing’ in the 1960s now account for a much larger share of the global total, but this is concentrated in a small number of countries that are highly R&D-intensive and/or very large like India and China, leaving many others still playing only a marginal role. The paper also returns to some of the Manifesto’s concerns about the limitations of R&D indicators as a basis for policy debate. It notes a surprising persistence of many of those earlier limitations.ESR

Innovation, Sustainability, Development and Social Inclusion: Lessons from Latin America

This paper is one of a series of working papers relating regional experiences to ideas proposed by the New Manifesto, following on round table discussions held in Venezuela, Argentina, and Colombia in 2010. The paper briefly describes the heterogeneous context and history of the Latin American region with specific attention to STI policies and institutions, as well as the particular challenge of effectively linking STI to social needs. It highlights the important historic contribution of the Latin American School on Science, Technology and Development, and the relevance and synergies of ideas presented by these and contemporary Latin American researchers in relation to the New Manifesto’s ‘3Ds’. The paper documents some examples – from public, private and civil society spheres – of current Latin American initiatives that illustrate regional efforts to develop, in different ways, a 3D innovation agenda, as well as constructing and putting into practice the different New Manifesto ‘Areas for Action’. It also questions the relative weight of these efforts compared to conventional priorities of competitiveness and growth, and highlights some of the obstacles to realising 3D aims. In particular, it underscores persistent social and economic inequalities, issues of institutional and political resistance to change, and the role of power relations (at multiple levels) in determining directions of science, technology, and innovation, and STI policy, as topics worth exploring further in the future.ESR

Grassroots Innovation Movements

Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists, and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. Unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries, policy silos, or institutional logics, these ‘grassroots innovation movements’ identify issues and questions neglected by formal science, technology and innovation organizations. Grassroots solutions arise in unconventional settings through unusual combinations of people, ideas and tools. This book examines six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts. Analysis explains why each movement frames innovation and development differently, resulting in a variety of strategies. The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have grown, or attempted to do so. It critically examines the pathways they have developed for grassroots innovation and the challenges and limitations confronting their approaches. With mounting pressure for social justice in an increasingly unequal world, policy makers are exploring how to foster more inclusive innovation. In this context grassroots experiences take on added significance. This book provides timely and relevant ideas, analysis and recommendations for activists, policy-makers, students and scholars interested in encounters between innovation, development and social movements

Transforming innovation for sustainability

The urgency of charting pathways to sustainability that keep human societies within a "safe operating space" has now been clarified. Crises in climate, food, biodiversity, and energy are already playing out across local and global scales and are set to increase as we approach critical thresholds. Drawing together recent work from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Tellus Institute, and the STEPS Centre, this commentary article argues that ambitious Sustainable Development Goals are now required along with major transformation, not only in policies and technologies, but in modes of innovation themselves, to meet them. As examples of dryland agriculture in East Africa and rural energy in Latin America illustrate, such "transformative innovation" needs to give far greater recognition and power to grassroots innovation actors and processes, involving them within an inclusive, multi-scale innovation politics. The three dimensions of direction, diversity, and distribution along with new forms of "sustainability brokering" can help guide the kinds of analysis and decision making now needed to safeguard our planet for current and future generations

Living the terminal state of a family member: salutogenic interpretation of the results of a case study

O objetivo deste artigo é interpretar dados obtidos num estudo de caso de tipo fenomenológico, que pesquisou o sofrimento de dezesseis cuidadores principais (familiares) de doentes em estado terminal, hospitalizados. Os dados desse estudo são aqui interpretados à luz do pré-paradigma salutogénico de A. Antonovsky, que promove a saúde, e não a doença, cumprindo finalidades proclamadas pela OMS, nomeadamente em Ottawa. A metodologia utilizada foi qualitativa, com recurso a interpretação hermenêutica, em conjugação com análise de conteúdo (baseada nas categorias mais importantes da conceptualização salutogénica). Os resultados obtidos revelam que todos os familiares identificaram e utilizaram vários Recursos Gerais de Resistência (GRR), passíveis de serem compreendidos à luz das três metacategorias: “compreensibilidade”, “gerenciamento” e “significação”. Verificou-se também que a utilização/criação dos GRR tem implícita a existência de sentidos de coerência fortes, por parte dos entrevistados, tal como enunciado por Antonovsky. Os resultados possibilitam compreender que existem áreas de formação de profissionais de saúde que podem ser estimuladas em situações similares à estudada. Algumas dessas áreas são a comunicação e a gestão emocional. Os resultados apontam também para a necessidade de investimento em ações de educação para a saúde que promovam o empoderamento psicológico e comunitário dos indivíduos e dos grupos, em geral

NGOs as innovators in extractive industry governance. Insights from the EITI process in Colombia and Peru

This paper explores NGO participation within the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a multi-stakeholder governance arrangement focused on generating greater transparency in the governance of extractive industries, and in particular in fiscal arrangements around mining, oil and gas operations. Using the cases of Peru and Colombia, we examine what motivates NGO participation in EITI, how NGOs have pursued innovations within EITI, the extent to which they have succeeded in achieving their goals, and the factors limiting or shaping their achievements. We draw on interviews conducted between 2013 and 2018, participation in global EITI meetings, and secondary material. The paper examines political and conceptual discussions regarding the opportunities that EITI may or may not afford to NGO-led innovation, while linking these to more general debates on achieving progressive or even transformative change through reformist institutions, as well as the roles of NGOs in multi-stakeholder governance processes

Explaining diverse national responses to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in the Andes:What sort of politics matters?

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative originated in the international domain but can only operate if adopted at a national scale. This paper addresses how national political settlements and efforts to define the idea of “transparency” in line with particular interests, have led to diverse responses to EITI across three Andean countries: Peru (an early adopter), Colombia (a late adopter), and Bolivia (a non-adopter). We argue that national elites (in the state, private sector and civil society) have taken up EITI (or in Bolivia\u27s case, rejected EITI) as part of a strategy to secure broader goals and to convey particular messages about the state of democracy and political priorities in their countries, including toward actors on the international stage. We conclude that the EITI, and the idea of transparency, are leveraged by national actors to meet domestic political goals and interests, even as these domestic political goals may also be intertwined with other international pressures and contexts. While EITI, and arguments over transparency, can affect the nature of the domestic political settlement, they do so primarily by helping deepen domestic political changes that are already underway and that were the same political changes that created the initial space for EITI