
June 30 2010
The British Royal Society has started publishing the first of a series of reports based on its Atlas of Islamic-World Science and Innovation Project. The reason they have chosen to undertake this project is the potentially staggering impact that countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others could have on science in the coming decades.
Saudi Arabia has established the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which has risen from the desert in just a few years based on a £20 billion endowment. Qatar has built Education City, a 2500 acre campus outside Doha where seven of the top US universities now have bases. Abu Dhabi is attempting to establish the world’s first fully sustainable city and innovation hub, with 50,000 people and 1500 businesses focussed on renewable energy.
The Islamic world has a rich scientific tradition but in more recent times has fallen behind. In 2005, 17 Arab speaking countries put together produced fewer scientific papers than Harvard University. This will all change with the commitment – both financial and ideological – to a new wave of scientific endeavour.
A lot of the investment is coming from the oil-rich states. They see the need to diversify their economy and it would appear that science and technology is a route they have chosen. It is refreshing to see countries built on oil investing so heavily in research into alternative energies. And it is not just the oil-rich countries. Turkey, Egypt, Iran and Pakistan are all showing strong commitment.
All of this is good news for science, which is of course a global undertaking, but in the current economic climate must sound a note of concern for the UK. We are currently in a position of genuine economic competitive advantage with our science base, but if we fail to build on that we will soon fall behind as the best people take their science to other countries where their ideas will be economically exploited to the benefit of other nation’s economies.
One particularly interesting element of this scientific revolution in the Islamic world is the important role being played by women. There are a number of high-profile women at the forefront of this movement. Sheikha Mozah in Qatar and Princess Sumaya in Jordan are driving forces.
But it goes much deeper than that. A UNESCO report recently revealed that 13 Islamic world countries produced a higher percentage of women science graduates than the US. In Saudi Arabia, women make up 58 per cent of the student population (against 16 per cent of the working population). It is difficult to estimate how this will translate into the scientific workforce of the future but is certainly a positive development.
The Royal Society Science Policy Centre is only just setting out on this journey of discovery and working in partnership with a wide stakeholder group “in-country” we will be looking at 15 individual countries.
They will be launching a full overview of the 15 countries in 2012. It will be interesting to see how far they have come and to compare it to how well the UK’s science sector has fared in the early years of a new government.
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