The OECD Ministerial Meeting and World Science and Technology Forum continued today in Daejeon, Korea at the Daejeon Convention Center. The highlight of the day was the Daejeon Declaration as presented by Andrew Wyckoff (OECD Director), Choi Yanghee (Korea, Chair), Carmen Vela Olmo (Spain, Vice-Chair), and Torbjrn Re Isaksen (Norway, Vice-Chair).
The “Daejeon Declaration on Science, Technology and Innovation Policies for the Global and Digital Age” was agreed upon by the ministers and representatives of over fifty countries. Under the chairmanship of Choi Yanghee they voiced their collective support for sustainable and inclusive innovative policies in science and technology. Director Wyckoff spoke to the underlying “commitment of each nation to address some of the grand challenges” faced by every nation, most notably climate change. He expressed that the timeline to be “perhaps over ten years.”
Vice-Chair Torbjrn Re Isaksen called on people to view innovation as not only the purview of “consumer electronics.” In fact, he commented, “there is a lot of innovation that goes into Norway’s aquasystem.” Tourism and the public sector are also areas in need of innovation, he says, especially in light of the ageing population.
Carmen Vela Olmo emphasized the need to share date in science and for more inclusivity.
The Daejeon Declaration is an ambitious one, to say the least. But, while
Director Wyckoff praised the meeting’s productivity, his sense of the practical and realistic challenges faced by each nation to see through the Daejeon Declaration was clear. “Each nation,” he said, “has a lot of homework that will begin tomorrow.”
