EU commissioner for science and research Janez Potočnik debates on “the world in 2025“

Janez Potočnik, EU Commisionner for Science and Research:
In 2025, 61% of the world population will be in Asia. The emerging and developing countries which accounted for 20% of the world’s wealth in 2005 will account for 34% of it in 2025. The centre of gravity of world production will move towards Asia. The group made up of China-India-Korea will weigh as much as the European Union. If the recent trends continue, in 2025 the United States and Europe will have lost their scientific and technological supremacy to Asia. It is true that Asia is emerging as a new global player in science and technology. China’s R&D intensity has grown by 50% since 2000, and now stands at 1.42%. This is already above the level of 15 of the EU’s Member States. And it is striking that nearly all of China’s R&D growth was in the business sector, which is Europe’s area of relative weakness. But these linear extrapolations are maybe too simple. 2025 is very close and China’s performance in terms of publications, citations, triadic patents, etc, are still lagging far behind the US and Europe.
The second shift can be summarized by saying that the 21st century will be the century of fragility. This does not mean that it will be worse than the 20th century; characterized by two World Wars, the Holocaust, the Cold War, Chernobyl and many other catastrophic events. It simply means that the world is more complex. Interdependency between countries, people, places and actors is greater, and what are called “systemic failures” are more likely. We witnessed this vulnerability with the recent financial crisis. The whole financial and banking system nearly collapsed and it is the concerted response of the States which restored stability. The extreme mobility, interdependence and interconnection of today’s world create a multiplicity of conditions favourable to the rapid propagation of infectious diseases and of the radio-nuclear and toxicological threats. Tomorrow we might experience serious tensions over access to energy, water, raw materials, even food. In 2030, the European Union will import almost 70% of its energy needs.
What can we do about these major challenges? Is Europe going to remain passive and suffer from developments that are unavoidable? The financial crisis produced the contrary effect: Europe was rapidly united in order to respond. And not just on the short term measures to adopt to restore trust in the banking system. Europe was at the forefront of the discussions on how to stabilize and reform global financial governance. To cope with the challenges of globalization Europe cannot only be an “environment-taker”. It has to constantly look ahead and organize the convergence of Member States around common objectives in order to increasingly behave as an “environment-shaper”. This requires development of forward-looking and outward-looking policies which support the collective efforts of European countries.
Let me take the example of research and innovation policies. President Obama is committed to strengthening the science base of the US economy and to double federal funding for basic research over ten years. For us in Europe the economic crisis must be an opportunity for starting to handle our internal and external challenges and for accelerating the transition to a less resource-intensive production and consumption model. Research and innovation in a broad sense (including social innovation) are key change factors. A forward-looking research policy means a policy that aims at addressing major socio-economic challenges. This is what the idea of a “European Research Area” is about. But the EU actions embedded in the seventh Framework Programme for research involve the 27 countries of the EU and another 11 candidate and associated countries in the Southern, Northern and Eastern neighbourhoods. As usual, research policy is ahead of other policies in anticipating paradigm shifts.
Responding to challenges such as climate change or ageing calls for “out of the box” thinking and for acting by cutting across disciplinary, policy or national categories!

You can find more interesting blog posts from Commissionner Potocnik at: http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/potocnik/