Technology Assessment in a Multilateral Science, Technology and Innovation System

Abstract

One of the key functions of global Technology Assessment is to promote multilateral Science Technology and Innovation cooperation, in order to resolve current global challenges. In this chapter, we identify TA’s role in the existing STI multilateral system and localize it within the existing global decision-making structures. We describe a wide spectrum of TA methodologies that United Nations and multilateral agencies employ, to analyse new and emerging technologies and provide policy input. We further concentrate on the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, where TA is specifically commissioned as an aspiration for the achievement of its development goals and we further provide examples of TA projects within the organisation’s remit. Moreover, we explore the relationship between the Sustainable Development Goals and TA, while offering realistic options to overcoming the numerous challenges that TA is faced with when applied in developing countries. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the four models of global TA and the significance of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a role model for an independent and effective global TA.

Contribution to: Technology Assessment in a Globalized World—Facing the Challenges of Transnational Technology Governance.

1 Introduction

The standard role of Technology Assessment (TA) has always been to serve the national policymaking community in its aims to devise a successful Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy. Even when TA became involved in public debates with wider stakeholder representation and initiated new methodological approaches to cover the needs of such debates, it remained within the realm of national debates about the effect of STI developments in a specific country or region within it (Hennen, 2002). But the current challenges that STI is required to resolve are, more often than not, international or even global in nature.

There is a common understanding that the main grand challenges that our societies face are not unique to a particular country, region or even cultural context (Robinson, 2007). Most of the grand challenges of our times (e.g. food security, climate change, pandemics, air pollution, soil degradation, depletion of fish stocks, ocean contamination, etc.) are global in nature. No country alone can deal with such enormous scales of intervention, and no solution can be effective at a local level of involvement alone. It is therefore inevitable to argue that global challenges require global solutions, which in itself means effective societal transformations and policy interventions on scales not previously seen in human history.

At the same time, there is considerable uncertainty as to the best available means of intervention and the technological developments to be used, since the science behind large-scale interventions is incredibly complex and untested. The only certainty is that STI developments are urgently needed to deal with the challenges of our times, and there is clearly a need to establish a level of multilateral coordination and governance of STI. This in turn requires the expansion of national plans and assessment capabilities, including monitoring and evaluation of technologies of interest. In essence, the gap between the national and international levels of TA must be bridged, if we are to deal effectively with grand challenges. Multilateral cooperation in TA has the potential to enhance the outcome and impact of strategies targeted towards grand challenges, due to economies of scale, economies of scope and network effects.

However, while many arguments call for scaling up STI cooperation, national governments are still reluctant to invest public resources in existing or new transnational programmes. Different stances of national governments towards technological trajectories often hinder cooperative approaches. This is especially relevant when it comes to disruptive innovations that entail opportunities and risks which are not fully known. At the same time, STI developments have intended or unintended effects that transcend international borders and political contexts. Even under a shared ethics of responsibility, politicians and research implementers may come to opposite conclusions about what constitutes a responsible approach to new technologies. For instance, some actors and observers see break-through innovations, such as genome editing, as important and even strategic in addressing global challenges (climate change, food security, etc.), while others assess them as developments containing severe and unacceptable global risks (Ladikas, 2019).

Overall, which lines of research and technology development are considered as responsible is very context-specific and can lead to fundamentally different directions in the innovation process. At the same time, multilateral STI cooperation can only work as a catalyst for incremental and disruptive innovations to address global challenges, if a sufficient number of countries assess the same lines of research and innovation as responsible and acceptable for further development. This is exactly the focus of global TA and its main function in promoting the necessary multilateral STI cooperation (Hahn & Ladikas, 2019). However, before accepting that TA is an integral part of the pathway to resolving global challenges, it is necessary to identify TA’s role in the existing multilateral system and locate it within the decision-making structures.

2 Technology Assessment in the United Nations System and Multilateral Organisations

2.1 TA in Multilateral Organisations

The foremost global STI governance structure is located within the United Nations (UN) system, which is also ultimately the natural place for the development of global TA. The history of the UN is intrinsically related to STI developments. Founded to keep global peace after World War II, it soon became the main debate and analysis centre for a wide range of technologies with direct effect in peace and development, prominent amongst them being nuclear power, food and agriculture technologies and medicinal technologies. Specialised agencies were created to deal in depth with technological developments, such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), and affiliated bodies dedicated to specific technologies, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In addition, there are many autonomous multilateral funds, programmes, research and training institutes, and other subsidiary bodies that deal with STI issues, such as the Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Although the evaluation and assessment of new and emerging technologies in relation to the remit of each organisation are central to their functions, there is no standard common methodological approach to achieve this. The common application of TA as in regular use at European institutes (e.g. European parliamentary offices of TA) is evident in many cases, but is rarely named as such. Examples include:

The World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST): an active forum of UNESCO that is mandated to formulate ethical principles that could provide decision-makers with criteria that extend beyond purely economic considerations. It is active in several STI areas, such as nanotechnologies, converging technologies and ICT.

The Advisory Services and Analytics (ASA) of the World Bank: tasked to support design of better national policies and build capacity, ASA provides analytical reports on critical STI developments in crucial areas for development such as energy and digitization. Much of the analysis is based on participatory TA principles.

The Office of Innovation (OIN) at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): assists member countries in understanding innovation to drive socio-economic growth, ensure food and nutrition security, alleviate poverty and improve resilience to climate change. It instigates debates and provides technology assessment reports to governments in key areas such as digital agriculture.

The Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): develops evidence-based policy advice on the contribution of science, technology and industry to well-being and economic growth. It provides assessment reports in a wide number of technologies including artificial intelligence, space technology, genomics, energy, etc.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA): includes the “review missions and advisory services” that deal with extensive assessment of technologies aiming at nuclear safety and security, as well as assessment of nuclear energy applications in the health sector.

The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES): within the overall organizational aim to assess the state of various biodiversity and ecosystem systems, the NFF performs visioning exercises with scientists, indigenous peoples, the private sector, civil society organizations and decision-makers, using participatory TA tools.

All of these UN and multilateral agencies employ, amongst others, TA methodologies to analyse new and emerging technologies and provide policy input. Their remit is diverse but it is basically that of a typical government think tank with partial focus on STI issues. The work of these agencies is not coordinated centrally as they are independent entities with their own boards of directors/trustees with no evident connection between agencies. This can lead to overlapping focus and competing views that are published and promoted independently of each other, even to the same target audience. Moreover, the identification and positioning of TA within the work programme of these agencies is a complex endeavour with uncertain results. The reason for this is that TA is not explicitly mentioned as a guiding research process, even though there is a clear affinity of conceptual and methodological aspects in their analyses of STI issues.

2.2 The Role of TA in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

A particular case in the UN system where TA is well entrenched as a guiding principle is that of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The reasons for this unique approach go back to the early history of UNCTAD, where the role of technology in economic development was identified as a crucial factor in its efforts to support developing countries to access the benefits of a globalized economy in a fairer and more effective manner.

As early as 1949, Raúl Prebisch, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and Secretary-General of UNCTAD from 1964 to 1969, analysed the unequal economic relations between Latin America and the industrialized Global North. Growing disparities in economic growth and well-being between the two hemispheres were traced back to different trade specializations, with Latin America being confined to the export of mostly unprocessed mineral resources and agricultural products, while the Global North traded industrial goods with increasingly higher knowledge content and technological sophistication. One consequence of this unequal trade was the changes of price relations in the exchanged goods that benefit the Global North to the disadvantage of the Global South. In addition, the gap in usage of technology was found to increase in times of unequal trade patterns, as innovations are often driven by the manufacturing sector in the search for higher levels of productivity.

In Latin America, ECLAC promoted industrialization mainly by means of import substitution as a key strategy for lowering the development gap between the North and the South, whereby formerly imported industrial items should be replaced by locally manufactured goods.¹ At UNCTAD, a similar reading of the main reasons for unequal international development pushed the struggle for fundamental changes in international trade relations under the concept of the “New International Economic Order (NIEO)”. Improvements in international trade relations would require a narrowing of the technology gap, since the application of state-of-the-art technology is a prerequisite for manufacturing items which may fulfil the needs of customers, both in terms of quality and prices. As an essential element of a NIEO, technology transfer was promoted by UNCTAD and defined as “the transfer of systematic knowledge for the manufacture of a product, for the application of a process or for the rendering of a service and does not extend to the mere sale or lease of goods” (UNCTAD, 1985, Chap. 1, para. 1.2.).

One of the criticisms of these relatively early concepts of technology transfer is that it was relatively static and one-dimensional, overlooking the relations between international measures of licencing, knowledge-sharing for manufacturing sectors, and the conditions of the potential recipient countries. A more recent document (UNCTAD, 2019) stressed the interrelations between successful technology transfer, the absorptive capacities in national or regional innovation systems, and local innovation as the outcome of technology transfer. Once STI systems have become effective, they may lead to a higher rate of innovation and at the same time improve capacities on the ground to absorb technological knowledge coming from outside. The same document (UNCTAD, 2019, 31–34) emphasizes that the role of technology is no longer confined to economic growth and social well-being, but is also pivotal in addressing global challenges, specifically climate change, global health and agriculture.

The UNCTAD debate on the role of technology and the STI system in development has brought TA to the forefront. Assessing technological developments in terms of their capabilities to enhance economic and social growth in the Global South is pivotal in both choosing the targets of technology transfer and also investing in regional growth initiatives. As such, TA has been promoted, alongside foresight,² as the preferred research process to analyse the implications of new technologies, expand the national debates and promote policy options. This is clearly stated as an aspiration for the UN in its efforts to achieve its development goals (UN Economic and Social Council Resolution, 2019):

To conduct technology assessment and foresight exercises as a process to encourage structured debate among all stakeholders towards creating a shared understanding of the implications of rapid technological change. (p. 6)

To explore ways and means of conducting international technology assessments and foresight exercises on existing, new and emerging technologies and their implications for sustainable development and building resilient communities, including discussions about models of governance for new areas of scientific and technological development. (p. 9)

3 TA and Global Challenges

The role of TA in the development of resolutions to global challenges is still unclear as it is rarely directly referenced in the debates. This is not surprising since, as we have seen, TA is not often acknowledged within the global STI institutional setting. There is nevertheless evidence that TA has contributed to the analysis of global challenges in multiple ways. The examples of climate change and agriculture in developing countries are indicative of TA’s contribution.

3.1 Climate Change

STI is seen as key to alleviating the impact and adapting to the consequences of climate change, which affects developing countries disproportionately. Although there is considerable debate on the role of technologies in dealing with climate change, these do not cover the economic and social context in which most developing countries function. Nevertheless, the climate goals of the Paris Agreement approved by the global community in 2015, such as improving energy access and social well-being without a direct increase in the carbon footprint of society, are also on the agenda of developing countries. All signature countries have committed to contain greenhouse gas emissions in order to keep global warming below 1.5 or 2 degrees above pre-industrial times, and they have expressed their commitments in National Determined Contributions (NDCs) to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In this manner, innovations in the energy field can be seen as absolutely key to this process, ranging from carbon capture and storage, through large-scale renewable energies and green hydrogen production, to effective mini-grids fed by solar and/or wind energy, and improved cooking stoves to serve the energy needs of rural communities (see e.g. Chen, 2018). TA has a pivotal role to play in the development of innovative solutions and also in the overall improvement of the global debates. An example of the latter aim is the World Wide Views project that attempted a first general methodology to initiate a global stakeholder dialogue on climate change (see Textbox 1).

Textbox 1: Worldwide consultation—World Wide Views on Climate Change

The World Wide Views is a multisite citizen consultation methodology used for global citizen consultations. The core of the method is to have citizens at multiple sites debate the same policy-related questions on a given issue on the same day. The method was developed by the Danish Board of Technology and other partners in the World Wide Views Alliance, which was established for this purpose, prior to the climate COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009. The aim was to develop a method that would provide participating citizens with balanced information and give them the opportunity to discuss the issues at hand with other citizens and at the same time produce results which are easily communicated to policymakers.

World Wide Views projects have so far focused on the themes of Climate and Energy (10,000 participating citizens in 76 countries), Biodiversity (3000 participating citizens in 25 countries) and Global Warming (4000 participating citizens in 38 countries). The questions put to the citizens are identified through a comprehensive consultation of policymakers and stakeholders worldwide in order to address the most pertinent, debated and disputed policy issues in the policy process which is addressed. The information material is designed to present citizens with the pros and cons of voting one way or another on the questions at hand. The information material is reviewed by a scientific advisory board and both the questions and information material is reviewed by citizen focus groups in different parts of the world prior to being finalized. Citizens discuss (with the help of professional moderators) and vote on the questions posed to them. The results feed directly into policy debates, which so far have been at UN conferences for Parties to the Climate and Biodiversity Conventions.

Source: http://wwviews.org.

3.2 Agriculture

Another global challenge involving numerous and complex STI issues is that of agriculture. A functional agricultural sector is seen as a fundamental element for the economic transformation of developing countries, and particularly Least Developed Countries. In its Technology and Innovation Report 2010, UNCTAD asserted that improving agricultural performance in developing regions depends on technology and innovation and rising agricultural production. This topic is of special relevance for developing countries, as the primary sector is still fundamental both for local food security in the Global South, and to create opportunities for income generation through the export of increasingly higher-valued agricultural and agro-industrial goods. Technology- and innovation-related challenges arise from the fact that the opportunities and risks of agricultural innovations have to be analysed against the fact that many small farmers and labourers depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Technological progress in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (see next section) is thus incompatible with technologies which drive further concentration processes forward and/or lead to the loss of income opportunities for labourers, especially women.

This is an area that has already seen a lot of TA activity across the globe (e.g. see IIED, 2007). For instance, following standard participatory TA approaches, socio-economic considerations have been incorporated in the analysis of GMO development in India (see Textbox 2). This represents a strong indication that the need to undertake TA exercises with wide stakeholder consultation in STI developments has been accepted by the decision-making bodies of the country.

Textbox 2: New participatory methodologies—Socioeconomic (SE) Consideration of Living Modified Organisms in India

A country-wide consultation exercise on socioeconomic considerations of Living Modified Organisms (LMOs), funded by United Nations Environment Programme, Global Environment Facility, was run by the Research and Information Systems for Developing Countries (RIS) and overseen by the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), Government of India.

The aim of the project was to develop guidelines and methodologies for SE assessment for LMOs as envisaged under Article 26.1 of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. It involved the creation of a steering committee with experts from the Indian Council for Agricultural Research, the Indian Council for Social Science Research and a number of state agricultural universities. The consultation exercise that employed survey and workshop methodologies involved small and medium farmers from across the country on a number of crop and trait examples.

Based on the analysis of the needs of farmers and the opinions of the expert community, the project developed a SE assessment methodology that was presented and adopted by the MoEF&CC. As a result, the moratorium on GM crops in India (active since 2010) continues. The guidelines and methodologies in decision-making on GMOs are discussed at the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group (AHTEG) under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and represents powerful empirical TA research toward the effort to find consensus on what factors/elements should be taken into account for Socio-Economic Considerations of LMOs.

Source: http://www.geacindia.gov.in/resource-documents/10-Resource_document_on_Socio_economic_considerations.pdf.

In another instance, the standard TA methodology of a Citizens’ Jury has been successfully applied to agricultural GMO developments in a Low Middle Income Country (see Textbox 3). This is another example of how well-established TA methodologies from developed countries can be used in vastly different socio-economic contexts with equally fruitful results.

Textbox 3: Participatory assessment—Citizens’ Jury on GMOs in Mali

A Citizens’ Jury on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) was organised by the government (the Regional Assembly) of Sikasso, sponsored by the Swiss Development Cooperation and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A steering committee consisting of representatives of fifteen local, national and international institutions (government, civil society, research, farmer organisations, IIED…) was responsible for the design, organisation and facilitation of the deliberative process.

The Citizens’ Jury was designed to allow ordinary farmers, both men and women, to make policy recommendations after considering expert evidence from different sources. Its main objective was to create a safe space for communication and action in which small-, medium- and large-scale farmers could better understand the risks and advantages of GMOs, confront different viewpoints in favor of and against GMOs and formulate recommendations for policies on GMOs and the future of farming in Mali.

The Citizens’ Jury recommendation to delay the approval of national legislation needed for the introduction of GM crops and initiate a debate on the future of agriculture was acted upon by the Malian National Assembly. In addition, a film was made about the process and outcomes of this Citizens’ Jury (Titled “Paroles de Paysans”) and was shown on national television channels in African countries (Burkina Faso, Mali) to strengthen the work of international civil society networks.

Source https://pubs.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/migrate/G02367.pdf.

Overall, it is clear that when it comes to global challenges, TA studies and standard TA methodologies can be used in many cultural and socio-economic contexts. The examples show that TA has already been applied successfully at both national and global levels. In all cases, there was little to no adaptation of the standard developed country approach, thus denoting the capacity of TA to transcend borders.

4 Technology Assessment and the Sustainable Development Goals

A particular case of interest for the potential function of TA at the global level is that of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations’ General Assembly in 2015, provides the main description of the challenges that humanity is faced with. This is broken down into seventeen SDGs, representing the aspirations of the world to achieve a sustainable and peaceful future for everyone. Each SDG is divided further into a set of specific targets (169 in total) that deal with specific issues in terms of poverty alleviation, improvements of health and well-being, inequality reduction, tackling climate change, reversing environmental pollution, etc. Figure 1 provides an overview of the SDGs.

Fig. 1

(Source United Nations)

UN sustainable development goals

It is worth noting that the development of the SDGs has been based on a set of specific principles. These take into consideration that grand challenges are universal (affecting all countries), interlinked (cannot be solved in isolation) and socially inclusive (all citizens are involved). In a more detailed description, the guiding design principles are (United Nations, 2015):

Universality: The new agenda is applicable to all country typologies, not only to developing countries. The SDGs allow for the concept of nationally adapted and differentiated approaches for implementing what is seen as a common and collective responsibility.

Integrated approach: The new agenda denotes that it is clearly insufficient to achieve the SDGs on a goal-by-goal or target-by-target basis. The SDGs require an integrated approach that identifies sets of development interventions that can unleash progress across multiple goals and targets—across sectors—at the same time. While accountability will continue to reside in a particular sector, understanding how to promote an integrated approach and policy coherence in order to inform better planning through cross-sectoral collaboration is key to success.

Leaving no one behind: The 2030 Agenda strongly embodies the idea of no-one left behind, and this is expressed in various SDG goals and targets which aim at universal achievement (e.g. zero targets: eradicate extreme poverty, eradicate hunger; systematic use of disaggregated data; quality outcomes based approach; and normative frameworks). This will require countries to work to reach the last mile. Countries will need to re-evaluate their approaches, development interventions and costs associated with leaving no-one behind.

The SDGs are therefore aspirations that have been translated into specific goals. However, the means through which to achieve these goals are not described in adequate detail. SDG No. 9, “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”, is the only one that directly deals with STI, but most of the SDGs require STI developments to achieve their goals. TA has a role to play in any effort to use STI in achieving the SDGs. Considering the wide spectrum of possibilities for implementing TA processes in this area, one can draw preliminary ideas from similar disciplines and their relationships to the SDGs. For instance, the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) has accepted that the SDGs can be used as a framework for the integration of diverse assessment disciplines. In its view, SDGs can be incorporated into impact assessment in various ways (IAIA, 2019; Partidario & Verheem, 2019), e.g.:

• Use the global SDG framework as an instrument to increase the relevance of impact assessment in national development policy, programme and project decisions.

• Seek harmonization of national impact assessment regulations with SDG-inspired development policies and practice, ensuring that relevant criteria are used in decision-making processes.

• Support the adoption or adaptation of impact assessment guidelines to incorporate SDG principles and concepts; develop sector-based impact assessment guidelines aligned with the SDGs; and generate well-documented case studies that highlight the links between impact assessment and the SDGs.

• Translate SDGs into criteria that are specific to a particular project or plan context; addressing the critical risks and limits of acceptable change in the potentially affected ecosystems and communities.

• Avoid being over-rigid or overly prescriptive: not all SDG targets are relevant for all contexts. Considering sustainable development issues in the local setting will simplify the impact assessment scope.

At the same time, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has acknowledged the need to use the innovation capabilities of the fourth industrial revolution to achieve sustainable industrial development in accordance with the SDGs. The WEF’s White Paper on the sustainability of production systems within the fourth industrial revolution has identified a number of relevant technological developments that must be assessed in terms of the SDGs (WEF, 2018). Examples are given in the areas of automotives, electronics, food and beverages, and textiles and footwear. Each of these areas is reviewed in terms of sustainable innovation potential that can be measured against the SDGs.

These are also interesting possibilities for TA. The exact positioning of TA in the process of achieving the SDGs depends on accurate identification of those SDGs that provide a useful reference framework to judge the impact of technological developments, and also on the availability of evidence at the global level that allows for a meaningful assessment process (Ladikas et al., 2018).

5 Technology Assessment in Developing Countries

When attempting to apply TA processes in the context and realities of developing countries, one must consider carefully the challenges that such undertakings involve. Current TA methods are based on experiences gathered in industrialised countries that naturally present great contextual differences to developing countries (see also Srinivas and van Est, this volume). For instance, the national innovation systems or production systems of developing countries are often much weaker, while their economies are much less diversified and often dominated by sectors that are technology-poor. The Gross Expenditure on Research and Development (GERD), including both public and private R&D spending, shows major differences. For instance in 2018, High Income Countries (HICs) invested 2.59% of their GDP in GERD, Upper Middle Income Countries (UMICs), including China, 1.64%, while Lower Middle Income Countries (LMICs) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) spent only about 0.53% and 0.17% of their GDPs, respectively (World Bank, 2021).

Other important indicators of the health of the national innovation system show similar great disparities (see Table 1). For instance, in terms of scientific publications LDCs have an astonishing 1/178 ratio to HICs. This is a very important indicator for TA since the amount and quality of the national scientific production are crucial for the quality of the assessment. Interesting here is that, as with many other STI indicators, China is by far the most productive MIC, which brings it into equal footing with HICs.

Table 1 Scientific and technical journal articles 2018 by World Bank country group

Further disparities between developed and developing countries show that the number of researchers in R&D per million population is 4116 in a HIC, but 737 in MICs, while there is no data available for LICs (World Development Indicators 2021). In addition, public funding for higher education that can produce future researchers is low and there is a constant “brain-drain” situation that depletes the limited numbers of researchers emerging from LICs. The situation is similar in terms of innovation, whereby research in the private sector is very limited, and most active industrial research entities are subsidiaries of larger foreign corporations.

A clear exception to the general low level of STI research capabilities in MICs and LICs is the multilateral research institutes, such as the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya and Ethiopia, or the International Potato Centre in Peru. Donor-funded research centres also offer exceptional research capabilities, for instance, the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use in Western Africa, the Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management for Southern Africa or the Fundación Hondureña de Investigación Agrícola in Honduras.

TA must therefore accommodate to the local context, and function according to local needs and capabilities (e.g. see UK Parliamentary Office of S&T, 2011). Lack of research capabilities in many countries signifies a lack of quality scientific data on which to base the required assessment, but also a potential lack of experts to participate in it. At the same time, stakeholder participation, as it is undertaken in current TA processes, assumes an active civil society and a culture of non-restricted public debate that might not be the case in many MICs or LICs. However, this might not be seen as a lack of democratic credentials in the country. There are many reasons for a diminished debate or active civil society that range from cultural norms to funding prerogatives (Wakeford & Pimbert, 2004). In any case, the limitations faced by TA due to the specific national context will definitely restrict its usual scope and functions, but this should not be seen as a prohibitive setting.

Another aspect that should be taken into consideration when attempting to adopt TA practices in the developing country context is the differences in technology adoption processes. STI-intense economies are also early adopters of STI developments, since they base much of their economic success in competitive advantages deriving from speedy assimilation of new technologies. Most developing countries are late adopters, as they lack the structures for early assessment. This is where TA can play an important role, by functioning as a “horizon scanning” process that can identify STI developments that offer particular opportunities in the less developed economy context. Such developments might be akin to what is termed “frugal innovation”, whereby simple or low-tech innovations can be more attuned to the needs of developing countries and thus much easier to assimilate in the existing context (Lelivend & Pesa, 2020).

6 Discussion: Future Challenges for Technology Assessment at the Global Level

As described above, multilateral STI analysis and policy advice is required to deal with many global challenges that face humanity. There is a need to generate new knowledge on the benefits and risks of STI developments and provide new perspectives and institutional structures in global governance. TA as a concept of problem-oriented research and policy advice is ideally placed for this purpose and has recently drawn interest from international organisations such as OECD and the United Nations.³

Beyond the basic institutional arrangements to develop a global TA, there are many additional topics to be addressed, which could be structured around four main areas:

Agenda- and priority-setting: There is no clear definition of what should be seen as grand, global or societal challenges which would need a fast and responsible response from STI. As not all topics can be addressed simultaneously, mechanisms would have to be found to define global TA agendas and priorities. There might be different ways of agenda and priority setting, for instance, and they may be either problem- and goal-driven, or science-driven. The SDGs provide the set of objectives to which the international community has committed and where STI solutions have to contribute. Ground-breaking innovations offer both opportunities and risks, which would have to be assessed internationally, e.g. artificial intelligence, or CRISP-CAS9 techniques.

Funding and spending arrangements: Depending on the challenge to be addressed and the underlying scientific basis, responsible and effective TA can in some cases be based on meta-level analyses of existing scientific work (as in the case of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)). However, this may be different when technology paths are relatively recent and the body of scientific literature is not exhaustive. Need may arise to conduct limited original research, which would raise questions regarding funding and spending arrangements to assure both effectiveness and equity.

Stakeholder involvement: Literature on TA indicates that good TA practices must involve different stakeholder groups, be participatory and interactive. The relevance and feasibility of this approach for multilateral processes should be assessed in more detail. For most current TA processes, parliaments are the clearly targeted addressee, as parliaments decide upon the legal framework under which technologies develop. However, there are other actors to be considered, which also decide about rules and regulations (governments and courts), and the social acceptance of technology paths (trades unions, civil society groups). How to effectively reach different stakeholder groups at a global level is still rather uncharted territory.

7 Conclusions: A Model for Technology Assessment at Global Level

The TA community has discussed extensively the various modes of institutionalisation of TA (Liebert & Schmidt, 2010; Decker & Ladikas, 2004). These discussions have focussed on specific national contexts whereby TA has been developed in the past forty years, mainly in western European countries (Hennen & Ladikas, 2019). Recently, there has been considerable interest in how TA could be institutionalised at a multilateral or global level (Hahn & Ladikas, 2019) and from the four models discussed in the conclusions of this volume two fit well within the global STI governance reality:

Institutional Networks across borders

To stimulate the internationalization of TA, existing national TA institutes may collaborate across national borders on various TA-related topics. This so-called Institutional Network option aims to establish an expert-and-participatory TA capability by connecting an appropriate set of independent, non-partisan and non-profit organizations in an international network. Examples of existing networks are EPTA and the globalTA network. Cooperation between institutes may vary from bilateral cooperation to cooperation on a global scale, like for example in the World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews) project.

Global TA linked to a global Decision-Making Body

National parliamentary TA organizations are often linked to a decision-making body, such as the parliament. This Decision-Making Body option can also be implemented on the global level, in particular with regard to UN institutes. In the field of global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an example of this model.

Both models are viable possibilities for a TA linked to international governance structures. We have seen that TA-linked activities are evident in a number of bilateral organisational settings, so long as they focus on STI issues. And this is perhaps the pivotal aspect of any form of TA that transcends national boundaries. Analysis of STI issues for the development of policy advice can hardly be done without some form of TA methodology, whether of the classical expert types or the more recent interactive ones. Nevertheless, one should risk a prediction of an ideal organisational structure for TA, if it is to function at a purely global level and applied to global challenges. As the Decision-Making body model suggests, this could be similar to the existing IPCC structure (see also Ashworth and Clarke this volume).

The IPCC is an excellent example of global science for policy advice, with some observers considering it “the largest exercise in scientific cooperation ever embarked upon” (Pearce et al., 2018, 127). It has worked as an institutional role model which helped form the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in 2012 (Beck et al., 2014). Researchers and observers have proposed an institutional setting for several other environmental challenges, e.g. food, water and anti-microbial resistance. There are four largely undisputed elements of success in the IPCC model of scientific policy advice (Pearce et al., 2018):

• Most of the work is done by a huge number of volunteer scientists from different parts of the world whose work is synthesized in reports of the three Working Groups (WGs): physical science (WG1), social and ecological impacts and adaptation (WG2), mitigation options (WG3).

• The IPCC has pioneered new ways of assessing scientific knowledge across a broad range of disciplines and interconnected topics.

• The findings of both its report outlines and final content are approved by government representatives, giving them high political authority.

• The high visibility of the work of the IPCC has contributed to keeping climate change on the international policy agenda over several decades.

The specific governance of the IPCC is the outcome of institutional co-evolution of the international climate policy regime and the scientific advisory sub-system. In 1986, the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases was set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Environmental Program of the United Nations (UNEP) and the International Council of Scientific Unions. It soon became clear that this group was too small and underfunded to fulfil a meaningful purpose. Following complex negotiations between WMO and the US Government, the road was paved for the creation of the IPCC, which materialized in 1988, under the auspices of WMO and UNEP. Shortly thereafter, in 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted by UN member countries. Between 1990 and 2022, the IPCC has published six Assessment Reports and a number of reports on specific topics.

Considering the relevance of the IPCC experience to a global TA exercise, some debates around the IPCC governance model seem of special relevance:

• How to prioritize questions around new and emerging technologies in a global science exercise? Critical debates have formed around the focus of the IPCC on precise climate change modelling, mitigation actions and the related risk that adaptation to already manifest climate change would not receive the necessary attention.

  This question is the essence of TA, and its main function as a means to assess the impact of specific technology developments in society, economy and the environment. As we have seen, global challenges require new STI approaches that can be applied equally well in different geographical, cultural and economic contexts. TA has been performing such comparative studies at multilateral level for a number of years and can effectively upgrade its methodologies to a global level of analysis (see the example of World Wide Views above, and Ladikas et al., 2015).

• How to assure a good mix of disciplines? As the initial focus of IPCC was very much on modelling future climate change, physical and other natural sciences were long seen as being over-represented at the expense of social sciences beyond economics.

  TA is a multidisciplinary approach that has successfully integrated social science, natural science and engineering methodologies under its remit. A standard TA analysis will use knowledge created by any relevant discipline on the issue under consideration, and the final analysis will be based on multidisciplinary analysis. This is also evident in the expectation that final reports and policy options development are co-authored by representatives of all disciplines involved in the analysis (Hennen et al., 2004).

• How to assure an adequate representation of different world regions? Corbera et al. (2016) found that around 80% of authors and reviewers of successive assessment reports produced by the IPCC were from OECD countries. This leads to different priorities and assessments, such as framing Southern forests as “empty” spaces available to suck up the Global North’s carbon pollution (Pearce et al., 2018, 126).

  As we have discussed above, TA is mainly active in western, developed countries, with a clear presence in every STI-intensive economy. It has nevertheless been applied successfully in a variety of developing country settings and has shown full capability to incorporate low income and low STI intensity contexts in its methodologies. This is particularly true for the interactive modes of TA, whereby wide stakeholder consultation is a prerequisite for the analysis and development of technology roadmaps (Ely et al., 2011).

• How inclusive or restrictive should assessments be conceptualized? For example, large-scale reforestation and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) can be assessed as a feasible climate change mitigation option via negative emissions, but all feasible trade-offs cannot realistically be assessed in the same report.

  TA offers an established process to research and identify the scope of the prospective exercises and determine which technologies are sufficiently relevant to be put on the agenda and assigned high priority. The exact delimination of what should be the object of the TA process will be based on the analysis of social, economic or environmental challenges to which the technological solutions should respond, either as a stand-alone solution or as an element of a comprehensive package of policy measures (Buetschi et al., 2004).

• How to balance global vs local: “between scientific knowledge that speaks of abstract global systems to a global audience, and knowledge that pertains more closely to local settings where the drivers and impacts of global change are more directly experienced” (Pearce et al., 2018, 128).

This is also an issue that TA has been dealing with in depth. Balancing out the needs of regional development as part of national-level development is a common focus of TA exercises, while more often than not, this upgrades to international (e.g. European) versus regional balancing. As such, TA has identified the need to translate scientific knowledge to lay language and has developed methodologies that aim at converting abstract theories to applicable technologies at local level (Hennen, 2002).

Overall, TA can make significant contributions to the international STI governance system. These contributions can take many forms, ranging from the establishment of a TA-like structure such as the IPCC (see also Ashworth and Clarke, this volume), or as part of the existing UN system, like UNCTAD. The future form will depend on many external factors, prominent amongst them being the political will to create such a global policy advisory institution. We have shown that TA has the experience and the tools to work effectively at a global level, which is evident in the existing TA activities that are undertaken, unwittingly or not, in many multilateral organisations. The TA community should respond to the tasks that global challenges are bringing, and the needs of the global community to promote common STI approaches to deal with them.