G8 Science Ministers Propose Collaboration on Global Challenges

The G8 ministers of science argues that the G8 countires should collaborate on science for global challenges.

This is the official summary:

"G8 science ministers met in London on 12 June 2013 with presidents of their respective national science academies, as part of the UK’s G8 Presidency. They discussed how their nations could improve the transparency, coherence and coordination of global scientific research to address global challenges and maximise the social and economic benefits of research.

 

The statement proposes new areas for collaboration and agreement for the G8 to consider. These include:

• global challenges
• global research infrastructure
• open scientific research data
• increasing access to the peer-reviewed, published results of scientific research"

Gov.uk has more.

Meeting the global challenges – international funding of water activities (GEOSS, Future Earth)

Woman with Earth globe (Photo: Stock Foundry)

In this post Bente Lilja Bye presents a comparative study of international funding mechanisms through 3 or more different research systems. Note that the project is looking for an additional US partner.

By Guest Writer Bente Lilja Bye,

Why – Background

Solving the global challenges requires resources for science, technology and innovations as well as infrastructure and capacity building. An important element of this is Earth observations. 

Funding of the necessary Earth observations requires international cooperation. This particular task is included in the GEOSS work plan as ID-05 Catalyzing resources for GEOSS implementation. 

OECD adressed the same challenge in its Meeting Global Challenges through Better Governance. The issue of funding was discussed at a general level, but the (now informal) Working group finds it necessary to be more concrete in order to be able to do a more detailed analysis enabling more actionable advise.

An alliance of global programs, ICSU and IGFA/Belmont Forum and others, includes the issue of cooperation on funding in their 10-year Future Earth program.

The study is also a combined continuation of the activities in the GEO Work Plan's ID-05 Catalyzing resources for GEOSS implementation and WA-01 Integrated Water Information  (incl. Floods and Droughts).

What - Objectives (Goal – subgoal)

The main objective is to identify barriers hindering effective international funding. In particular address challenges due to the multidisciplinary character of projects on global challenges. Based on practical experiences in selected sectors/areas (water) provide advise and possible avenues leading to more effective cooperation on funding global challenges.