By LEONARDO BOFF*
Which science is good for world transformation?
The countries that form the G20, since 2017, have created a link between the science academies of the member countries to prepare scientific and technological subsidies for their annual meetings. The country that hosts the G20 is responsible for the meeting of this group, in this case, Brazil, where the Summit will take place in Rio de Janeiro in 2024. The group created the name Science20. The studies and debates were concluded on July 2nd of this year.
The theme is “Science for global transformation”. It is detailed in five thematic axes – artificial intelligence, bioeconomy, energy transition process, health challenges and social justice.
As this is something very important – a careful analysis of the proposals made to the heads of State and Government gathered at this Summit is necessary.
As this is a specific topic in the areas of science and technology, it is natural that the summary presented in the five themes focuses on these branches of knowledge.
However, it immediately becomes apparent that we are dealing with an intra-systemic discourse, without questioning the assumptions underlying this system. The paradigm of modern science works in it, which atomizes knowledge and is anthropocentric, as it sees the human being as separate from nature, whose structuring axis of their practice is the desire for power/domination over everything and everyone. It fits, without any critical observation, within the capital system, created by this paradigm, with all its well-known mantras.
In this sense, in the published summary, there is no appropriation of the new holistic and relational paradigm based on quantum physics (Bohr/Heisenberg), whose fundamental understanding is to maintain that everything is related to everything and nothing exists outside the relationship; in the science introduced by Albert Einstein of the equivalence between matter and energy; nor in the new biology and cosmology, seen in process, therefore, as cosmogenesis and biogenesis.
Not even in ecological discourse, since its founder Ernst Haekel (1834-1919), who coined the word ecology (1866), has ecology been considered as the science of relationships, because all beings are interconnected and all are in permanent dialogue with the environment. This clearly expressed the Earth Charter, adopted by the UN (2003), as one of the most important official documents of current ecology: “Our environmental, economic, political, social and spiritual challenges are interconnected and together we can forge inclusive solutions” (Preamble, 4).Pope Francis writes the same in his encyclical On caring for our common home (2015)
In vain we find such “interconnection” and the search for “inclusive solutions” in the aforementioned summary. The themes run parallel without noticing the systemic interconnection between them.
Nonetheless; that it is clearly stated that science and technology are fundamental to the functioning of our complex societies. But we are also aware through contemporary epistemology that behind all knowledge there are interests of all kinds, including geopolitical ones. Just remember the classic book by Jürgen Habermas, knowledge and interest (Unesp), philosopher and sociologist of the Frankfurt school.
What would those interests be? The most important aspect is the maintenance of the current socioeconomic system, capitalism, as a mode of production and its political expression, neoliberalism with its market. Next, the concern of the dominant power, the USA, for security in order to guarantee a unipolar world, based on techno-science and the production of increasingly sophisticated weapons, many of them so powerful that they can kill human life. For this purpose, trillions of dollars are being invested which, if applied, would solve the serious problem of hunger, health and housing for the millions of people marginalized by the current dominant system.
Aside from these theoretical reflections, it is worth highlighting the concrete effects of this type of science and technique developed from modernity and still in force today. In the desire to dominate everything, the principle of self-destruction was created with all types of lethal weapons, which shows that technical-scientific rationality has become completely irrational.
The rage for accumulation has devastated virtually all terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The consumption of opulent countries requires more than an Earth and a half of goods and services, something that it cannot meet: the well-known “Earth Overload”. The extremely intensive extraction of natural resources, some collective commons (such as water, forests and seeds), has led to today's ecological-social crisis.
This crisis is demonstrated by global warming that is unprecedented since the last interglacial period 125 thousand years ago. Global temperatures reached a record high in 2023 and 2024, reaching 1,5ºC above the pre-industrial period (1850-1900). Floods and fires devastated several regions, such as Rio Grande do Sul and Pantanal.
Social inequality is one of the most perverse realities: the richest 1% own more than half of the world's wealth. Mini-particle air pollution is responsible for many diseases and seven million premature deaths annually. And we could continue with many other harmful effects resulting from this paradigm.
The important thing is to say that this degradation of planet Earth and life has as its main agents exactly those who meet at the G20 Summit (with some exceptions): the Governments where the powerful and wealthy of this world are. It is symptomatic that in the item “Social Justice” there is not a word about the brutal global social inequality. They focus on expanding universal internet access.
In the item “Bioeconomy” we expected it to refer to overcoming the current type of economy, which is highly exclusionary and centered on the production of material goods. Instead of placing, as the title suggests, life at the center and science and technology, politics and economics at the service of life. But a call is made “to formulate a joint policy framework that allows countries to implement bioeconomy programs…improve quality of life and protect natural resources”.
Without touching on the accumulating and exclusionary system, it is a beautiful purpose like the 2015 Paris Agreement that was not put into practice. Such an idealistic purpose goes against the logic of the dominant system. It will certainly not be implemented.
These are some critical considerations to the proposals from technicians and scientists that will be presented at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
I highlight President Lula's proposal to form a Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty. But the truth has to be told: this type of techno-science, without conscience, is not good enough for world transformation. If we simply focus on the means without defining other humanitarian and ecological ends, under another paradigm, we will head towards an immeasurable catastrophe.
How much truth and how much change of direction can the spirit of capital support? This is a question that will hardly find an answer.
*Leonardo Boff He is a theologian, philosopher and writer. Author, among other books, of Sustainability: What it is – What it is not (Vozes). [https://amzn.to/4cOvulH]
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