The First Meeting of the G20-Chief Science Advisers Roundtable Held at Ramnagar

Uttarakhand:29/3/23:Ramnagar, Uttarakhand hosted the First Meeting of G20-Chief Science Advisers Roundtable (G20-CSAR), which witnessed intense discussion on issues of transboundary S&T issues of mutual interest. G20-CSAR is the flagship event under India’s G20 Presidency and led by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India.

The day-long roundtable witnessed discussions under the broad themes of Opportunities in One Health for better disease control and pandemic preparedness;  Synergizing Global Efforts to Expand Access to Scholarly Scientific Knowledge;  Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Science & Technology (S&T); and An Institutional Mechanism for Inclusive, Continuous and Action- Oriented Global S&T Policy Dialogue.

Under the theme Opportunities in One Health for better disease control and pandemic preparedness, we discussed Pandemic preparedness plan for flexible, adaptive, and timely responses to pandemics, Integrated disease surveillance mechanisms for humans, livestock, and wildlife, R&D roadmap for diseases of One Health importance, and Investing in analytics (such as disease modeling, AI/ML tools) and data standards.

Under the theme Synergizing Global Efforts to Expand the Access to Scholarly Scientific Knowledge, we discussed that the access should be free, immediate, and universal, high subscription and Article Processing Charges levied by journals must be reduced, the establishment of Interoperable inter-linking of national repositories with international repositories/ archives, and having Open Access mandate to make knowledge outputs of public-funded scientific research widely available.

The third theme was on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Science & Technology (S&T). The participating countries shared their work in advancing access to the under-represented, under-privileged, marginalized, minority as well as tribal/ native communities in the larger scientific enterprise. In the session, the Inclusion of Traditional Knowledge Systems (TKS) in formal system of knowledge through due scientific validation process, and Recognizing the potential of language diversity and addressing the bottlenecks in accessing scientific knowledge were also discussed.

The fourth session discussed the need for having an Institutional Mechanism for Inclusive, Continuous and Action- Oriented Global S&T Policy Dialogue.

It was agreed upon that the scientific advisers play a critical role in shaping policy choices by providing evidence-driven science advice and that the in the spirit of cooperation and dialogue, it is the responsibility of chief science advisers to collaborate and engage in international dialogue to address transboundary issues affecting the entire scientific enterprise so that the science and technology can benefit all.

The deliberations and engagement on the topics discussed today will continue until August 2023, when the next meeting is scheduled, in which a Science Policy Communiqué will be released.

After the meeting, Prof Ajay Sood, Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Government of India; Dr Parvinder Maini, Scientific Secretary, Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Government of India, and Mr Naman Upadhyay, Under Secretary at the G20 Secretariat also interacted with the local media.