Science diplomacy

Science diplomacy is the use of scientific collaborations among nations to address common problems and to build constructive international partnerships. Science diplomacy is a form of new diplomacy and has become an umbrella term to describe a number of formal or informal technical, research-based, academic or engineering exchanges, within the general field of international relations and the emerging field of global policy making. Although diplomacy featuring science is ancient, science diplomacy began to formally emerge in the 1930s, and the term science diplomacy appeared shortly after the end of the Cold War. Science diplomacy is taken to involve the direct promotion of a country's national needs, and/or the direct promotion of cross-border interests, and/or the direct meeting of global challenges and needs, including via the United Nations system and relevant conferences. Its remit thus includes the global networked governance of such major global issues as development of renewable energy, management of climate change, fusion power, space exploration, and technology transfer. Notable developments in science diplomacy may arise as the result of scientific conferences and can feature the creation of new organizations to promote science diplomacy. Examples include the 1931 founding of the International Council of Scientific Unions, now the International Council of Science (ICSU); CERN, founded in 1954; the International Space Station, which had its origin in the early 1980s; and the ITER nuclear fusion experiment, conceived of around the same time. In more recent years, science diplomacy has been applied to pandemics and to the new age space race, in the form of space diplomacy. Science diplomacy, along with e.g. economic, digital or para-diplomacy, is a subcategory of the so-called new diplomacy, as opposed to the long-standing traditional diplomacy known to date. Science diplomacy is thus also a sub-field of international relations and typically involves at some level interactions between scholars and officials involved in diplomacy, although whether scientist diplomats or diplomat scientists are more effective is an open question.