Science, Technology and Innovation for Global Sustainability through the Millennium Development Goals
Dato Lee Yee-Cheong, President, World Federation of Engineering Organisations 2003-05; Co-Coordinator, UN Millennium Project "Science, Technology and Innovation" Task Force; Senior Fellow, Academy of Sciences Malaysia

Darcy Kelley: Well clearly Jeff Sachs is not the only one who's a tough act to follow. Thank you so much for that really inspiring talk. And the translating ideas into action is the strength of the field from which our next speaker comes. Dato Lee Yee-Cheong is an engineer by training, trained in Australia at the University of Adelaide and has been a real leader in sustainable development work. He led the World Federation of Engineering Organisations from 2003 to 2005, and was responsible for leading the Joint Initiative at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. He was a coordinator of the UN Millennium Project's Science, Technology and Innovation Task Force. As you probably can guess, he has a large number of awards. And today he's going to talk to us about these issues, science, technology and innovation for global sustainability through the millennium development goals. Let's welcome Dr. Yee-Cheong.

Dato Lee Yee-Cheong: Thank you, Chair. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like just to set the scene by saying that ???? actually more or less gel with the Brundtland report of 1987, but I would like to actually remind everybody that the report is not just about the environment, but also about the human condition. And it says that poverty and environmental concerns must be addressed together, and significant improvement in the material standard of living of development countries are preconditions to sustainable development, and technology will play a very important part in that process. But the Brundtland report then gave rise to Earth Summit in Rio of '92, and that gave rise to Agenda 21 which is still being talked about. But a decade later then we had the World Summit of Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, and giving rise to the Johannesburg plan of implementation still being talked about. But I think nevertheless it has emerged a consensus that science, technology and innovation contributed to the betterment of the human condition in the second half of the 20th Century, but we must remember that two-thirds of the human population did not benefit and has not benefited from the advances of science, technology and innovation. Therefore this has basically given rise to the UN Millennium Declaration and MDGs.

I would like just to remind everybody that the MDGs were part of the Millennium Summit of the UN General Assembly of the year 2000, and the focus on development I think stalled in 2001-2002 because of September 11th, and also because of Afghanistan and later Iraq. So I think that Secretary-General Kofi Annan then in 2002 asked Jeffrey Sachs to lead the Millennium Project to try to operationalize how we can actually try to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for developing countries by 2015.

I would just like to show everybody the eight goals of the MDGs, and also the Task Forces of the Millennium Project that addresses particular goals and targets. Myself, as the Chair, just explain, as coordinator of Task Force 10, science, technology and innovation, and the key recommendation of the science, technology and innovation task force are as follows, improving the SDI policy environment, including policy advice, mechanisms in developing countries, ??ing SDI human capacities, promoting SDI entrepreneurial and innovation activities, investing in SDI research and development, conducing technology foresight for developing countries for ??? in global production change, and finally of course forging regional and international partnerships. To me the most important recommendation of our SDI task force is that for least developed countries to lift themselves out of poverty and achieve the MDGs, they need basic infrastructure, as Jeff has just explained to everyone, and also very importantly indigenous small and medium enterprises, with the local operational and maintenance technicians. I'm not even talking about engineers, but actually at the more basic level of technicians. Because without basic infrastructure and local SDI base indigenous industries can not upscale, and economic can not uplift, and SDI will not come. The above is based on the development experiences and success of Asia, Pacific and southeast Asia, where I come from, from Malaysia, where I think macroeconomic stability, self reliance and confidence in ourselves ???? and most important of all investment in education, they have transformed the social and economic landscape in the short span of three to four decades. The UN Millennium Project, the main report and the task report [?] actually formed the development basis of UN Secretary-General's report to member states in March 2005 in preparation for the summit general assembly of September last year. And I think ??? in the general assembly have largely endorsed the UN Secretary-General's report on the development agenda.

I would like to just give some extracts from the UN Secretary-General's report. And to show you that first thing it says is this, that there is now resources and technology available for the first time to free humankind from want. The second thing is that we can not go on business as usual. We have very little time. And you take time to train the necessary human resources. And the most important finding for me is that to increase countries' indigenous capacity for science and technology governments should establish scientific advisory bodies, promote infrastructure, science and engineering faculties, stress development and ?? applications in science and technology curriculum. During the summit general assembly of September last year all the top scientific and technology, the bodies, like the Inter-Academy of National Science Academies, and also engineering academies, the World Federation of Engineering Organisations, we came together with the UN Millennium Project to submit a joint statement to the General Assembly, and basically p??ing ourselves, to commit ourselves, to working with appropriate partners towards these MDGs, the urgent goals.

So now, ladies and gentlemen, the MDGs have been adopted by the largest gathering of global political leaders, and supported by the highest global science, engineering and technology organizations. May I please urge everyone to stop talking and start doing. Today the talking never stops and the doing rarely starts.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think the most urgent action focus must be directed at indigenous human resource base and institutional and enterprise capacity building. And since institutions and enterprises are run by human beings, it all boils down to SDI human resources capacity building, and of course fundamentally it boils down to education. So in our Task Force report we focus on universities. They must add as the fund of knowledge of development, especially in developing countries. So I think first of all policymakers in developing countries must realize that science per se does not create wealth. It is a translation of science into technology, into systems and devices, which are accepted by the marketplace that create the wealth. So turning out innovative and entrepreneurial graduates must be the mission of universities in developing countries. For that I think university academics in developing countries must be very good communicators. They should not be recruited on Ph.D. research experience and publication alone, they should have working experience in industry and in the marketplace. But to me the most important attribute is that they should have demonstrated some involvement in community service so they can be caring teachers in their own faculties and departments. The universities must be graduating job creators rather than job seekers. And I think one of the ways to do so is to establish undergraduate incubators that assist students to venture into knowledge-based enterprises suited to the needs of the economy. I think such incubators, undergraduate ?? incubators, will attract industrial support because that is the most fertile recruiting grounds for industry, to get students or future graduates that are well suited to the industry needs. If they succeed of course they will gr?? at enterprises, and then on graduation will be employers. But if you don't succeed they will be best suited for the economy and for the marketplace. [This is what he actually said, although I don't think it's what he meant to say.]

I think a very positive trend in universities is the blossoming of engineers without border in university campuses, especially in Canada and USA. And I would not touch more on this because tomorrow you'll hear from Parker Mitchell, the co-chair of Engineers without Borders Canada. But I would like to pose a challenge to everyone who is either within the university faculty or alumnus of a university or undergraduate, why not we have every university atop a Millennium MDG Project? Starting from now everybody who is connected to a university, please go back to your campuses and commit your university, your department, to carry out immediately an MDG project.

I think that the nurturing of the innovative mind we must start from very young. And that's why the Inter-Academy panel of the World Scientific Academy is now very focused on the promotion of hands-on inquiry-based primary school science education. And it is one of their top priorities. And the best, the most successful example is the La Manna [?] La??? [?] program of the French Academy of Sciences. And I think the very concept of the inquiry-based primary science education is not so much to get the school children to want later on to follow a scientific career, but more importantly that they learn to doubt and to question, and they do not follow prophets blindly. So I think it is to me the basis of a good training for good citizenship, because later on as voters, whether they are scientists or not is not so much important but as voters, and as part of the decision making mechanism of a country they understand the importance of science and technology.

…the path to economic development in developing countries is through more emphasis and investment in science and scientific research, especially basic scientific research, because I think if we do that without the enabling and the appropriate economic environment in the country it's just going to contribute to the brain drain to the developed world.

I want to touch on one example of what I'm now doing, because I think that the important thing is not urging what other people should do, but each one of us as a scientist, as an engineer, what we should do. So one of the initiatives that I'm doing with Kenya. The thing is that with engineering it was the military engineers in history that were the pioneers of engineering. Then after that you have the civilian engineers. In the past there were only two categories, civilian engineers and military engineers. So in every developing country the military engineering units are the best equipped with bulldozers, earth moving equipment, ??? and all that, yet they are not really utilized. So in Kenya for the last two years the ?? had put a location for the most ??? area of water storage for irrigation. In both years at the end of the year money was returned to the treasury because of lack of implementing capacity, local implementing capacity. Now parts of Kenya are suffering from famine through drought. So I've been going to the US Army Corps Engineers to try to get them to be a catalyst, to get the Kenyan military engineers, or the military, to help the Ministry of Water in implementing this project, and in the case of Kenya the military have agreed to be subcontractors to the Ministry of Water in two areas, one building barrages and small dams, and the other is taking bore holes for water. So I hope that this idea of mobilizing the idle military engineering capability would be spread to other countries.

The other question is brain drain. And in the case of brain drain I think that we can not ?? brain drain, because as a professional they can travel anywhere, and we know that there is a shortage of SDI professionals throughout the world, so of course the rich will attract a lot from the developing countries on this. So in order to stop this problem of brain drain I think we have to depend on ?? cooperation.

I just want to put an example. In a study on the USH in science and technology, ?? is sleeping, it cites that China is graduating 600,000 engineers a year, India 300,000, whereas US is only graduating 60,000 a year, so the brain drain will worsen. But the good news is that the neighboring countries in southeast Asia we can tap into the reservoir of this vast pool of engineers from China and India at reasonable salaries and burdens to ourselves. But I would like to appeal to everyone to try to get the government, to try to lobby the ??? to make the mobility of science and technology professionals a priority in the negotiations. Without the blessing and the agreement in services it is very difficult to make sure that there is mobility of the professionals.

And then the last thing I want to just mention is that we have got to now address also the very serious problem of the declining enrollment in science in secondary schools and universities in the developing world. And why is there an aversion to science and technology among the youth in the developing world, especially in Islamic countries? So Malaysia, myself and UNESCO we are having an initiative to instill pride in the Islamic youth in the very glorious history of Islamic science and engineering technology, and we had a symposium just earliest this month in UNESCO because we would like them to turn away from ??? and go back to the mainstream of science and technology to satisfy the needs of development in their own countries. But again, as an engineer I'm an optimist. So I think that we can solve the problem. If we can achieve the MDG first and then we can solve the problem of sustainability. But provided that all of us who are scientists, engineers and technologists, we do something ourselves. There's no time to lose. Don't just speak about what other people need to do, but we need to say what we can do ourselves.

Thank you very much.