Abstract
Multilateral issues did a lot for revealing science diplomacy. The negotiation of international agreements and the often difficult search for consensus between countries on key global issues are among the main tasks of multilateral diplomacy. Scientists take their part in it. They contribute to the definition of the international agenda and they help in finding solutions, thereby supplying the “science in diplomacy” section in the three reference points for interactions among science and diplomacy. This final chapter describes the system of international scientific relations in which global issues arise. It focuses on one of the key issues, that of climate change, in order to examine how science nourishes and supports diplomacy.
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Notes
- 1.
TWAS—whose name was Third World Association until 2004—is headquartered in Trieste and receives a significant portion of its funding from the Italian government. UNESCO is responsible for the management of funds and personnel.
- 2.
The International Council of Scientific Unions was created in 1931. The International Council for Science has retained this original acronym.
- 3.
Here is one example: “On the eve of the G8 summit of 2011, academies of the G8 + 5 and the academy of Senegal (invited country) met on 24 and 25 March in Paris for a working session. Following a proposal from the French Academy of sciences, this meeting addressed two major themes: Water and health and Scientific education for global development. This led to the drafting of a joint statement of the conclusions and recommendations of this group session, which was given to heads of state and government of the G8 countries” (Institut de France-Académie des sciences 2012, p. 27).
- 4.
In a broader sense, the term “international organization” also applies to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), numbering over 4000.
- 5.
J.-J. Salomon notes that the role of science is purely instrumental: it is “limited to facilitating, at government level, the establishment of institutional links between specialists from different countries” (Salomon 1, in Science and Politics, op. cit., p. 325).
- 6.
With initiatives such as the World Water Assessment Program, the Man and the Biosphere Program, the International Basic Sciences Program, or the Management of Social Transformations Program.
- 7.
A recent compilation of 11,944 abstracts of scientific articles on climate published between 1991 and 2011 by 29,083 authors showed that 97% of those who state a position on global warming believe in its human origin (Cook et al. 2013).
- 8.
“All other environmental, development or North-South equity issues, which had composed since the 1990s all the topics raised by sustainable development, have tended to be encompassed by the climate regime, subject to the pace of its progress and geopolitical dynamics” (Dahan and Aykut 2012, p. 31).
- 9.
See for example the report of the World Meteorological Organization (1986).
- 10.
US diplomat Richard Benedick was one of the architects of the Montreal Protocol on protecting the ozone layer.
- 11.
Article 2 of the “Principles Governing IPCC Work”.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
A national focal point is an institution designated by a signatory country of a convention or a member of an intergovernmental panel to be the key contact.
- 14.
All these procedures are thoroughly described on the official website of the IPCC.
- 15.
The vocabulary is precise and subtle. Three levels of endorsement are presented on the IPCC website: (1) “Approval” means that the material has been subjected to detailed line by line discussion and agreement. It is the procedure used for the Summary for Policymakers of the Reports, (2) “Adoption” is a process of section-by-section endorsement. It is used for the Synthesis Report and Overview Chapters of Methodology Reports, and (3) “Acceptance” signifies that the material has not been subject to line-by-line nor section-by-section discussion and agreement, but nevertheless presents a comprehensive, objective and balanced view of the subject matter.
- 16.
Since the Copenhagen conference (2009), limiting global warming to 2 °C between now and 2100 has become a political and diplomatic goal. But although it is a clear and convenient watchword, this warming threshold is based on a questionable simplification of the diagnosis made by scientists (Aykut and Dahan 2011).
- 17.
R. Grundmann notes that the United States and Germany, the parliamentary investigation committees have favored hearings of experts supporting the official line: “In the US we saw how Congressional hearings were instrumentalized in order to avoid binding carbon emissions while in Germany the study commission was set up to legitimize exactly such a policy” (p. 428).
- 18.
We noted in Chap. 4 the involvement in this field of Environment, Science, Technology and Health officers at US embassies.
- 19.
Building a European position is not easy. In the definition of the “climate package”, the Union has been torn between its historical core, calling for ambitious targets for emissions reduction (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom) and recent member states wishing to prioritize the short-term competitiveness of their economies (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia). Adding to this, there are other dividing lines on the share of renewable energies in the energy mix.
- 20.
Suspecting that the scientists’ majority conviction was not going in the direction of his vision of American interests, President Bush Junior in May 2001 commissioned a report by the National Academy of Sciences on the state of climate science. In their response 11 leading scientists confirmed the dominant view of global warming having an essentially human origin. The US President did not yield to these argument show ever. The Kyoto Protocol came into force in 2005 and has been ratified to date by 184 countries, but not by the United States.
- 21.
We borrow from these authors the following description elements.
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Ruffini, PB. (2017). Multilateral Science Diplomacy. In: Science and Diplomacy. Science, Technology and Innovation Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55104-3_6
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