PRESS CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH UNESCO WORLD REPORT

PRESS CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH UNESCO WORLD REPORT

The Director of the Information Society Division of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Elizabeth Longworth, today launched UNESCO’s World Report entitled Towards Knowledge Societies, at a Headquarters press conference. 

She said the report, which sought to strengthen the intellectual, strategic and ethical watch capacities of the international community and of societies, had taken a simple concept and showed what a radical difference the pooling of knowledge, rather than its partition, could make towards sustainable development.  In today’s complex world, a third industrial revolution was under way with the new technologies, accompanied by advances in globalization. 

Cognitive resources were at the centre of human activity and wealth creation, she said.  Those countries that recognized the importance of cognitive skills and made the necessary investment in living, learning and information systems would leap ahead in terms of development.  Those that did not would get left behind.  So, instead of a digital divide, the “knowledge divide” was much more pervasive and serious in terms of the world’s future. 

She said that on the eve of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia, which had sparked global debate, the UNESCO report had highlighted the positive role information technologies could play in narrowing the “knowledge divide” and improving the quality of life.  The report, a vital contribution, offered a growth and development approach -– a new paradigm -– based on the pooling of relevant knowledge.

The fundamental premise was that knowledge went hand in hand with core freedoms, and that knowledge societies emphasized people’s needs and was grounded in basic human rights and values.  Freedom of expression and an independent and pluralist media were key.

The UNESCO was responding to people-centred development, and the ability of individuals to participate and be active contributors.  The report offered several recommendations, which were at the heart of the battle against poverty and exclusion, and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.  In a world where there were still 800 million illiterates, with two thirds of them women and girls, between 15 million and 35 million extra teachers were needed to meet the relevant Goal in 2015. 

Huge challenges remained, she said, stressing the fundamental need to invest in quality education for all.  In terms of science and innovation, the key indicator was the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) for research and development.  Developing countries lagged well behind in that regard, devoting .2 per cent of GDP for that purpose, compared to 2 per cent for developed countries.  The report highlighted other characteristics of the knowledge divide, such as the debilitating effect of the “brain drain”.  It also underscored the need to enhance local and indigenous knowledge systems.

In terms of the impact of technologies on today’s world, the report emphasized the importance of collective memory versus the inherent instability of all information and knowledge.  There was a danger of a kind of “digital Alzheimer’s”, given that the average life span of a web page was 44 days.  Different cognitive abilities were needed to survive in today’s world.  There was a revolution taking place in terms of the effect of the new technologies on governance.  The new technologies were challenging centralized authority and enabling a level of transparency, which many citizens never had before.  Understanding the complexities and inter-dependencies was essential to closing the gaps and benefiting from UNESCO’s vision of living in knowledge societies. 

Asked what role the former President of Lithuania had with UNESCO and, more generally, what role a high-profile personality had in promoting knowledge societies, Ms. Longworth explained that UNESCO used various high-profile people to promote different themes and to create awareness.  That strategy was aimed at really “drawing out” what it meant in a national context to live in knowledge societies and to use the power of the presidential office.  The former Lithuanian President was a UNESCO spokesperson aimed at raising awareness. 

Regarding the effect of the expansion of the European Union on the “brain drain”, she said that every country suffered from brain drain.  That was not a unique North/South issue, although given the development crisis in the development countries, it was serious.  All countries, particularly the industrial ones, had been competing for some time for specialists, especially in science and technology.  She did not, however, have specific figures on what role the Union’s expansion had played, but the competition that had been raging among the countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), through scholarships and other incentives to attract doctorate candidates and professors, had really been robust. 

The mobility factor was not about prohibiting people from moving, but trying to understand how to build networks for knowledge sharing, she added.  There was a certain “twinning” that could go on with institutions in the less developed countries.  Much knowledge could be transferred, without necessarily transferring people themselves.

* *** *

For information media • not an official record