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A Global Network of Science and Technology Advice in Foreign Ministries

This paper is a product of the International Dialogue on Science and Technology Advice in Foreign Ministries (Vienna Dialogue) in October 2016, involving more than twenty nations and several international organisations. The event was a key step to further develop the Foreign Minister Science and Technology Advisor Network (FMSTAN), growing from an initial group of five nations. The Vienna Dialogue was convened by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) at the Vienna headquarters of IIASA, bringing together diplomats from foreign ministries to consider the value of evidence for informed decision-making by nations with regard to issues, impacts and resources within, across and beyond national boundaries. The evidence comes from the natural and social sciences with engineering and medicine as well as other areas of technology. By building common interests among nations, science is a tool of diplomacy, promoting cooperation and preventing conflict in our world. Science diplomacy was discussed as an international, interdisciplinary and inclusive process to help balance national interests and common interests in view of urgencies today and across generations in our globally-interconnected civilization.


Our Globally-Interconnected Civilization
Our connections across the Earth are intimate more than any point in human history. Yet, we still are in our infancy as a globally-interconnected civilization.
Consider our oldest calendars, recording time annually from around 6000 years ago to the present. In all this time, it was only the last century when humans truly became interconnected across our home planet, not just populations living in different locations on Earth, but actually touching each other across all continents.
First half of the 20 th century (after the calendar reset around 2000 years ago) was marked by animosity among all nations with the introduction of "world" wars. These were not regional wars in Europe or Asia or Africa or South America or Australia or North America. These were conflicts that affected our world on a planetary scale (Fig. 1).

FIGURE 1:
Emergence of our globallyinterconnected civilization during the 20 th century. 1 In stark contrast to the 'world' wars during the first half of the 20 th century -more than 95% of the multilateral ecosystem and environmental regimes in force (dots) have been signed after 1950. Institutions to establish 'international spaces' beyond sovereign jurisdictions (yellow) further highlight the development of common interests among all humankind, including regions that shall be used for peaceful purposes only without nuclear weapons.
Humbled by the horrors of a world at war, nations collectively began to think together about transboundary issues, impacts and resources. From this united exercise, a global arena of treaties and conventions was born, creating connections among nations during the second half of the 20 th century for the sustainability of our civilization. 2 Together, the first and second halves of the 20 th century reflect periods of national interests and common interests on Earth (Fig. 1). Like the 20 th century, there are national interests and common interests across the Earth's surface. National interests exist within the boundaries of nations, which collectively cover nearly thirty percent of the Earth's surface.
Common interests exist across the remaining seventy percent of the Earth, in areas established by humankind as international spaces beyond national jurisdictions, limiting the origins of national conflict (Fig. 1). With hope and inspiration, the second half of the twentieth century is best reflected by Antarctica, which the 1959 Antarctic Treaty protects for "peaceful purposes only…. with the interests of science and the progress of all mankind." With global perspective, we also can see human population growth in cities around the world. We cannot know exact numbers, but the trend is unambiguous. From the beginning -across all of the millennia -it was only 1800 when we reached the first billion humans alive at the same time on Earth. By 1920, twelve decades later, there were two billion, doubling the human population. By the 1970's there were four billion, doubling again in just five decades. Accelerating, there will be eight billion humans by end of this decade as our global population continues to grow exponentially across the Earth.
With human population growth comes environmental and societal changes that underlie the risks of famine, disease and war. 3 These risks are now operating on a planetary scale. Consider the refugee crises that are stirring nationalistic responses today with population movements at levels unseen since the World War II 4 -when there was two-thirds less people alive on Earth. How should cultures and nations respond to refugee crises, recognizing the tide of human population growth will continue to rise with foreigners increasingly mixed around our world? Among our globally interconnections, we now live in a digital era that has transformed information transfer on Earth. Leapfrogging traditional producers of information -everyone with a smart device and social media now is a publisher as well as recipient. Barraged from all angles, there is information overload, consuming time with the moment as we race ever faster to keep up with news from around the world, increasingly concerned about cyber-security. 5 4 Our digital era also is new with its dimensions of artificial intelligence 6 , robotics 7 and genomics 8 to name a few innovations that highlight human imagination with science fiction becoming reality. Yet, we are still in our infancy as a global community, perhaps best reflected by the polarized debate decrying 'climate change,' which itself is a redundant phrase since climates (by definition) are inherently dynamic on every planet in our solar system. Nonetheless, the fact that we are talking about climate reflects a maturity in our capacity as a civilization to understand the integrated responses of oceans and atmosphere with geology and biology over time on Earth.
Aligned with our global population growth, the Earth system has been influenced increasingly by humans from the dawn of agriculture through the industrial era into the future. 9 How nations individually and collectively respond to warming or cooling of the Earth's surface will remain a work in progress.
On a planetary scale -as a globally-interconnected civilization -the challenge we face today and will forever face, as long as there are nations, is to balance national interests and common interests across the Earth. We also have to be practical, recognizing that nations will always first and foremost look after their national interests.
The fundamental intersection between national and international interests exists within foreign ministries, charged with promoting cooperation and preventing conflict among nations. Decision-making within foreign ministries requires evidence collected, integrated and interpreted in view of political, economic and cultural instabilities each nation must avoid for its own security.
Urgencies exist across security time scales to address the risks of instabilities that are the concern of each and every nation. In a global context -unlike any time in human historytoday urgencies also exist across sustainability time scales, involving present and future generations (Fig. 2), recognizing that children being born will be alive in the 22 nd century.

FIGURE 2:
In our globally-interconnected civilization today, urgencies exist simultaneously across security time scales (mitigating risks of political, economic and cultural instabilities) and sustainability time scales (balancing societal, economic and environmental elements across generations) that must be addressed by nations individually and collectively.
In our globally-interconnected civilization -where urgencies of the present and future meet today (Fig. 2) -science and technology (S&T) advice in foreign ministries is part of the solution to address the issues, impacts and resources within, across and beyond the boundaries of nations. 10 In foreign ministries, the 'evidence brokers' are the science and technology advisors to foreign ministers.
Recognizing the fundamental importance of S&T advice for our globally-interconnected civilization, 11 the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) co-convened the International Dialogue on Science and Technology Advice in Foreign Ministries 12 in October 2016 near Vienna, Austria, at the headquarters of IIASA. The 'Vienna Dialogue' engaged diplomats from more than twenty nations, including the five members of the nascent Foreign Minister Science and Technology Advisor Network (FMSTAN) as well as other representatives of foreign ministries and from international organisations (represented by the co-authors of this paper inclusively). Emanating from the Vienna Dialogue, the goal of this paper is to share lessons and perspectives with a view toward enhancing S&T advice in foreign ministries.

Science Diplomacy in Foreign Ministries for the 21 st Century
Topics discussed during the Vienna Dialogue are shown in Table 1, introducing the position of S&T Advisor to the Foreign Minister as an option for nations to consider. The larger goal of the Vienna Dialogue was to nurture science diplomacy in foreign ministries, enhancing the capacity of our world to balance national interests and common interests. Decision-making by individuals, governments and our world requires evidence about change to understand the context of the challenges and opportunities to address. Across time and space, change is revealed by the natural and social sciences with technology and innovation further assisting to frame the appropriate solutions.

6
Questions addressed by the natural sciences underpin evidence for disaster risk reduction as well as responses to 'extreme events,' from regional hurricanes that occur seasonally to localized earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunami that reoccur over decades and centuries. With the advent of human-launched satellites 13 in 1957, we also have synoptic capacity to observe, record and transmit information on a planetary scale, underscoring our technological advances to address global opportunities and challenges across present and future generations.
Questions addressed by the social sciences underpin evidence for our sustainability, 14 balancing economic, environmental and societal elements in view of the urgencies today and across generations to come (Fig. 2). The socio-economic evidence underlies all manner of decisions, from trade and financial systems to infrastructure investments. In the international arena, nations receive and exchange evidence through many channels with the ministries of foreign affairs at the center of statecraft. For diplomacy among nations in our digital age -the evidence is unprecedented with the volume, variety and velocity of the deluge that is now known as 'Big Data'. 15 Sorting out the signal from the noise of the evidence that nations must address individually and collectively with urgency in our globally-interconnected civilization (Fig. 2), now is a matter of science diplomacy.
As a quantitative process to formulate and answer questions, science diplomacy reveals options that contribute to informed decision-making. The options (without advocacy) -which can be used or ignored explicitly -are distinct from recommendations advocated by individuals or institutions with agendas.
In a general sense, options are integrated through a decision-support process (Fig. 3), responding to constantly changing circumstances within, across and beyond the boundaries of nations. This iterative process involves stakeholder perspectives; evidence that is holistic (international, interdisciplinary and inclusive); and governance records. Iterative decision-support process involving international, interdisciplinary and inclusive (holistic) evidence from the natural and social sciences that is integrated with governance records (policies, regulations and laws of governments) in view of stakeholder perspectives to reveal options (without advocacy) that contribute to informed decisionmaking for the foreign affairs of nations.

8
Building on the decision-support generalization (Fig. 3), science diplomacy itself can be defined as an international, interdisciplinary and inclusive process involving evidence to balance national interests and common interests for the benefit of all on Earth. This definition has been evolving since over the past decade, 16-17 resonating with increasing application on a global scale.
Among the early events in the synthesis of science diplomacy is the June 2009 meeting on New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy that was hosted by The Royal Society in partnership with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), involving government ministers, scientists, diplomats, policymakers, business leaders and journalists from twenty countries. This conference revealed a taxonomy for science diplomacy with three major aspects: 18 1. Diplomacy for science (facilitating international science collaboration); 2. Science for diplomacy (helping to improve understanding between countries, especially where regular diplomacy may be strained); and 3. Science in diplomacy (informing foreign policy objectives with science and technology advice).
That same year, the Antarctic Treaty Summit 19 in Washington, D.C. brought together high-level decision makers, along with global thought leaders from 27 nations to celebrate lessons learned for humankind from the first half century of the Antarctic Treaty. These global lessons are memorialized in a joint Congressional Resolution that was adopted with unanimous consent in the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate during the Antarctic Treaty Summit -on the December 1 st signature day of the Antarctic Treaty fifty years before. 20 Global elements of science diplomacy emerged from the Antarctic Treaty Summit 21 and are distilled in Table 2. These global elements, which reveal the value of science across our civilization, are open for elaboration and practical application in the spirit of inclusion. Lessons of science diplomacy operate all over the world at local to global scales. A regional application is reflected by the Murmansk speech of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, when he borrowed from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research to introduce the concept of an "Arctic Research Council." In 1996, the Arctic Council emerged, establishing sustainable development as a common Arctic issue among the eight Arctic states and six indigenous peoples organizations. Throughout, this high-level forum for the Arctic has been nourished by evidence from its permanent working groups of social and natural scientists, stimulating Foreign Ministers to explicitly affirm "peace" in their biannual declarations since 2009. 22 The eight Arctic states then signed two binding agreements in 2011 and 2013, dealing with search-and-rescue and marine-pollution-response, respectively. Next to be signed is the binding Agreement on Enhancing Arctic Scientific Cooperation during the upcoming Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting -chaired by the United States in Fairbanks, Alaska, in May 2017. Contrary to media hype, the high north is a region of low tension, precisely because states have been cooperating around science.
All of the global elements of science diplomacy (Table 2)  In an holistic manner, the Sustainable Development Goals (Fig. 4) are characterized as a "knowledge platform… a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity." While they were crafted in a political environment with urgencies of the moment -these goals offer humankind a timeless gift that is purposeful today and will continue to be so into the distant future. In our globally-interconnected civilization -the evidence required for the welfare and security of nations (Fig. 4) is international, interdisciplinary and inclusive (the 3 I's). Among these holistic features, the biggest challenge is inclusion, which is open ended, if for no other reason than the evidence for informed decision-making must look across generations (Fig. 2). The decisions involve all of the science-diplomacy elements (Table 2) to achieve economic prosperity, environmental protection and societal well-being. On a global scale -the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (Fig. 4) help to frame the holistic capacity within and between nations, shaping the future of our globally-interconnected civilization.

Science and Technology (S&T) Advice Networks in Foreign Affairs
Recognizing the need to build "knowledge platforms" within and between nations, the International Network of Government Science Advice (INGSA) was established in 2014 to consider the "use of scientific evidence in informing policy at all levels of government." 27 INGSA operates under the aegis of the International Council for Science (ICSU), which is a nongovernmental organization with a global membership of national scientific bodies and international scientific unions, involving 142 nations currently. 28 ICSU is now merging with the International Social Science Council to more fully mobilize the knowledge and resources of the international science community for the benefit of society, complemented by the S&T organs of the United Nations as well as networks of science academies around the world (Table 3). At the international level, national governments interact in terms of their foreign affairs. S&T advisors involved with foreign affairs exist at the highest levels of national governments with their heads-of-state and foreign ministers (Table 4). Recognizing the 'silo' nature of governments, there also can be external S&T advisors in health, trade, defense and other ministries with more focused foreign remits. While Table 4 identifies nations with individual S&T advisors, other countries have opted for a different institutional arrangements for S&T advice, including government services, advisory boards and agencies. A few months later, Senegal became the next member of FMSTAN. In 2017, Oman and Poland have joined FMSTAN to date. This nascent global network is focusing initially on four areas to articulate the benefits of investing in internal S&T advisory capacity within foreign ministries to more fully complement external capacity:

Level of S&T Advisors and Starting Year of the Position Among Nations
1) Raising awareness about the importance of enduring S&T advisory capacity in foreign ministries; 2) Sharing best practices and lessons learned in building S&T advisory capacity; 3) Strengthening S&T advisory capacity in foreign ministries; and 4) Coordinating respective S&T diplomacy activities.
S&T advisors to foreign ministers are not necessarily experts on all scientific matters, but they understand science and know where to find the most appropriate expert on any given topic. They have the skills to explain evidence required for informed decision-making about foreign affairs, serving as evidence brokers in our increasingly transboundary world with constantly emerging complexities. Characteristics of S&T advisors generally and with specific focus on foreign affairs were revealed by the Vienna Dialogue (Table 5), considering their roles as evidence brokers to reveal options (Fig. 2) that contribute to informed decision-making by nations across the international landscape.  (Table 3), establishing a new level of diplomacy across foreign ministries 33-34 at the intersection of national interests and common interests on a global scale (Fig. 5).
FIGURE 5: Global interests of our civilization -which is now interconnected arcoss the Earth (Fig. 1) -require balance between national interests and common interests with urgencies across security and sustainability time scales (Fig. 2). Before such balance can be achieved, the first step is build common interess among nations, which is an important result of science diplomacy, promoting cooperation and preventing conflict. Such balance and stability in our world involves evidence from the natural and social sciences along with integration of stakeholder perspectives and governance records that contribute to informed decision-making (Fig. 3) for the benefit of nations individually and collectively.
The S&T acceleration through the industrial 35 and digital 36 revolutions coincides closely with human-population growth, probably because necessity is the mother of invention. On our common journey, S&T connections now operate with urgency across security and sustainability time scales (Fig. 2), creating international challenges and opportunities that influence the foreign affairs of nations on a global scale (Fig. 5).
Science, technology and innovation introduce new challenges as well as new solutions that transform our world, probably since humans began walking the Earth. Today and forever after -for the security and sustainability of nations individually and collectively (Figs. 1-5) -S&T advice in foreign ministries and the global development of the Foreign Minister Science and Technology Advisor Network (Table 3) is a source of holistic capacity and hope for our globallyinterconnected civilization.

Science knows no country because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.
Louis Pasteur This incidental serial will share rigorous syntheses of meetings that relate to science diplomacy. The spirit of this serial is to be holistic (international, interdisciplinary and inclusive) in a manner that will be helpful to the future of our globally-interconnected civilization.
This serial is intended to integrate stakeholder perspectives, holistic evidence and governance records in a manner that reveals options (without advocacy), which can be used or ignored, with the goal of contributing to informed decisionmaking in our world.
Informed decisions are at the summit, overlying options and evidence. The evidence itself is distilled from data, with observations and information integrated from questions at the earliest stage possible for stakeholder engagement, which is the reason for the meetings in the first instance.
The decisions relate to the combination of fixed, mobile, and other built assets (including communications, research, observing and information systems) that require capitalization and technology PLUS regulatory, policy, legal, official-statement and other governance mechanisms (including insurance). Behind the decisions is the science, as the study of change, including natural and social sciences as well as indigenous knowledge. Change itself reveals patterns and trends over time and space -to anticipate as well as respond to issues, impacts and resources -across generations within, over and beyond the boundaries of nations.

ABOUT ThE SERIAL
Science Diplomacy Action addresses an immediate and longterm need to publish rigorous syntheses and summaries of meetings associated with science and technology advice in government at all levels, especially among the foreign ministries of nations. This need is reflected by the rapidly growing number of meetings that focus on science diplomacy as a holistic process of evidence integration to balance national interests and common interests for the benefit of all on Earth. The value of these science-diplomacy meetings (or any meetings) is largely limited to those that attend. Science Diplomacy Action recognizes this unrealized opportunity to extend value beyond the meetings by soliciting and publishing rigorous meeting syntheses.
Nation states have sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdictions across nearly thirty percent of the Earth. In contrast, international spaces established from World War II beyond sovereign jurisdictions exist across nearly seventy percent on the Earth as well as in outer space. On a global scale, across one hundred percent of our home planet, the challenge is to balance national interests and common interests. Recognizing this forever challenge, the Science Diplomacy Center was launched in February 2017 at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
With its three triangulated areas of focus -Education, Research and Leadership -the Science Diplomacy Center aims to: • Educate the next generation of science diplomats; • Facilitate research to reveals evidence and options that contribute to informed decision-making; and • Provide leadership with science-diplomacy networks that build common interests among allies and adversaries alike acrossour globally-interconnected civilization The decision-support process applied by the Science Diplomacy Center integrates holistic (international, interdisciplinary and inclusive) evidence from the natural and social sciences as well as indigenous knowledge regarding impacts, issues and resources within, across and beyond sovereign jurisdictions. This holistic integration further involves stakeholder perspectives inclusively as well as governance records that represent the operation of government institutions. Importantly, this decision-support process is designed to reveal options (without advocacy), which can be used or ignored explicitly, contributing to informed decision-making across diverse jurisdictions, ultimately by nations individually and collectively.

SCIENCE DIPLOMACY CENTER
To help with informed decisions, involving the combination of built elements and governance mechanisms for sustainable infrastructure development, the Science Diplomacy Center operates across the 'continuum of urgencies,' which exists from security time scales (responding to the risks of political, economic and cultural instabilities that are immediate) to sustainability time scales (balancing economic prosperity, environmental protection and societal well-being across generations).

SUBMITTING MEETING SYNThESES:
As an incidental serial for rigorous meeting syntheses, the intention is to grow this serial in a manner that is both practical and helpful. The standard for the publication in Science Diplomacy Action is represented by Synthesis No. 1 (September 1, 2017), which emerged from the 1st International Dialogue on Science and Technology Advice in Foreign Ministries in October 2016.
In a holistic (international, interdisciplinary and inclusive) manner -Science Diplomacy Action seeks syntheses to share questions, observations, information, data, evidence and options that contribute to informed decision-making about issues, impacts and resources across jurisdictions in our globally-interconnected civilization. Science Diplomacy Action will operate as a rigorous publication with peer review, considering the overall quality, relevance and integrity of each submission. Each accepted synthesis will be an authoritative outcome of the relevant meeting with an author point-ofcontact and other meeting participants listed as co-authors with their approval.