The revealed seventh UNESCO science report that the world witnessed an increase in spending on scientific research between 2014 and 2018, by 19.2%, faster than the increase in the global average income, which did not exceed 14.8%.
This rise is mainly due to the large money invested by both the United States and China to a large extent, which is the bright side in the trends of spending on scientific research, while there is a pale face represented in the presence of about 80% of the countries of the world that did not exceed the 1% threshold of their public income. Read also The contribution of the social sciences and humanities to the digital world The Secretary-General of the Arab World Organization of Young Scientists, Jawad Al-Kharraz: We support young researchers and these are my advice to them The Association for Scientific and Technological Advancement is on an arduous mission to support Arab researchers abroad Ocean sciences..Norway tops the world and Kuwait first in the Arab world
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Poor spending for Arabs
According to this report, the Arab countries did not progress much in the field of spending on science, as the percentage moved from 0.48% in 2014 to only 0.59% in 2018, and this is mainly due to the political problems that the region experienced, which negatively affected its economic growth.
But there are exceptions; The UAE recorded the highest increase in the region, moving from 0.69% in 2014 to 1.30% in 2018, followed by Egypt, which invested 0.72% of its public income in 2018, compared to 0.64 in 2014.
The report highlighted the example of the UAE, which almost doubled its spending on scientific research, and it currently contributes 0.42% of global spending on scientific research.
On the global level, some countries recorded a decline in their public spending, such as Japan, which fell from 3.40 to 3.20%, Russia from 1.05 to 0.99%, and Canada from 1.72 to 1.57%.
This uneven increase in spending on scientific research was offset by an increase in the number of researchers, as the Arab region experienced an average slight increase, as the number moved from 536 researchers per million people in 2014, to 682 researchers in 2018.
Jordan ranked first in the Arab world in increasing the number of its researchers, outperforming many countries in the world, with a rate of nearly 150%, followed by Iraq with 60%, then Bahrain with 58%, and the UAE with 20%.
Health and artificial intelligence in the lead
The report confirms that the global rise in the number of scientific researchers resulted in an increase in the number of scientific publications in 2019 by 21% compared to 2015, research that has known dominance in the fields of health, environment and artificial intelligence, and the number of publications in artificial intelligence – for example – in 2019 About 150 thousand scientific papers.
According to the report, many countries of the world have directed their interests towards this specialization; During the past five years, more than 30 countries have drawn up special strategies for the development of artificial intelligence research, including China, America, Russia, India, Mauritius, and Vietnam. India ranked first in the world in the number of scientific publications, especially in this field, while Morocco came first in the Arab world, followed by Iraq, then Jordan.
In the field of renewable energies, scientific publications have witnessed an increase, even if they are not at the level of other disciplines, as they jumped from about 71,000 publications in 2011 to more than 108,000 in 2019. India ranked first in the world in the number of research in 2019, while Saudi Arabia came in First place at the Arab level, followed by Egypt.
Despite all this, the report indicated that about 70% of scientific publications are not accessible to most scientific researchers in the world, and this is a form of unequal opportunities among researchers in the world, and countries should work to remove this obstacle.
The report indicated that UNESCO has been working since 2019 to establish a system that allows all researchers in the world to access new scientific research, a procedure that may be approved in November 2021.
In contrast, China ranked first in the number of patents at the global level, with a percentage of 29%, followed by America 20%, Japan 18.4%, and Europe 14.4%.
The “militarization” of the aerospace industry
The report also recorded the openness of the space industry, under which the specialization of wireless communications falls, to the private sector. This is due to the importance and size of the global market, which has witnessed amazing developments; In Africa alone, the aerospace industry has reached nearly $10 billion.
And in January 2020, SpaceX became the first private company to send humans into space, when it oversaw the transportation of astronauts to the International Space Station.
The report stated that the US “NASA” agency has become, in recent years, dealing a lot with private companies in many of the operations that have become routine for them, in order to devote themselves to larger tasks such as exploiting deep space.
In the rest of the world, the space industries are experiencing an exciting development. As in the UAE – for example – which was able to launch the “Hope” probe, and also in Africa, whose countries are seeking to establish the African Space Agency, which will be based in Egypt.
But the race towards space and the resulting development in the space industries have become, over the past few years, attracting the attention of the military and the leaders of the armies in many countries. Which caused the creation of undeclared political problems between these countries.
The United States triggered the surprise when, in February 2019, it announced the birth of a new unit of its military forces, called the “Space Force”, which was included in the Air Force. Then many countries – such as France, China, and Russia – announced the creation of space military forces.