In early October, Maria Esteban and Yvonne Stokes, as chair and member of ICIAM's ISC Committee, attended the quarterly virtual meeting held by the ISC President, Sir Peter Gluckman. The following is a summary.
The next formal meeting of the ISC General Assembly will take place in January 2025 in Oman; Maria will represent ICIAM at this meeting. Preparation for this meeting is intense, as this is the first meeting since the re-organization of the ISC following the merger of the science and social science councils and the formulation of new statutes. Significantly, members will be asked to approve the Strategic Plan for the next three years. (A draft will be available shortly.) The claim is that this plan is "of a much higher level, avoiding going into too many details". The basic questions are "Where to be?", "What to do?", "How to be the global voice of science?" and above all, "how not to duplicate what is being done elsewhere?" Five strategic priorities were stated:
- 1: Creating the conditions that allow science to thrive
- 2: Setting and coordinating science agendas on issues of global importance (here we find work with UNESCO on sustainability and the IDSSD - international decade on science for sustainable development, international polar year and international oceans year)
- 3: The evolution of science systems (science publishing, the role of AI, equity, the democratization of science)
- 4: Promoting and assisting science diplomacy, particularly where it advances the common good and addresses global challenges.
- 5: Articulating and translating scientific knowledge to inform decision-making
At the meeting there were clarifications of these priorities, and a discussion of a number of other questions, including questions about visas for scientific travel, the relation of ISC to IDSSD, how to restore and increase trust in science, how to enhance communication in and of science, and how to find resources to carry out the mission of ISC.
The recording of this meeting can be found here.
Information on ISC's activities for the year 2023 can be found in the annual report