Martin Henry WE ARE to be talking - again - this evening on Science and Technology for Economic Development. More specifically the question, 'Can science and technology alleviate poverty in Jamaica' is to be addressed.
The 16th Annual National Conference on Science and Technology sponsored by the Scientific Research Council sets out "to examine how the country has utilised Science and Technology for economic, health and knowledge purposes [and] will further the call for Jamaicans to see themselves as wealth creators, innovators and entrepreneurs."
Actually we have been at this for a long time. And a brisk, broad-brush historical review might be in order to set the stage for discussion. The real question to ask is not whether Science and Technology can alleviate poverty in Jamaica. We have already answered in the affirmative and have taken a whole string of policy decisions and actions on the basis that S&T is one of the principal instruments for the alleviation of poverty. The real questions are the retrospective: To what extent has Science and Technology led to the generation of wealth, and the alleviation of poverty, and the prospective: How can S&T be better used for wealth creation and the alleviation of poverty?
We tend to overlook the fact that poverty has been redefined in Jamaica and much of the rest of the world in just a couple of generations, let us say for convenience since the Second World War. Life expectancy has significantly increased, nutrition is generally better for the poor, especially protein intake. There is better access to better health care. Infectious diseases have been brought under control, with the children of the poor enjoying over 90 per cent immunisation. There is better access to potable water, to electricity, to communication and transportation. Poverty now wears a cell phone and shoes.
Speaking of cell phones, it is a well established fact that access to telecommunications increases people's economic prospects and productivity. The phone provides quick, wide and cheap access to market information, it saves time, it allows networks. When attached to a computer and the Internet that communication power for economic development is multiplied hundreds of times.
And speaking of protein nutrition, we may have missed that genuine revolution in poultry production since the 1960s which has changed the eating habits of Jamaicans, raised their nutritional profile at affordable costs, and created a sophisticated area of agro-industry which can match its counterparts anywhere in the world. Just ask Jamaica Broilers. A technology-driven aqua-culture industry is in the making. A few years back, Donny Bunting on his fish farm in Clarendon was experimenting quite successfully on his own with growing high value lobsters 'under fish,' as they call it. We made that work the subject of a programme in the JIS series at the time "Science and Technology at Work." There needs to be a lot more promotion of Science and Technology at work.
Senator Anthony Johnson, as JLP spokesperson for Science and Technology, with his strong capacity in historical analysis, reminds us in his comment for the book by Henry Lowe, Yvonne Brown and Ken Magnus, Discovering the Future: The Emergence, Development and Future of Science and Technology in Jamaica, that most of Jamaica's economic advances have been based on the application of new technologies in sugar, banana, bauxite, bulk trans-shipping, and the production of mass housing solutions. (A few other things could be added). Technological development, therefore, is not new to us, he concluded.
Let us not forget that the sponsor agency for these annual national S&T conferences, the Scientific Research Council, was established by the vision of Norman Manley two years before Independence "to foster and co-ordinate scientific research and encourage the application of the results of both local and overseas research to the exploitation and development of the island's resources." Despite the ups and downs, it hasn't been all failure. There has been a significant technology-driven transformation of the Jamaican economy since 1960. The big question is why not farther, faster? Much of the answer lies outside of S&T itself in the way we have managed our total society. To take just a couple of points: We have managed to export most of our trained talent in S&T, and have crippled a great deal of entrepreneurship at home. We must now figure out why in order to go forward.
We were right up there with the rest of the world for the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD) in 1979. Since then we have been engaged with the UN system in studying the S&T system ad nauseam. I have been personally engaged with the project for Strengthening Endogenous Capacity in Science and Technology and with a Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP) Review.
The goal of these and other projects was to apply Science and Technology to development for wealth creation and the alleviation of poverty. Arnoldo Ventura and I produced an S&T for development paper for an UNCTAD publication with the bold title, An Assault on Poverty: Basic Human Needs, Science and Technology. Our conclusion then is even clearer now: "It goes without saying that for governments to seriously target the basic needs of their citizens, the maintenance of a stable civil society in which human rights are respected is a non-negotiable requirement. Peace, security of person and property, equality before just laws, and the maintenance of public institutions are basic requirements for effectively addressing basic needs."
We have produced Policy and Plan for S&T, now largely forgotten. We have incorporated S&T into the National Industrial Policy, now largely forgotten. We have experimented with Ministries and sub-Ministries of Science and Technology and are now at a Ministry of Commerce, Science and Technology.
What should this Ministry do to make S&T work for development? There are a great many studies and recommendations lying around. We can learn from our failures - and our successes. Successes are not exactly microscopic, although they are overshadowed by what might have been. The UNDP Human Development Report for 2001, which focused on Making New Technologies Work for Human Development, answers the question of S&T for development/poverty alleviation in these words: "Throughout history, technology has been a powerful tool for human development and poverty reduction. If any form of development is empowering in the 21st century, it is the acquisition of knowledge and the creation of technological capacity."
Martin Henry is a Communication Specialist.
