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Monday, January 17, 2005

Threats to human survival: a WIRE to warn the world

Threats to human survival: a WIRE to warn the world

Yet the institutions that exist today cannot deliver that new approach. The UN has no single technical agency devoted to global risk assessment. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, G8, and World Trade Organization are all inappropriate repositories for impartial analysis of global threats. Independent foundations may offer more neutral forums for risk judgments. But even foundations, such as that run by Bill and Melinda Gates, identify challenges from their own particular perspectives, producing solutions biased by their own specific ideologies.

What is the answer? In one respect, Michael Crichton is correct. We do need a "non-partisan, blinded funding mechanism to conduct research to determine appropriate policy". The power of independent technical evidence is consistently undervalued. For instance, global policies towards child health have changed because of new data derived from sound epidemiological and experimental science.14 The case for putting science at the centre of development policy-making has been made before.15 It received renewed support last week from the task force on science, technology, and innovation, part of the UN Millennium Project. Calestous Juma, the task force report's author, argued that:

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