UNESCO's new head of science talks about the wide-ranging activities of UNESCO's Natural Sciences Sector and the central role basic science plays in the sector's mandate.

Science at UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Natural Sciences Sector, ICTP's most direct link to UNESCO, works with partners worldwide to promote science and technology.
The Natural Sciences Sector seeks to advance its broad mandate through a variety of programmes, including the:
- Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC).
- Man and Biosphere (MAB) Programme.
- International Geological Correlation Programme (IGCP).
- International Hydrological Programme (IHP).
- Environment and Development in Coastal Regions and in Small Islands (CSI) Platform.
In addition, the sector promotes efforts in renewable energies, particularly solar energy, through its participation in the World Solar Programme 1996-2005, and helps to forge university-industry-science partnerships through the UNISPAR programme. UNESCO's Natural Sciences Sector also recognises scientific and technological achievement through its sponsorship of a host of prizes and awards. And the sector participates in a variety of programmes designed to explore specific science policy issues ranging from scientific ethics to strategies for combatting AIDS and malaria.
Our broad portfolio of activities shares a common set of strategies and goals to:
- Advance scientific research and the transfer of technology through partnerships with local, regional, national and international institutions.
- Build scientific and technical capacities in a variety of fields of importance to the social and economic well-being of our member states.
- Focus particular attention on the needs of the developing world.
The relationship between the Natural Sciences Sector and ICTP is defined by the sector's overarching strategies and goals. While the sector and the member states that we serve are interested in the application of science and technology to solve real-world problems, we recognise that training and research in the basic sciences provide the 'critical' thinking and technical skills necessary for devising sustainable science-based development strategies. In short, we believe that each nation's ability to develop the basic sciences--and to nurture a critical mass of physicists, chemists and biologists--is a key aspect of capacity building and should not be ignored even among nations with pressing economic and social needs.

Walter Erdelen

When I visited ICTP last July for the first time since becoming assistant director general for the Natural Sciences Sector, I had already been informed about the Centre's internationally acclaimed role as a training centre for scientists from the developing world. What impressed me during my brief visit to Trieste was not only the lively educational environment that pervaded the ICTP campus but the commitment of ICTP's scientific staff to research excellence--not just in the Centre's traditional fields of high energy physics, condensed matter physics and mathematics, but in such related fields as physics of weather and climate, seismology, and the modelling and simulation of complex realities, all of which have been launched and expanded in recent years.
Both the training and research aspects of ICTP fit well with the Natural Sciences Sector's efforts to promote education in the basic sciences and to contribute to strategies for science-based sustainable development, especially in the developing world. The work of ICTP speaks to our sector's--indeed all of UNESCO's--special interest in the least developed countries, particularly countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
My staff and I look forward to working closely with ICTP's staff in forging a stronger partnership that highlights the important role that basic science plays in UNESCO's overall mandate. I believe that the Centre has a great deal to contribute to UNESCO's Natural Sciences Sector by offering new ways of thinking about old, intractable problems dealing with the relationship of science to society.
I hope to invite ICTP senior staff to Paris to share their thoughts with us in the near future. This is all part of a larger strategy within the sector to strengthen and renew the sense of belonging and exchange within our own family of institutions.

For more detailed information about UNESCO's Natural Sciences Sector, please visit its website at www.unesco.org/science/ or email w.erdelen@unesco.org.

Walter Erdelen
Assistant Director General for Natural Sciences
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),
Paris, France

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