22 - Benefits and Costs of Two Science and Technology Targets for the Post-2015 Development Agenda

Summary

Introduction

In its deliberations regarding development of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the United Nations (UN) working group considered various issues involving science and technology (S&T) initiatives. In general, the working group viewed technology development and transfer as a way to “strengthen and enhance means of implementation and global partnership for sustainable development.” The inclusion of S&T to help achieve SDG is sensible because access to, and effective implementation of, knowledge and technical information are fundamentally important sources of economic growth (Keller, 2004). They are equally central in meeting public needs, such as adaptation to climate change, water safety, and public health (Maskus and Okediji, 2014). Thus, S&T initiatives speak both to economic development and sustainability, making them a suitable candidate for inclusion in the SDG in some form.

Unfortunately, most of the cases in which technology was listed in the UN working documents involved broad aspirations, rather than clearly articulated targets. This lack of policy specificity is unsurprising because technology transfer and investments in research and development (R&D) are largely private decisions, although significant expenditures are also undertaken by public authorities and their grantees. In this context, such words as promote and encourage are appropriate in this area because the primary objectives may simply be to improve market and governance conditions to induce firms to disseminate technologies and undertake R&D programs that are conducive to economic and social development. Such exhortations are difficult to assess numerically, however.

Because of this limited information, this chapter articulates specific objectives that both facilitate the broad objectives of the SDG and are amenable to reasonable cost-benefit calculations. I select two cross-cutting objectives that, if achieved, could offer strong facilitation to technology diffusion, access to knowledge, and growth of technological capacities in developing countries.