The CERN Model, United Nations and Global Public Goods: Addressing global challenges

Prof. Heuer,
Ms. Calmy-Rey,
Ms. Cresson,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Welcome to today’s event where we will look at the CERN Model, United Nations and Global Public Goods in addressing global challenges. We will discuss how the cooperation between the United Nations and CERN can be further strengthened and hopefully identify new synergies to address the current challenges.

The United Nations General Assembly recently adopted the new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 Goals. This agenda provides an ambitious target for the international community to work for a universal set of global public goods, including providing education and health services, water and sanitation, infrastructure and affordable energy. These targets cannot be accomplished by one actor alone. We need to establish new partnerships for sustainable development. The research and science community is an indispensable partner in this endeavour. Goal 17 underlines this by calling for an enhanced North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation on access to science, technology and innovation.

Even if not all of us have understood the complexities of the Higgs-Boson – or the God particle for non-scientists like me – we do know that CERN’s work has benefitted us all, as every single user of the internet will admit.
The need to share research results between scientists and institutes around the world on a larger scale for the sake of advancing science, was the reason why CERN developed the world wide web in 1989. This public good invented by CERN, has since changed the way we work and share information in a most fundamental way. The United Nations and other actors have helped to use the web for development purposes, creating new business opportunities and facilitating public service delivery.

Standing at the beginning of the implementation phase of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we need new and more revolutionary inventions at the service of society to deliver results. As CERN has shown, we have to harness science, innovation and technology through cooperative partnerships across countries and organisations. The integration of the world of science and the world of politics and diplomacy has to be strengthened more than ever.

It was the cooperation between these worlds that gave birth to CERN in the aftermath of World War II, despite the difficult political context. Since 1953 CERN has shown how scientific collaboration can promote peace, across political borders. And today, CERN is again playing a pivotal role in bringing scientists from politically divergent countries together which will hopefully impact the political dialogue as well: Arab, Israeli, Iranian and Pakistani scientists are jointly working together in the SESAME project in Jordan. All participants speak a common language, the language of science, and put their political divergences aside for the sake of science. Science for diplomacy can indeed improve international relations.

At the same time, research itself is always political. Where and how do we invest resources? Whom do we involve? Who benefits? Hence, diplomacy is also important for science as it facilitates international scientific cooperation and drives the advancement in specific, strategically important areas.

Policy makers have to ensure that their decisions are guided by science and scientific evidence, not the other way around. Climate change is a good example. The collection of scientific evidence from hundreds of scientists, especially through the assessments and synthesis report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has been instrumental in mobilizing policy makers and I very much hope the warnings from scientists will be heard at the climate conference in Paris in December.

The United Nations itself provides an important interface between science and policymaking. The United Nations University is conducting crucial research and training that will be key in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Their work is complemented by targeted research by bodies such as the UN Research Institute for Social Development, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, all three based here in Geneva. The latter is a good example of how excellent research can generate ideas that are desperately needed to move the disarmament agenda forward.
The creation of the United Nations Scientific Advisory Board in 2013 underlines the importance that our Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, and the United Nations attach to science. This Board helps the United Nations strengthen the link between science and policy. It will also continue to improve our understanding of our ‘planetary boundaries’, ‘tipping points’ and ‘environmental thresholds’. It will further strengthen evidence-based policy-making.

In short, the United Nations goes to great length to reinforce scientific diplomacy. And we are trying to advance this here in Geneva, not least through increasing collaboration with Universities, Research Institutes and Think Tanks. But we still have some way to go. And there is much to learn from the CERN model.

Both CERN and the United Nations were created in the aftermath of World War II with a motivation to build peace and further the development of humankind. Let us discuss how we can use this common ground for the provision of global public goods to send a strong signal from Geneva and drive realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Thank you very much.