G20 Science Advisers agree to work on draft document: Ajay Kumar Sood

The G20 Science Advisers' Roundtable first meeting here on Wednesday agreed to work on a draft document incorporating inputs of all participating countries.

"There was agreement to work on a draft document by further refining the concept note, incorporating inputs offered by the rest of the countries over the next two or three months. It will be circulated among the participating countries so that a draft document is ready by August when we meet again in Brazil," Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India Ajay Kumar Sood said at a press briefing here after the first day's deliberations.

The first day's agenda of the meeting was focused on opportunities in 'One Health' including human, livestock and wildlife health, open access of knowledge, bringing traditional knowledge base of marginalised and tribal communities into the mainstream following the principle of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility and having a scientific inclusive policy framework in which all G20 nations participate, he said.

The discussions revolved around the broad themes of opportunities in One Health for better disease control and pandemic preparedness; synergizing global efforts to expand access to scholarly scientific knowledge, diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in science & technology and an institutional mechanism for inclusive, continuous and action-oriented global S&T policy dialogue.

Under the theme 'Opportunities in One Health for Better Disease Control and Pandemic Preparedness', we discussed preparedness plan for flexible, adaptive, and timely responses to pandemics, Sood said.

Integrated disease surveillance mechanisms for humans, livestock, and wildlife, R&D roadmap for diseases of One Health importance and investing in analytics (such as disease modeling, AI/ML tools) and data standards, he said.

A total of 18 G20 countries participated in the deliberations on Wednesday, he said. Indonesia and Argentina were the two exceptions as they could not attend due to time constraints, Sood said.

He said the country's experience with the COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to the concept of One Health which is aimed at better preparedness levels to deal with challenges thrown up by a pandemic through environment surveillance.

Sood credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi for leading from the front during the pandemic which was the main factor behind India coming up with its own anti-Covid vaccines in a very short span of time and conducting the world's largest vaccination drive and even giving its vaccines to other countries of the world.

Under the theme Synergizing Global Efforts to Expand the Access to Scholarly Scientific Knowledge, it was felt that the access should be free, immediate, and universal.

High subscription and article processing charges levied by journals must be reduced, the establishment of interoperable inter-linking of national repositories with international repositories/ archives, and having open access mandate to make knowledge outputs of public-funded scientific research widely available.

The third theme was on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Science & Technology (S&T).

The participating countries shared their work in advancing access to the under-represented, under-privileged, marginalized, minority as well as tribal/ native communities in the larger scientific enterprise.

In the session, the Inclusion of Traditional Knowledge Systems (TKS) in formal system of knowledge through due scientific validation process, and Recognizing the potential of language diversity and addressing the bottlenecks in accessing scientific knowledge were also discussed.

The fourth session discussed the need for having an Institutional Mechanism for Inclusive, Continuous and Action- Oriented Global S&T Policy Dialogue.It was agreed upon that the scientific advisers play a critical role in shaping policy choices by providing evidence-driven science advice and that in the spirit of cooperation and dialogue, it is the responsibility of chief science advisers to collaborate and engage in international dialogue to address transboundary issues affecting the entire scientific enterprise so that science and technology can benefit all.

The deliberations and engagement on the topics discussed on Wednesday will continue until August 2023, when the next meeting is scheduled, in which a Science Policy Communiqu will be released, Sood said.