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Laurie Smith spends his working life trying to see around corners. As Head of Mission Discovery at Nesta, the U.K.'s innovation agency, he helps governments and institutions tackle long-term challenges, from mission-driven policy to emerging technologies.

When we spoke, one tension kept resurfacing: institutions say they want to think long-term, but almost everything about how they are organized rewards the opposite.

1. Why do institutions struggle to operationalize long-term strategic thinking, even when they know foresight matters?

For Smith, the problem is less about political will than institutional incentives. “The incentives often point in a different direction,” he said.

“Electoral cycles are quite quick, media cycles are quite quick. You’ve got a politician who may genuinely intend to think long-term, but if the pressure is that you get rewarded for being short-term, not for long-term, people end up behaving accordingly. You’ve got a systemic problem.”

Yet Smith does not think democratic systems are condemned to short-termism. Countries like China may be able to plan further ahead because they face less electoral pressure, he said, but democratic governments have their own tools, from future generations acts to climate legislation and other long-term policy instruments.

Institutional design is only part of the story.

“I’m not a psychologist,” he said, before suggesting that human decision-making may also reinforce short-term thinking. Rationally, he said, gains and losses should carry equal weight, yet people experience them differently.

“If you die, that’s the biggest loss. You cannot do anything else.”

That instinct, combined with institutions that reward immediate results, makes long-term thinking difficult even for leaders who genuinely want to do it.

2. How do you distinguish real transformative signals from hyped-up innovation noise?

Policymakers often want a formula for recognizing the next transformative technology. Smith’s experience has convinced him that one doesn’t exist.

“There isn’t an algorithm,” he said. “A lot of it’s built-up experience. Some of it’s just like muscle memory.”

Instead, he looks for recurring patterns. General-purpose technologies tend to matter more because they reshape multiple sectors rather than solving a single problem.

“If a technology affects lots of things, the more general-purpose it is, I think that’s one thing that makes it more important.”

He also pays attention to technologies that accelerate further discovery.

“AI probably increases your ability to find other technologies, and also improve the subsequent ones recursively.”

Even then, timing can matter as much as the technology itself.

“It’s not that the technology exists,” he said. “It’s: when does it become useful?”

For Smith, foresight is less about following a prescribed method than developing the judgment to recognize when those moments arrive. As he put it, “the least worst way of thinking about the future.”

3. What separates effective mission-driven governance from aspirational branding?

A mission only becomes meaningful when success can be measured, according to Smith.

“Our missions are measurable and specific,” he said, pointing to Nesta’s own approach. A goal such as reducing emissions by fifty percent by 2030 works because “it’s a specific measure, you know you’ve done it.”

But defining the destination does not mean prescribing the route. “Be firm about your goal, but give people freedom in how to achieve it.”

Rather than trying to design every step in advance, Smith favors an iterative approach.

“You start small, do practical experiments, de-risk your assumptions fast, and then get bigger.”

4. Are large institutions actually capable of embracing uncertainty and experimentation, or are they just built for stability?

Large institutions, Smith argued, are fully capable of experimentation.

“It depends on the institution,” he said. “Institutions are, in principle, capable of doing it, because there are institutions that do do it.”

He pointed to technology companies and test-and-learn units within government as evidence that experimentation can become part of institutional culture.

Just as important, he said, is recognizing that different disciplines often use the same language differently. Even a word like “experiment” can mean one thing to a designer and something quite different to a scientist, creating misunderstandings before substantive work even begins.

His solution is simple: bring people together, surface those differences early, and make terminology explicit rather than assuming everyone means the same thing.

5. How has your view of the science-policy-society relationship evolved as tech outpaces government?

“Everything needs to be more agile,” he said. “You can’t have these rigid, fixed systems. You need really flexible systems. It’s imperfect, but it’s the best solution.”

He illustrated the point with regulation of genetically modified organisms, arguing that rules built around specific technological processes can quickly become obsolete as science evolves.

His preference is to regulate outcomes instead, while involving policymakers and the public earlier in the development of emerging technologies.

That flexibility matters because technologies often end up having their greatest impact in places no one anticipated. GLP-1 drugs, he noted, were originally developed for blood pressure or diabetes before becoming significant for entirely different uses.

That unpredictability, Smith said, is why institutions need governance systems that can adapt as technology does.

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U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk called on governments to agree on “red lines” for artificial intelligence and establish independent verification of AI safety, as countries bring competing proposals for governing the technology to the Human Rights Council.

Türk said on Monday he would write to AI companies in the coming days urging them to take immediate steps within their control to reduce risks from increasingly powerful systems, while calling for governments that host AI companies and those involved in their supply chains to agree on common limits.

“We need independent verification, and much stronger collaboration on security within the industry,” Türk told the opening of the council’s 63rd session in Geneva.

The intervention comes as artificial intelligence takes a larger place on the council’s agenda but governments have yet to agree on a single framework setting out how the technology should be developed and governed in accordance with human rights.

Bangladesh, Egypt and Nepal are leading a new resolution on the human rights implications of AI during the current session, while Armenia is introducing a separate measure addressing women and girls in the context of digital technologies. South Korea has pursued another council initiative on new and emerging digital technologies since 2019.

The proliferation of initiatives reflects growing interest among governments in shaping AI rules, but also raises questions about whether the different efforts will converge around common standards.

“The need for AI governance is widely acknowledged – but where is the action?” Türk said. “Delay only benefits the massive tech companies, their owners and enablers.”

Türk also warned about the concentration of control over the technology.

“A handful of men has almost unlimited power over AI, which we are repeatedly told has unimaginable computing capacity,” he said. “They talk about freedom, but on closer inspection, this turns out to be little more than the freedom to exploit our data.”

AI governance is already developing through several parts of the international system. U.N. member states have established a Global Dialogue on AI Governance and an Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, while governments and regional organizations are developing their own regulatory approaches.

Türk welcomed those developments but said stronger safeguards were needed as the capabilities of advanced AI systems increase.

“I share the concerns of industry insiders that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity,” he said. “AI that escapes its testing environment, or blackmails developers to prevent itself from being turned off, is AI that is too powerful.”

Türk called for an “all-out effort” to establish what he described as “cast iron guarantees” around AI safety and security before the technology advances further.

His proposed red lines were not defined in Monday’s speech, nor did he specify what form an independent verification system should take or which international institution should oversee it.

Those questions come as governments at the Human Rights Council confront a more immediate institutional issue: whether to consolidate their work on AI or continue addressing it through separate resolutions and mandates.

The council has considered digital technologies through resolutions and thematic studies for several years. During the current session, experts are also presenting a report examining AI’s effects on cultural rights.

But it has yet to produce unified guidance for governments and technology companies on applying international human rights standards to the development and deployment of AI.

Marc Limon, executive director of the Geneva-based Universal Rights Group, which has advised South Korea on its initiative, has argued that the council needs a dedicated special-procedures mandate to bring its work together.

With additional countries now proposing initiatives, separate efforts risk “muddying the water,” Limon told Geneva Solutions ahead of the session.

“The ultimate goal is to have one set of accessible, unified universal guidance for states on how to regulate AI in a human rights way, and for digital technology companies on how to develop AI that complies with human rights,” he said.

While some governments have resisted proposals for additional human rights oversight of AI on the grounds that regulation could slow technological innovation, Türk said governance also needs to address the technology’s effects on employment practices, fundamental principles of democracy and the environment.

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Issue No. 21 | Monday, September 7, 2026

Good morning,

Welcome to The Science Diplomat Playbook, your Monday morning guide to what’s shaping the week ahead in global science diplomacy.

The lead

Governments and experts gather in Kunming, China, on Monday for three days of discussions examining collective progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, beginning a new stage in the first global review of the agreement adopted in 2022.

The framework established 23 targets for 2030, covering everything from ecosystem restoration and protected areas to pollution, finance and the sustainable use of biodiversity. But setting global targets was only the beginning. Governments now have to determine collectively how much progress has been made and where efforts remain insufficient.

The Kunming Dialogue is part of that process. Countries agreed at COP16, held at Cali, Colombia, in 2024, that the global review would be led by governments, supported by an informal technical dialogue bringing together national representatives with Indigenous peoples and local communities, scientists, women and youth representatives, businesses, financial institutions and other experts.

Delegates will also confront the lagging progress of the Cali Fund, which was created at COP16 to convert private corporate profits into public conservation projects in developing countries. Its certified financial statement shows that in 2025 it received just $1,000 from a single donor, the U.K.-based startup TierraViva AI.

That makes the meeting an important interface between evidence and diplomacy. Scientific assessments and national reports can show changes in ecosystems, financing or conservation efforts, but governments must decide how that evidence should be interpreted collectively and what it means for the commitments they made.

The dialogue also brings the biodiversity framework back to the city where its political architecture began taking shape. The first part of COP15 was held in Kunming in 2021 before negotiations concluded the following year in Montreal with adoption of the Kunming-Montreal framework.

The meeting follows biodiversity negotiations in Nairobi this summer that examined the first global assessment of progress and warned that current efforts remain insufficient to achieve the framework’s 2030 mission.

Kunming now moves that process forward: from establishing what the evidence says toward determining what countries should collectively make of it.

Elsewhere this week, governments and other participants gather in Baku for a U.N. Climate Week intended to build momentum toward COP31, while the IPCC convenes its first expert meeting specifically devoted to water and climate change.

The U.N. Human Rights Council opens a month-long session in Geneva on Monday, with environmental health, water, climate finance and nuclear legacies among the issues that will intersect with its broader human rights agenda.

The 81st session of the U.N. General Assembly opens in New York on Tuesday, beginning a month that will culminate in high-level meetings on climate action, sea-level rise and pandemic preparedness alongside the annual general debate. The general debate begins Sept. 22.

And toward the end of the week, leaders of the expanded BRICS grouping are expected to meet in New Delhi, with innovation, resilience and sustainability among the priorities.

Major processes to watch

China — Kunming Dialogue examines collective progress on biodiversity

Countries meet in Kunming through Wednesday for an informal technical dialogue supporting the first global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

The process brings governments together with scientists, Indigenous peoples and local communities, businesses, finance and other participants to consider collective progress toward the framework’s 2030 targets.

The important question is what the accumulated evidence says about progress at the global level — and how that assessment should shape the next stage of international biodiversity policy.

Azerbaijan — Climate Week builds toward COP31

Governments, international organizations, businesses and other participants gather in Baku for the second U.N. Climate Week of 2026, intended to connect decisions taken through the formal climate negotiations with action on the ground.

The Sept. 7–11 meeting will focus on turning international climate decisions into practical action while generating targeted input for COP31, which opens in Antalya, Turkey, in November.

The meeting provides an intermediate stage between formal negotiating sessions: a place to identify obstacles involving finance, capacity, data and implementation before governments return to the negotiating table later this year.

Geneva — Space security moves from threats to verification

UNIDIR brings governments, researchers, industry and defense experts together on Tuesday and Wednesday as a growing reliance on satellites and the blurred boundary between civilian and military space systems raises new questions about stability in orbit.

Discussions range from threats to space infrastructure and strategic orbital capabilities to current negotiations on preventing an arms race in outer space. One particularly important question is whether sophisticated space-surveillance technologies can do more than prevent collisions: could they eventually help governments verify agreements or monitor compliance with norms of behavior?

The meeting also examines another emerging governance problem: private companies now operate infrastructure and generate data with strategic significance, complicating traditional assumptions about responsibility, neutrality and targetability in conflict.

Sri Lanka — IPCC turns to water in shaping its next climate assessment

The IPCC and International Water Management Institute convene about 60 experts in Colombo for the first IPCC expert meeting specifically devoted to advancing the science of water and climate change.

The Sept. 8–10 meeting will examine the current state of knowledge, identify research priorities and gaps, and generate evidence that could inform the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report. The discussions will consider water’s role in climate adaptation, resilience and risk, including the cascading and transboundary consequences of changes in water availability and distribution.

Participants will also develop a synthesis report on water, climate resilience, adaptation and equity. The work connects preparation of the next global climate assessment with wider international discussions over water security and governance.

UNGA watch — The 81st session opens

The 81st session of the U.N. General Assembly opens Tuesday, beginning the institutional run-up to high-level week.

The major political activity comes later: the general debate begins Sept. 22, alongside high-level meetings later that month on climate action, sea-level rise, pandemic preparedness and nuclear weapons.

Plastics treaty watch — Informal consultations continue

Heads of delegation to the negotiations for a global agreement on plastic pollution meet virtually Tuesday and Wednesday as efforts continue to find a path through unresolved differences in the treaty process.

The discussions are part of a series of informal meetings leading toward INC-5.4, scheduled for March 2027. The negotiating committee’s chair has proposed consultations every four to six weeks on priority areas, the roadmap and how the process should proceed.

The meeting does not represent a return to formal negotiations, but it provides another indication of whether governments can narrow differences before they do.

Security Council watch — Iran dispute leaves nuclear oversight in limbo

The Security Council returns to Iran’s nuclear program Thursday amid a deeper dispute over whether the sanctions committee it is scheduled to discuss legally exists.

France, the U.K., the U.S. and other Council members maintain that U.N. sanctions and the 1737 Committee were restored after European countries invoked the JCPOA’s snapback mechanism last year. China and Russia reject that interpretation and argue that the sanctions expired in October 2025. The disagreement has left the committee without an agreed chair and prevented its Panel of Experts from becoming operational.

The institutional paralysis comes as international nuclear monitoring has also been impaired. The International Atomic Energy Agency says it has lost continuity of knowledge across Iran’s declared nuclear facilities and cannot account for the size or whereabouts of the country’s enriched-uranium stockpile.

The dispute has spread beyond the Iran file, contributing to an unprecedented delay in appointing chairs for Security Council subsidiary bodies and constraining the work of sanctions committees and other oversight mechanisms.

Separately, members are expected to continue discussing a Greek-drafted resolution on the impact of digital technologies on violations against children in armed conflict, bringing questions of technology governance into the Council’s established children-and-armed-conflict agenda.

Signals

• The biodiversity framework is moving into a different test: not setting global targets, but determining collectively whether the evidence shows countries are on course to meet them.

• Water is moving closer to the center of the next IPCC assessment as scientists examine how changes in the hydrological cycle cascade through food, ecosystems, economies and adaptation.

• Climate diplomacy between COPs includes meetings designed to connect negotiated decisions with the practical obstacles governments face in carrying them out.

• Improved space surveillance could become part of the verification architecture for future international rules governing activity in orbit.

On the calendar

Sept. 7–8 — Minamata Convention Implementation and Compliance Committee (Virtual)
The treaty’s compliance body reviews implementation issues as new national reporting feeds into the first evaluation of whether the Minamata Convention is proving effective. → Meeting information

Sept. 7–9 — Kunming Dialogue 2026 (Kunming, China)
Countries and other participants examine collective progress toward the 23 targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as part of preparations for its global review. → Meeting information

Sept. 7–11 — U.N. Climate Week (Baku, Azerbaijan)
Governments and other participants work on translating international climate decisions into action and generating input for COP31 in November. → Meeting information

Sept. 7–Oct. 7 — U.N. Human Rights Council, 63rd session (Geneva)
The Council opens a month-long session spanning global human rights crises alongside issues including hazardous substances and wastes, water and sanitation, climate finance and the human rights consequences of nuclear legacies. → Meeting information

Sept. 8 — U.N. General Assembly 81st session opens (New York)
The General Assembly begins its annual session ahead of the general debate and a series of high-level meetings later in September. → Meeting information

Sept. 8–9 — Plastics treaty heads-of-delegation meeting (Virtual)
Negotiators hold informal consultations on the roadmap toward the next formal session of negotiations on a global agreement on plastic pollution. → Meeting information

Sept. 8–9 — UNIDIR Outer Space Security Conference (Geneva)
Governments, researchers and industry experts examine threats to space systems, strategic stability, efforts to prevent an arms race in outer space and technologies for monitoring and verifying activity in orbit. → Program

Sept. 8–10 — IPCC-IWMI Expert Meeting on Water and Climate Change (Colombo, Sri Lanka)
About 60 experts identify research gaps and priorities on water, climate risk, adaptation and resilience that could inform the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report. → Meeting information

Sept. 12–13 — BRICS Summit (New Delhi)
Leaders are expected to discuss cooperation spanning innovation, AI, digital infrastructure, climate, energy, health and economic resilience. → Schedule

Aug. 10–Oct. 2 — IPCC Working Group I First Order Draft expert review (Global)
Experts continue reviewing the first draft of the physical science contribution to the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report. → Review information

Closing

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The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly backed an African-led effort to change how the world is represented on maps, calling on governments, schools, international organizations and technology companies to use projections that more accurately show the relative sizes of continents.

The resolution passed on Friday by 164 votes to one, with the United States alone opposing and six countries abstaining. It promotes the Equal Earth projection and other equal-area maps as alternatives to the centuries-old Mercator projection, which which exaggerates the size of landmasses farther from the equator.

The nonbinding measure does not abolish Mercator or establish Equal Earth as the U.N.’s official world map. Instead, it seeks to turn an African campaign over cartographic representation into changes in international standards, education, digital mapping and maps used by governments and international institutions.

“A map is never neutral,” Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said ahead of the vote. “It shapes perceptions, influences how the place of peoples and continents in the world is understood and may, sometimes from the earliest years of schooling, perpetuate representations that do not correspond to geographic reality.”

Togo led negotiations on behalf of the African Group, building on a campaign endorsed by the African Union. The resolution describes distorted representations of continental size as contributing to the “symbolic minimization” of Africa and says correcting them can constitute an act of “cognitive justice and memorial reparation.”

The Mercator projection was developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 for maritime navigation. It preserves direction, allowing sailors to plot courses using straight lines, but does so at the expense of accurately representing area.

As a result, landmasses appear progressively larger the farther they are from the equator. Greenland, for example, can appear roughly comparable in size to Africa on a Mercator map even though Africa is about 14 times larger.

Equal Earth, developed in 2018, instead preserves the relative areas of countries and continents, though like every attempt to represent a spherical planet on a flat surface it necessarily distorts other geographic properties.

The resolution acknowledges that no projection can perfectly represent the Earth and says different projections remain appropriate for different purposes. It specifically leaves existing navigational uses of cartography unaffected.

But African governments argue that Mercator’s continued use well beyond navigation, including in education, media, official materials and digital platforms, has consequences for how the relative scale and importance of different regions are perceived.

“Africa is not asking for preferential treatment,” Dussey said. “Africa is asking that its reality, aspirations and contribution to the international system be duly taken into account.”

The resolution goes considerably further than recommending a different classroom map.

It encourages member nations and international organizations to adopt Equal Earth and other equal-area projections when the relative size of continents matters, and calls for development of international standards for more accurate representation in printed and digital maps.

It asks UNESCO, the U.N. Development Program, U.N. geospatial experts and the Office for Outer Space Affairs to work with regional organizations and academia on cartographic standards, educational curricula and authoritative geospatial information.

It also urges global technology platforms to engage with governments and regional organizations on more accurate mapping and encourages schools to teach both more accurate continental sizes and the limitations of different projections.

As the only nation to vote against the resolution, the United Nations framed the initiative as part of a wider political agenda, criticizing its references to reparations and “cognitive justice.” Its representative called the measure part of a “much larger and more radical ideological project.”

The European Union, which supported the resolution, stressed that the measure concerns the relative size of landmasses and has no bearing on sovereignty, territorial status or internationally recognized borders.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced ahead of the vote that the French government plans to abandon Mercator for its world maps.

The General Assembly also asked the Secretary-General to provide information on implementation through its 83rd session and placed the issue of accurate cartographic representation and geospatial capacity in developing countries on that session’s provisional agenda.

“Our approach is not directed against any country, continent or cartographic tradition,” Dussey said. “Nor does it seek to impose a single interpretation of the world.”

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El Niño is expected to intensify into a very strong event before the end of the year, a sharp escalation from forecasts three months ago that mostly pointed to moderate strength, raising the risks of drought, floods and extreme heat into 2027.

The World Meteorological Organization said on Thursday there is a nearly 100% likelihood that El Niño will persist through February 2027, the first time one of its El Niño/La Niña updates has expressed such a high level of certainty.

In June, WMO put the probability of El Niño developing between June and August at 80% and said most forecasting models indicated a moderate event, although some suggested it could become strong.

The phenomenon is now firmly established and expected to strengthen further, fueled by exceptionally warm surface and subsurface waters across the tropical Pacific. WMO expects it to reach very strong intensity before peaking toward the end of the year, with climate effects continuing well into 2027.

WMO officials said at a press conference in Geneva that the event could rank at the high end of El Niño events observed using comparable monitoring methods over the past four decades, although its eventual peak remains uncertain.

“This exceptional El Niño demands exceptional preparation and response,” WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said.

“Never before in the 50-year history of the World Meteorological Organization have we launched such a major mobilization with National Meteorological and Hydrological Services who are on the frontline of delivering the forecasts and services to save lives and livelihoods,” she said.

The shift since June is visible in measurements across the Pacific. The Niño 3.4 index, a widely used measure of sea-surface temperature anomalies in the central-eastern equatorial Pacific, averaged 1.5° Celsius above normal from May through July and reached 2° above normal in July.

Weekly readings subsequently rose to approximately 2.2° to 2.6° above average between late July and mid-August, indicating continued intensification. Below the surface, the heat is more pronounced. Subsurface ocean temperatures in some areas were more than 8° above average during July and early August, according to WMO.

“The sea surface warming, the subsurface ocean heat content, and the atmospheric circulation are singing the same song,” Wilfran Moufouma Okia, WMO’s chief of climate prediction, told reporters.

Under WMO’s classification, an El Niño is considered very strong when the relevant sea-surface temperature anomaly exceeds 2°. Moufouma Okia said forecasting models currently produce an average peak of around 3.6°, although individual models range above and below that figure and the eventual magnitude will only be known when the event peaks.

“El Niño is being supersized before our eyes,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said. “The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up.”

El Niño is a naturally occurring climate pattern and is not caused by climate change. Saulo said there is no established link between climate change and the frequency or strength of El Niño, but the event is adding heat to an already warming climate.

The powerful 2023-24 El Niño contributed to 2024 becoming the warmest year on record. “We should not be surprised if this record is broken,” Saulo said.

A very strong El Niño increases the likelihood of significant changes in rainfall and temperatures, but WMO cautioned that its intensity does not determine the severity of impacts in individual countries.

Moufouma Okia said El Niño changes the probability of particular climate conditions but does not predict individual disasters. “It is not a forecast of storm or a forecast of heat wave,” he said.

Its effects vary by location and season and interact with other climate systems. A positive Indian Ocean Dipole is also forecast to develop this fall, while tropical Atlantic waters are expected to remain warmer than normal, conditions that could reinforce, weaken or alter typical El Niño effects in different regions.

For September through November, its multi-model forecasts indicate an increased likelihood of above-normal temperatures across almost all land areas, while projected rainfall shows a pronounced atmospheric response associated with the strong Pacific El Niño.

WMO also sees increased chances of wetter-than-normal conditions across much of Africa and parts of South America, while drier-than-normal conditions are favored across the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Australia, northern South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Governments are already acting. Panama has declared a national state of emergency to mobilize preventive spending, while the Panama Canal Authority has introduced water-saving measures. India has convened an interministerial preparedness review covering agriculture, health, water, power and the economy, while Pacific countries are preparing for an above-average tropical cyclone season.

The consequences could also persist after El Niño itself begins to weaken. Saulo said the event is expected to push global average temperatures higher and that knock-on effects on agriculture, hydropower and water availability could continue into 2027 and 2028 in some countries.

“El Niño does not have to be a recipe for disaster,” Saulo said. “We have the forecast, the foresight to save lives and protect livelihoods.”

Editor’s Note: Decision Intelligence Briefs provide concise strategic analysis rooted in the legacy of structured decision science. Each monthly briefing maps emerging institutions, governance frameworks, strategic risks and opportunities shaping international scientific cooperation.

The introduction and strategic outlook are open to all readers. The full briefing and downloadable PDF edition are available to paid subscribers.

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Decision Intelligence Briefs | No. 4
The Science Diplomat
September 2026

The science of better decisions

How decision science helps people and institutions navigate uncertainty and complexity.

Scientific evidence can illuminate choices. Decision science helps decision-makers act when evidence is incomplete, interests conflict, and uncertainty cannot be resolved.

Whether confronting climate change, public health emergencies, artificial intelligence, energy transitions, national security, or transboundary resource disputes, decision-makers must often act while evidence remains incomplete, consequences are uncertain, and stakeholders disagree about priorities. Waiting for clarity can carry costs of its own, but acting too quickly can lock institutions into choices that later prove difficult to reverse.

This brief examines how decision science provides structured methods for navigating uncertainty through decision analysis, systems thinking, stakeholder analysis, negotiation analysis, scenario planning, and robust decision-making. It also explores how governments, international organizations, universities, and research institutes are beginning to build institutional capacity for better decision-making.

Strategic outlook

Three structural trends are reshaping how institutions approach complex decisions.

Evidence alone is insufficient.

Scientific evidence remains essential, but it rarely resolves the most difficult choices. Decision-makers must routinely weigh uncertainty, competing objectives, political constraints, and incomplete information.

Structured decision methods are moving into policy practice.

Governments, international organizations, and research institutions are applying decision analysis, systems thinking, negotiation analysis, and scenario planning to improve decision quality.

Institutional design and behavioral factors shape outcomes.

Research shows the quality of decisions depends not only on information but also on organizational design, incentives, group dynamics, and the processes through which choices are made.

Why this Brief matters

• Complex policy decisions rarely fail because of a lack of information. More often they fail because uncertainty persists, objectives conflict, stakeholders disagree, and institutions struggle to make robust choices under pressure.

• This Brief explains the concepts, methods, and institutions of modern decision science, showing how structured approaches can improve judgment, clarify trade-offs, and strengthen decision-making across governments, international organizations, businesses, and scientific institutions.

🔓 Unlock the full Decision Intelligence Brief and download the print-ready PDF edition. Available with a paid subscription or team subscription.

Read more

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Keeping peak global warming to around 1.8° Celsius may be necessary if the world is to retain a realistic prospect of returning to the Paris Agreement’s 1.5° C. limit this century, according to a major new assessment that sharply narrows the remaining room for delay.

The U.N. Environment Program report concludes that exceeding 1.5° is now expected, likely within the next few years. But how far temperatures rise beyond that threshold could determine whether bringing them back down remains achievable.

Most pathways capable of returning warming to 1.5° by 2100 reach a peak of no more than about 1.8° to 1.9°, the report finds. Because of delays in cutting global emissions, recent studies put the lowest peak warming now considered feasible at around 1.7° to 1.8°.

“Humanity is speeding past the limit to avoid climate catastrophe,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said as the report was released Wednesday. “But we can still bring warming back below 1.5° by the end of the century.”

Current government commitments already leave little margin for keeping peak warming near 1.8°. Even an optimistic scenario in which countries fully implement their national climate plans and additional net zero pledges puts expected peak warming at around 1.8°. Under existing policies, warming is projected to reach about 2.6° by 2100.

The findings change the practical challenge facing international climate policy. For years, negotiations have been organized around preventing warming from exceeding 1.5°. Governments must now consider how to limit a period above that threshold while preventing temperatures from rising so far that returning becomes increasingly difficult.

“It changes the pathway: from avoiding exceedance altogether to limiting how high and how long temperatures rise above 1.5° while preserving the possibility of returning below it,” the report says.

The 1.5° goal emerged from the 2015 Paris Agreement, which committed governments to hold warming well below 2° while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°. The lower threshold became particularly important to countries highly vulnerable to climate change, including small island nations.

Exceeding it does not mean that 1.5° ceases to matter, UNEP argues. Instead, the objective becomes limiting both the magnitude and duration of what climate scientists call “overshoot.”

“There is no benign overshoot pathway, but its magnitude, duration and consequences are not predetermined,” the report says. Every fraction of additional warming and every year spent above 1.5° increases exposure to climate hazards and the likelihood of irreversible losses.

That leaves governments confronting three problems simultaneously: rapidly reducing emissions to limit peak warming, adapting societies and economies to more severe climate impacts, and eventually removing enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to reduce global temperatures.

The last task may prove particularly difficult. Returning from an overshoot requires sustained net-negative carbon dioxide emissions — meaning more CO₂ must be removed from the atmosphere than continues to be emitted.

Governments must speed and deepen emissions cuts

UNEP estimates that about 220 billion metric tons of net-negative CO₂ emissions would be needed to lower global temperatures by around 0.1°. Even if net removals eventually reached 10 billion metric tons annually, roughly a quarter of current global CO₂ emissions, temperatures might decline by only around 0.05° per decade.

Existing methods cannot easily provide removals on that scale. Establishing forests in areas where there was no forest before and forest management currently remove about 2.2 billion metric tons of CO2 annually. Even if fossil fuel emissions fell to zero and deforestation ended, maintaining removals at that rate for about a century would lower temperatures by only around 0.1°, according to the report.

Technological approaches involving geological carbon storage face their own constraints. UNEP warns that maintaining net zero while large residual CO₂ emissions continue could eventually consume estimated geological storage capacity, because those emissions would have to be continually offset by removals.

Overall, the report concludes that even optimistic expansion of carbon removal is unlikely to reverse warming by more than a few tenths of a degree this century. That makes the height of the temperature peak crucial.

“Beyond around 1.8°, decline to 1.5° during the 21st century becomes increasingly challenging,” the report says. Carbon removal can credibly contribute to a return below 1.5° only if peak warming remains well below 2° and remaining emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are also reduced.

The report rejects using future carbon removal as a substitute for immediate emissions cuts. The higher temperatures rise before net zero is reached, the greater the subsequent removal burden — and the greater the risk that the necessary capacity will not exist. It also changes the significance of net zero.

In an overshoot world, reaching net zero would no longer be the endpoint of climate policy. It would mark the point at which warming could stop rising — and the much slower task of trying to bring temperatures back down could begin. Governments would need policy frameworks and institutions capable of managing carbon removal obligations and investment over periods extending well beyond conventional political cycles.

The implications of overshoot cannot be reversed simply by cooling the atmosphere later. Sea levels will continue rising, some ecosystems could cross irreversible thresholds and communities may be forced to relocate. UNEP says many countries and communities would face “irreversible losses and permanently changed conditions” even if warming eventually returns below 1.5°.

For small island developing nations, that could include territory becoming uninhabitable or submerged and unresolved questions over statehood and maritime rights. UNEP asks what international arrangements will be needed to ensure continued recognition of their sovereignty and maritime entitlements as those changes occur.

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When representatives from governments, Indigenous organizations, scientists, and civil society groups gathered this spring in Santa Marta, Colombia, they were doing more than discussing climate change. They were helping build a new institution.

Co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, the summit on “transitioning away” from fossil fuels produced a declaration and plans for a scientific advisory mechanism intended to accelerate climate action beyond existing negotiating processes. Its significance lay not only in the issues under discussion but in the creation of new structures through which those issues could be addressed.

A second climate summit, co-hosted by Tuvalu and Ireland, is already planned for 2027. Among the key challenges for the next gathering, according to Maina Vakafua Talia, Tuvalu’s minister for home affairs, is “confronting the narrative that forces false choices: multilateralism and international cooperation are not defined by a single process, but rather by recognizing the governance gaps.”

The development illustrates a broader pattern in international governance. Participation is often described as the goal while governments seek seats at negotiating tables and organizations gain observer status, or while communities angle for recognition and researchers take advisory roles.

Participation begins before formal meetings and accumulates over time. Institutions create categories that determine who participates and how. Some participants eventually move beyond participation itself and begin shaping agendas, but what happens next is equally important.

Over time, a governance system can expand its understanding of who has something valuable to contribute. The process can take years or even decades, but many of the biggest changes in international governance emerge from institutional learning. That was one of the lessons advocates pointed to at Colombia’s climate talks.

“From Santa Marta to the Pacific, a new reality is taking shape: this is no longer a one-off moment, but the foundation of an ongoing international process dedicated to phasing out fossil fuels,” said Kumi Naidoo, president of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, which helped organize and inspire the summit in Colombia.

“What is emerging is a process that can finally match climate diplomacy to the scale of the crisis,” he said. “The Pacific has helped turn a historic opening into a standing process, and the task now is to ensure it delivers the legal and political architecture for a just and rapid transition.”

The growing role of Indigenous peoples in international environmental governance provides another example.

For many years, Indigenous communities argued that their knowledge and experience were relevant to questions involving biodiversity, conservation, health, and climate adaptation. Their participation was often limited, however, and their expertise was not always treated as central to decision-making processes. Gradually, that changed.

International institutions recognized Indigenous knowledge could complement scientific knowledge in addressing environmental challenges. Consultation mechanisms expanded, participation increased and new structures emerged. In 2025, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity established a permanent subsidiary body dedicated to Indigenous peoples and local communities, creating a formal place within the institution itself.

Colombia’s Environment Minister Irene Vélez Torres, co-chairing a new subsidiary body, called it an “unprecedented step toward greater environmental democracy” in biodiversity work.

“We are facing profound crises — climate change and biodiversity loss — that require stronger conventions and greater impact in the field of environmental democracy,” she said. “That means full participation of Indigenous peoples and local communities.”

The new subsidiary body, years in the making, began its work by deciding how to integrate its traditional knowledge and rights into global efforts to preserve species.

“For two decades, we’ve discussed how to elevate the voices and roles of Indigenous peoples and local communities within our convention, because it’s the right thing to do and because we need them,” CBD Executive Secretary Astrid Schomaker said after two weeks of meetings in Panama.

“The meeting was foundational and delivered what it needed to deliver – establishing rules, fostering openness and participation, and setting the stage for a stronger voice for Indigenous peoples in environmental governance,” she said.

The process is not always successful. At the final round of negotiations for a global plastics treaty in Geneva last year, Indigenous leaders expressed frustration that their perspectives remained largely peripheral to the talks. While governments debated production limits, chemical restrictions, and treaty language, some Indigenous advocates argued the negotiations overlooked more fundamental questions about humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

“We don’t see the environment being separate from human beings,” Indigenous leader Frankie Orona told Arete News after the talks had stalled without agreement.

Heni Unwin, a Māori marine scientist from New Zealand, described a worldview in which environmental stewardship begins by recognizing that people are part of nature rather than apart from it. She shared a proverb from her people: "The river is the first thought and the river is the second thought," meaning that before any decision is made, its impact on the river must be considered both for "the first time" and "the second time." In this way of thinking, Unwin said, "our environment is first and foremost before anything that we do."

Such perspectives, even if they do not resolve diplomatic disagreements, illustrate how participants often seek to introduce new ways of understanding the problems institutions are trying to solve.

Similar questions are emerging far beyond environmental governance as governments, researchers, and international organizations look at how institutions learn from people they historically treated as outsiders to formal decision-making.

A recent OECD discussion paper on citizen participation argued that many citizens feel they lack meaningful political agency and called for new approaches that move beyond consultation toward more substantive forms of participation. The challenge is not unique to democracies. Across governance systems, institutions are confronting a common question: How should they incorporate knowledge, experience, and perspectives that originate beyond traditional centers of authority?

Human rights organizations were once largely external to diplomatic processes. Environmental groups gradually became embedded within international negotiations. Scientific expertise became institutionalized through advisory panels, assessments, and permanent bodies.

The significance extended beyond representation. The institution altered its understanding of what knowledge mattered. Similar debates are occurring across science diplomacy and global governance. “Science is not the only knowledge system that people use,” International Science Council President Peter Gluckman observed earlier this year in an interview, arguing that institutions must understand how scientific knowledge interacts with other forms of expertise and experience.

In each case, the change involved more than admitting new participants into existing conversations. Institutions themselves evolved. The process often begins with a simple challenge to established assumptions.

Participants ask whether a problem is being understood correctly.

They question who is considered an expert and introduce perspectives that existing structures may not fully recognize. Many such efforts fail and some disappear. A few persist long enough to become part of institutional architecture; the history of international governance contains many such examples.

Some major issues wind up being seen through competing lens. Climate change has been approached, alternatively, as an issue that is, alternatively, primarily environmental, economic, security-focused, developmental, legal, or public health facing. Each framing has brought different participants, forms of expertise and institutional responses into the conversation.

The same dynamic can be seen across fields ranging from global health to artificial intelligence. Governance systems not only process information but also decide what kinds of information matter.

That is why participation remains important. New participants often introduce new ways of understanding problems. They identify connections that others overlook and raise questions existing institutions were not designed to ask. Most institutions change slowly, but they do change, as evidenced with Indigenous knowledge.

“Aboriginal knowledge is an important aspect of climate change, because we’ve been here for 60-plus-thousand years,” said Linda Payi Mae Ford, an associate professor at Australia’s Charles Darwin University, who identifies as Rak Mak Mak Marranunggu, from Kurrindju.

“We know and understand the country in terms of song, our dance, our performance,” she told climate scientists and Indigenous people at a 2022 gathering organized by the Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) Network, a coalition of 100 investigators and more than 30 groups across Australia. “That’s in our language.”

For global governance, the result is more than a collection of organizations, treaties and procedures. It is also a process through which societies continually reconsider who should participate, what knowledge should be recognized, and how shared problems should be understood.

Participation opens the door. Agenda-setting helps shape the conversation. The most enduring influence comes from changing how institutions understand the world.

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Pacific island nations have spent years pressing for a principle with enormous consequences for their future: rising seas should not shrink their established maritime zones or end their legal existence as nations.

That campaign is receiving renewed attention this week at the Pacific Islands Forum in Palau, where leaders are confronting sea-level rise alongside intensifying competition among larger powers for influence in the region.

Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, maritime zones are generally measured from baselines drawn at the low-water line. Exclusive economic zones can extend as far as 200 nautical miles, giving coastal nations rights over fisheries and other natural resources.

But UNCLOS was negotiated without addressing what should happen when climate-driven sea-level rise moves the coastline itself. Pacific governments have been working to settle that question before their geography changes substantially.

In 2021, Pacific Islands Forum leaders declared that maritime zones established in accordance with the Law of the Sea should continue to apply despite climate change-related sea-level rise and should not have to be continually reviewed as coastlines change.

In 2023, they extended their position to statehood, declaring that international law supports a presumption of continuity of statehood and that the sovereignty of Forum members should continue despite the effects of sea-level rise.

A new report by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres shows how far those positions have moved into international law.

Both the International Law Commission and the International Court of Justice support a presumption that statehood, once established, continues despite the physical loss or degradation of territory, according to the report. Nations and other parties have also called for interpretations of UNCLOS that would preserve established maritime zones and boundaries despite physical changes to coastlines, providing legal certainty and avoiding renewed disputes over maritime areas already settled.

The scientific pressure behind those efforts is accelerating.

Global sea level rose 5.9 millimeters in 2024, a record, after rising an average 4.7 millimeters a year between 2014 and 2023. The Secretary-General’s report says the rate is expected to continue increasing through 2050 because of warming already locked into the climate system.

Nearly 770 million people, or about 10% of the world’s population, live in coastal areas less than five meters above the high-tide line. Rising seas are already increasing coastal flooding, freshwater salinization and erosion and, in extreme cases, could result in permanent loss of land or even the territory of a nation.

Pacific island nations face particularly acute exposure. Relative sea levels in low-lying Pacific small island developing nations have risen more than twice the global average over the past three decades, according to the report. Rising seas and other climate impacts are already forcing relocations in Fiji, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.

“Sea level rise is increasingly recognized across intergovernmental processes as a global crisis,” the report says. “Leaders at meetings of the Pacific Islands Forum and the Alliance of Small Island States have repeatedly emphasized the need to scale up international cooperation, protect affected populations, strengthen adaptation finance and safeguard sovereignty, statehood and rights in the face of permanent territorial loss.”

Legal recognition of continuing statehood would not resolve what happens to the people of a country that becomes substantially uninhabitable.

The U.N. report says existing legal frameworks lack clear provisions for relocation caused by sea-level rise, including questions involving nationality, land tenure, compensation, livelihoods, cultural identity and social protections.

Nations could therefore retain their legal existence and maritime rights even while significant portions of their populations live elsewhere.

The legal questions have reached the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Law Commission, the U.N. General Assembly’s Sixth Committee and meetings of nations belonging to UNCLOS.

The Secretary-General’s report points to several possible next steps. Some nations have proposed a General Assembly declaration reaffirming relevant principles of international law. Others have suggested an international treaty on sea-level rise or new legal regimes designed to preserve the existence of affected nations.

The report recommends that legal solutions be based on stability, predictability, sovereign equality, self-determination and the protection of affected populations. It also suggests making sea-level rise a standing item on the General Assembly’s agenda.

The debate carries economic and geopolitical consequences because the maritime territory controlled by a Pacific island nation can be vastly larger than its land area.

Exclusive economic zones contain fisheries and other natural resources and cover waters of growing strategic interest to China, the United States and other powers.

That competition has been visible at this week’s Pacific Islands Forum. China warned of unspecified “consequences” over Taiwan’s presence at the meeting, while Australia and New Zealand rejected Beijing’s objections and said the Forum determines who participates. Taiwan attends as a development partner, and Palau, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands maintain diplomatic relations with Taipei.

The dispute follows the failure of Pacific foreign ministers last month to agree on a collective response to a Chinese missile test in the region.

Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr., who is hosting the Forum, has sought to keep the focus on the region’s own priorities.

“The Pacific is our home,” he said, “not a theater for geopolitical competition.”

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Europe and Africa have spent years building research and innovation partnerships across food security, health, climate and emerging technologies. But producing promising science is only part of the challenge.

What happens when a publicly funded research project produces a technology worth developing — and the research grant ends?

The African Union and European Union, working with the Union for the Mediterranean, are trying to address that gap between research and the marketplace. Science-based and deep-tech startups and SMEs working on food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture have until Sept. 15 to apply for 16 places at the A.U.-E.U.-Med Innovation Fair in Bari, Italy, where they will pitch their technologies to investors on Nov. 25.

Another 16 pitching slots will go to promising results emerging from collaborative research and innovation projects that have reached much the same predicament: the science has advanced, but further investment and de-risking are needed to move it toward commercial use.

“There’s still a big gap to be filled,” Vincenzo Lorusso, a European Commission policy officer and E.U. co-chair of the A.U.-E.U. Innovation Agenda Working Group, said in an interview on The Science Diplomat Podcast.

The fair is the latest attempt to move research and innovation across that divide as the decade-long A.U.-E.U. Innovation Agenda moves beyond funding scientific collaboration toward the more difficult task of turning some of its results into technologies, businesses, products and jobs.

“It comes to the Innovation Fair,” Lorusso said when asked where a promising research result can go when it has advanced beyond conventional research funding but is not yet ready for private investment.

His African Union counterpart has described the obstacles identified by the A.U.-E.U. Innovation Agenda more broadly.

Lukovi Seke, principal program officer for African Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators at the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD and A.U. co-chair of the working group, said during an A.U.-E.U. workshop in July that gaps identified in developing the Innovation Agenda included innovation ecosystems and management, knowledge exchange, technology transfer, access to finance and human-capacity development.

“Technology transfer is very important,” Seke said. “We need to share what we have.”

He also emphasized that financing cannot come entirely from outside Africa, arguing that governments need domestic budget allocations to support technology and innovation.

The A.U.-E.U. Innovation Agenda, adopted in 2023 as a decade-long framework for research and innovation cooperation between Africa and Europe, was explicitly designed to move the relationship beyond scientific collaboration alone. Its objectives include strengthening innovation ecosystems, technology transfer and sharing, entrepreneurship, public-private partnerships and access to finance.

The financing problem is not new. More than 300 participants joined an A.U.-E.U. Innovation Agenda workshop devoted specifically to access to finance for innovation in May 2024. The Innovation Fair, now approaching its fifth edition, has provided one testing ground for a more commercially oriented approach.

The first was held in Nairobi in 2022, before the Innovation Agenda had formally been adopted. By Cape Town the following year, more than 30 innovators and incubators were pitching technologies and roughly 50 exhibition stands had turned part of the event into a technology marketplace. A 2024 event in Cairo extended the effort into the Mediterranean region.

By Brussels in October 2025, the effort had developed into a broader Africa-Europe-Mediterranean collaboration aimed at moving innovations toward investment, scale-up and further de-risking. Innovators, researchers and business-support organizations pitched before an audience of more than 500 people, while matchmaking was intended to connect them with investors and potential partners.

Eighteen startup finalists subsequently entered continuing scale-up support through the Africa-Europe Innovation Platform and related programs. At least one participant says relationships formed through the process have persisted beyond the event.

Belgian entrepreneur Tom Lismonde, who pitched his AI-powered Ovation Academy in Brussels, told an A.U.-E.U. workshop on youth-led innovation in July that eight or nine months later he remained in contact with stakeholders connected to the Africa-Europe Innovation Platform and the ENRICH in Africa network.

Those relationships, he said, were continuing to help his company identify opportunities involving innovation and startup-development programs. But continuing contacts and access to support are different from attracting investment or building a commercial market. The A.U.-E.U. partnership is now trying to determine what its innovation programs actually produce.

Lorusso said greater private-sector participation remains essential. Hundreds of startups and SMEs are already involved in implementation of the Innovation Agenda, he said, including companies receiving support to de-risk technologies or expand their footprints between Africa and Europe.

“But we can do more,” he said, particularly in bringing corporations into the process. “Private sector engagement is certainly key for making sure this translation ultimately occurs.”

The 2026 fair makes the objective explicit: “Turning results into market successes.” This year’s gathering will again bring together participants from Africa, Europe and the Mediterranean and focus entirely on food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture, priority areas for both Africa-Europe and Euro-Mediterranean research and innovation cooperation.

The event will be held at the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies, or CIHEAM Bari, in Valenzano, outside Bari, as part of the annual Mediterranean Innovation Agrifood Week.

The two groups pitching reflect different routes to the same financing gap.

One begins with publicly funded research: a scientific consortium may spend years developing a technology, generate a promising result and reach the end of its grant without having a company, investment strategy or clear route to market.

The other begins with entrepreneurs building science-based or deep-tech businesses that may already have products or customers but need capital, partnerships and access to larger markets.

Lorusso said the partnership was conceived partly from recognition that decades of successful Africa-Europe research cooperation had not always translated effectively into products, services and business opportunities. Bari is intended to put both pathways before investors.

Organizers expect roughly 300 participants on site and several hundred more online, bringing researchers and entrepreneurs together with venture capital, corporations, public finance institutions, philanthropy, accelerators and other potential sources of investment and scale-up support.

Each of the 32 selected projects and companies will have two minutes to pitch — years of scientific work, product development or company building distilled into roughly 120 seconds before potential investors.

Whether those pitches actually help bridge the financing gap will take considerably longer to determine.

Lorusso said the success of an Innovation Fair should not be judged simply by how many people attend, although participation remains one indicator. One test six months afterward, he said, will be how many potential research and innovation de-risking deals have been established or secured by the 32 Bari pitchers.

The A.U.-E.U. Innovation Agenda Working Group and its partners from the Union for the Mediterranean intend to monitor their progress six, nine and 12 months after the event and beyond.

That provides a more demanding benchmark for a series of fairs that began with three-minute pitches in Nairobi four years ago. For Lorusso, the ultimate measure of the broader A.U.-E.U. Innovation Agenda is similarly concrete.

“How many products have been generated, how many solutions have been brought to the market, to the society, to end users,” he said. “How many businesses have been scaled up? How many startups have been accessing bigger markets?”

Four years after innovators first delivered three-minute pitches in Nairobi, Bari will narrow the pitch to two.

The more important measure will take considerably longer. The test will be what happens to the technologies after the two minutes are over.

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Issue No. 20 | Monday, August 31, 2026

Good morning,

Welcome to The Science Diplomat Playbook, your Monday morning guide to what’s shaping the week ahead in global science diplomacy.

The lead

Governments return to Geneva on Monday for a final week of expert talks on lethal autonomous weapons systems as pressure grows to turn more than a decade of international discussion into negotiations over legally binding rules.

The meeting comes days after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric renewed their call for international rules, warning that advances in autonomous weapons are bringing the world “dangerously close to crossing a moral red line”: machines autonomously targeting human beings.

The technology, they argue, is moving faster than diplomacy. Autonomous capabilities are becoming cheaper, more accessible and easier to incorporate into existing weapons, increasing pressure to establish international rules before potentially harmful practices become entrenched.

But the meeting beginning Monday cannot itself negotiate a new treaty. The Group of Governmental Experts operating under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons is authorized only to develop elements that could eventually form the basis of an international instrument. Its current mandate ends with this week’s session.

That puts the diplomatic question ahead of the technical one. Governments have spent more than a decade examining autonomous weapons while the systems themselves have continued to advance. The question now is whether countries are prepared to move from discussing the elements of possible rules toward actually negotiating them.

The U.N. and ICRC are advocating a two-tier approach. They want prohibitions on autonomous weapons that have effects that cannot be adequately predicted, and on systems designed or used to directly target people. Other autonomous weapons would face restrictions involving the targets they can engage, where and for how long they can operate, and the scale of force they can use.

Human control remains at the center of that debate. The problem is particularly acute when weapons target people because an individual’s legal status can change rapidly on a battlefield: a combatant who surrenders or is wounded, for example, becomes protected from attack.

This week’s meeting serves as a bridge to a potentially more consequential decision in November, when countries meet for the convention’s five-year Review Conference and could decide whether to launch formal negotiations.

Elsewhere, the United Nations launches a major report on sea-level rise during the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Palau, while governments and the technology sector gather in The Bahamas for a major ITU forum on global digital policy.

In Geneva, health and technology experts also examine how digital health credentials can move securely across national borders.

Major processes to watch

Autonomous weapons — Final expert session tests the path toward negotiations

Government experts meet through Friday for the second and final session of their 2026 mandate, working from a rolling text intended to identify elements that could eventually form the basis of an international instrument.

UNIDIR will also use battlefield scenarios to test how international humanitarian law applies to autonomous weapons. The immediate question is what governments can agree to carry forward before the CCW Review Conference later this year.

Pacific — Rising seas move from climate science into international law

The United Nations launches a major report on sea-level rise Monday during the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Palau, bringing together scientific evidence with increasingly difficult questions about finance, displacement, sovereignty and international law.

Nearly 770 million people live in coastal areas less than five meters above the high-tide line. The report says sea-level rise is accelerating while gaps in observation networks, coastal mapping and scientific capacity are limiting the ability of countries to forecast impacts and plan for them.

Some of the hardest questions concern what happens when rising seas alter territory itself. Governments are confronting how to preserve statehood, nationality and maritime boundaries if islands become uninhabitable or submerged, alongside protections for people forced to relocate.

The report points to possible next steps ranging from a General Assembly declaration to a dedicated international treaty or other new legal frameworks for sea-level rise. Its recommendations will feed into further international discussions, including a U.N. high-level meeting on sea-level rise in September.

The Bahamas — ITU forum looks for common ground on digital policy

Governments, technology companies, researchers, civil society and the technical community gather in Nassau for the International Telecommunication Union’s World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum.

A Strategic Dialogue on Tuesday precedes the formal forum from Wednesday through Friday. Discussions will span connectivity, sustainability, resilience, space, innovation and emerging technologies.

Unlike a treaty negotiation, WTPF does not produce binding rules. Its role is to exchange views and build consensus on major digital-policy questions, with the resulting opinions intended to help shape discussions at the ITU’s forthcoming Plenipotentiary Conference.

That makes Nassau an agenda-setting stage in the larger process of international technology governance: governments are trying to identify areas of agreement before making decisions about the ITU’s future direction.

Geneva — Digital health systems confront the problem of crossing borders

Government officials, international organizations, technical experts and companies meet in Geneva for the Global Digital Collaboration Conference, with WHO focusing on how health information can move securely and reliably between countries.

A central issue is the development of secure and portable digital health wallets. Discussions will examine governance, technical standards, interoperability and trust frameworks needed to allow credentials such as immunization records and professional certifications to be verified across different health systems.

The infrastructure is already operating at significant scale. WHO says its Global Digital Health Certification Network connects more than 80 countries and nearly 2 billion people.

The challenge now is not simply digitizing health records, but establishing the technical and institutional trust required for countries to recognize one another’s digital credentials.

Security Council watch — AI enters the conflict-prevention debate

The U.N. Security Council turns to artificial intelligence on Wednesday in an informal dialogue examining how the technology could be used in conflict prevention and peacebuilding.

The discussion, organized by Bahrain, France, Greece and Latvia, will examine the use of AI in moving from early warning to conflict resolution. Experts from the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research, the U.N. Department of Peace Operations and Security Council Report are expected to brief.

The meeting comes as the Council is already confronting technology from several other directions. Members continue discussing a proposed resolution on the impact of digital technologies on violations against children in armed conflict, while Thursday’s agenda returns to chemical weapons in Syria.

Separately, the Yemen sanctions committee is expected Monday to examine reports on dual-use components and precursor chemicals and on strengthening information-sharing and flag-state capacity to stop vessels suspected of carrying weapons or related material to Yemen.

Signals

• The autonomous-weapons debate is approaching a procedural test: governments have spent years developing possible rules but still need to decide whether to negotiate them.

• Sea-level rise is beginning to challenge assumptions embedded in international law about territory, maritime boundaries and even the continuity of nations.

• Cross-border digital health depends on countries trusting one another’s technical systems, not simply adopting compatible technology.

• ITU’s policy forum shows how international technology governance can take shape through consensus-building before governments reach formal decisions.

On the calendar

Aug. 31 — U.N. Sea-Level Rise Report (Palau)
The United Nations launches a new assessment of the scientific, financial and legal challenges posed by rising seas during the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting. → Report

Aug. 31–Sept. 4 — Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems GGE (Geneva)
Government experts hold the final session of their current mandate to develop elements that could form the basis of international rules on autonomous weapons. → Overview

Sept. 1–3 — Global Digital Collaboration Conference (Geneva)
WHO and partners examine trusted digital systems, including standards and interoperability for health credentials that can work across borders. → Agenda

Sept. 1–4 — ITU Strategic Dialogue and WTPF-26 (Nassau, The Bahamas)
Governments and the technology sector discuss connectivity, resilience, sustainability, space, innovation and emerging technologies ahead of the ITU’s forthcoming Plenipotentiary Conference. → Program

Sept. 3 — WMO El Niño update (Geneva)
The World Meteorological Organization provides its latest assessment of El Niño conditions and outlook. → El Niño/La Niña Updates

Sept. 1–4 — UNSGM workshop (Geneva)
Experts meet at the Palais des Nations for a workshop on the U.N. secretary-general’s mechanism for investigating alleged use of chemical, biological and toxin weapons. → Timetable

Aug. 10–Oct. 2 — IPCC Working Group I First Order Draft expert review (Global)
Experts continue reviewing the first draft of the physical-science contribution to the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report. → Review information

Closing

You’re reading The Science Diplomat Playbook, a weekly briefing mapping the institutions, technologies and governance systems shaping international cooperation.

When World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus joined the tributes to Dolly Parton following her death this week, he remembered the country music star in terms rarely applied to an entertainer.

“Today is a sad day as we mourn an exceptional artist, a true champion of kindness, and ambassador of science and public health,” Tedros wrote.

Scientists were making much the same connection.

Nature devoted an article to Parton’s scientific legacy, recounting her support for medical research, vaccination, public health and literacy. Researchers remembered a celebrity whose relationship with science extended beyond lending her name to a cause.

“Few celebrities use their influence to support science so meaningfully,” Gaurav Kansagara, a cell biologist at the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine in Bangalore, India, wrote on Bluesky.

Parton’s most prominent contribution came during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March 2020, she donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, establishing the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund. The money supported coronavirus research, including early work connected with the experimental mRNA vaccine eventually produced by Moderna.

The fund was acknowledged in the first published report of the vaccine’s Phase I trial in the New England Journal of Medicine. At least 37 research papers have credited the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund with support, according to Nature.

Parton herself was careful not to exaggerate her contribution, later saying she received more credit than she deserved and describing her role as trying to put her money where her heart was. But she did something else once the vaccine became available.

In March 2021, Parton received the Moderna vaccine publicly at Vanderbilt and encouraged others to follow her example.

“I’m old enough to get it, and I’m smart enough to get it,” she said, before adapting the chorus of “Jolene” to urge people to get vaccinated.

William Schaffner, a preventive-medicine researcher at Vanderbilt, told Nature that Parton’s public vaccination provided a “shot of hope” at a difficult moment in the pandemic.

“Dolly Parton created a connection between public health and the average person,” he said.

COVID-19 was not the first time Parton had used her prominence in support of public health. In 1994, she contributed music to an album raising money to fight HIV/AIDS and participated in an AIDS-awareness campaign aimed in part at rural communities, where the disease was often perceived as an urban problem.

Her support extended further. Parton contributed to pediatric cancer and infectious-disease research and helped finance health care in her native Tennessee.

Her Imagination Library, established in 1995 after being inspired by her father’s inability to read, grew into an international literacy program that has distributed hundreds of millions of books to young children.

And her name became attached to science in an entirely different way in the 1990s, when researchers at Scotland’s Roslin Institute named Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, in her honor.

Parton had no formal scientific authority. She represented no research institution, government or international organization.

What she possessed was something different: an ability to carry messages about vaccination, health, education and research to audiences far beyond the institutions producing the science.

That helps explain the language chosen by the head of the world’s leading public-health organization after her death: Tedros remembered her as an ambassador.

Season 1, Episode 8 — Vincenzo Lorusso on Africa-Europe science diplomacy, innovation and the path from research to market

Science diplomacy between Africa and Europe is moving beyond research cooperation toward a more strategic question: how to turn scientific collaboration into products, services, businesses and lasting institutional relationships.

In this conversation, Vincenzo Lorusso, a policy officer at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation and E.U. co-chair of the A.U.–E.U. Innovation Agenda Working Group, reflects on what implementing the decade-long agenda has taught him about science diplomacy in practice. Drawing on a career spanning veterinary medicine, public health, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, international development and European policymaking, he describes science diplomacy as both a bridge between countries and a form of people-to-people negotiation that operates across institutions, sectors and cultures.

The discussion examines how the Africa-Europe relationship is becoming more strategic as science, technology and innovation take on greater importance in diplomacy, competitiveness and security. Lorusso argues that scientific cooperation can create common ground even when countries diverge on other foreign-policy issues, while emphasizing that collaboration must ultimately produce tangible benefits for both sides.

A major focus is the challenge of moving research beyond grants and into the marketplace. Looking ahead to the A.U.–E.U.–Med Innovation Fair in Bari, Italy, Lorusso explains why the partnership is trying to connect research-derived technologies and science-based startups with investors, corporations, venture capital and other sources of scale-up support.

Registration and expressions of interest are open for the Nov. 25 fair, with the call for expressions of interest closing on Sept. 15. He also sets out a more demanding measure of success: not how many people attend an event, but how many technologies attract follow-on investment, reach users, grow into businesses or enter new markets.

The conversation also looks ahead to the October A.U.–E.U. Research and Innovation Ministerial Meeting in Addis Ababa, where ministers are expected to consider new workstreams on science diplomacy and AI in science. Lorusso discusses why Africa-Europe cooperation is increasingly giving science diplomacy a more institutionalized role and where future tensions may emerge around industrialization, energy, emerging technologies and strategic interests.

The episode closes on the question of what success would look like a decade from now. For Lorusso, the answer is ultimately measurable: more products reaching society, more businesses scaling, more startups entering larger markets and stronger institutional ties across Africa and Europe.

Themes covered:

• Science diplomacy between Africa and Europe

• The A.U.–E.U. Innovation Agenda in practice

• Moving research from grants to products and markets

• Private-sector engagement and investment

• The A.U.–E.U.–Med Innovation Fair in Bari

• Measuring impact beyond events and participation

• Africa-Europe cooperation on emerging technologies

• The new A.U.–E.U. science diplomacy workstream

• Research, industrialization and strategic interests

• What long-term success should look like

Recorded on August 17, 2026.

Co-hosted by Amna Habiba, Bupe Chikumbi and John Heilprin.

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GENEVA — The United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross warned that autonomous weapons are bringing the world “dangerously close to crossing a moral red line,” urging governments to begin negotiating legally binding restrictions as the technology becomes cheaper and more widely available.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric renewed a three-year-old joint appeal on Tuesday as governments prepare to resume talks in Geneva next week on lethal autonomous weapons systems.

“We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines,” they said jointly. “The development of weapon technology has advanced at record speed, placing increasing strain on legal frameworks.”

The appeal says technological capabilities have advanced faster than international regulation since their previous call, with autonomous systems increasingly being deployed on battlefields and reducing human control over the use of force.

“Technological developments are not waiting for the diplomatic calendar,” Carolyne Mélanie Régimbal, chief of the Geneva branch of the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs, told a press briefing.

She said autonomous capabilities are becoming cheaper, more accessible and easier to incorporate into existing weapons, increasing the urgency of establishing international rules before harmful practices become entrenched.

The renewed push comes after more than a decade of discussions under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons without negotiations on a binding instrument.

Government experts meet again next week for the final session of their current mandate. But the group is authorized only to develop elements that could form the basis of an instrument, not to negotiate one.

A political decision could come at the convention’s five-year Review Conference in November.

“The international community has spent more than a decade examining this issue,” Régimbal said. The November meeting, she said, will be a “critical moment for states to show political courage” and turn that work into negotiations.

What would be prohibited

The ICRC is not calling for a ban on all autonomous weapons. Laurent Gisel, head of the Arms and Conduct of Hostilities Unit at the International Committee of the Red Cross, said it wants governments to prohibit systems whose effects cannot be adequately predicted and autonomous weapons designed or used to directly target human beings.

Autonomous weapons targeting people pose particular legal problems because a person’s protected status can change rapidly on a battlefield. A combatant who surrenders or is wounded, for example, becomes protected from attack.

There is also a more fundamental ethical concern, Gisel told the press briefing, because directly targeting people with autonomous systems risks reducing “human life to data, algorithms, sensor, and machine operations” and effectively delegating decisions about who is killed to a machine.

Other autonomous weapons would be subject to restrictions, including limits on the targets they can engage, their geographic and temporal range, the scale of force and the environments in which they operate.

Gisel said autonomous defensive systems have existed for decades, including weapons aboard warships designed to intercept incoming missiles. Such systems are less problematic, he said, because they operate against narrowly defined objects in relatively predictable environments with limited risk to civilians.

The concern instead is the trajectory toward systems operating across wider areas, for longer periods and in populated environments, potentially using increasingly complex AI to select and engage targets.

Ukraine case remains unconfirmed

The briefing also confronted the question of whether autonomous targeting has already crossed the threshold highlighted in the appeal.

Asked about recent reporting that an AI-guided Russian drone autonomously selected a target in a July 6 attack that killed three civilians in Ukraine, the officials said they had no confirmed evidence that autonomous weapons had been used to select and directly target people.

“We don’t currently have evidence, confirmed evidence, that autonomous weapons have been used to directly target human beings on the battlefield,” Gisel said.

He stressed that autonomous weapons already exist and have killed people, including combatants, but distinguished that from systems independently selecting humans as their targets.

Régimbal said the reported Ukraine case also illustrated the need to distinguish artificial intelligence from autonomy. “AI does not necessarily equal autonomous weapon but rather is one of the tools that bring these systems to life,” she said.

Gisel warned that waiting for definitive examples before establishing rules carries its own risk. “All weapons have proliferated,” he said. “This will be the case with autonomy in weapons, since they are essentially sensors and algorithms.”

The technology, he said, could spread beyond advanced militaries and eventually be used by armed groups outside conventional battlefields.

“The standards have to be established before the weapons are developed,” Gisel said. “Otherwise it will proliferate.”

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When science diplomacy leaders from Africa and Europe gathered in Brussels this spring, one comment captured a broader shift underway in international governance.

“As policy makers say often, if you are not at the table, this is the menu — you may well be on the menu,” said Yaya Sangaré, secretary-general of Ivory Coast’s Fund for Science, Technology and Innovation.

The remark echoed a familiar argument about participation. Countries, researchers, and institutions need to be present if they hope to influence decisions that affect them.

Another speaker pushed the idea further. “Africa is not waiting to be invited into the global scientific governance,” said South African science policy official Eudy Mabuza. “Africa is changing it.”

Participation is often treated as the goal. International organizations encourage broader representation. Governments seek seats on committees. Scientific communities push for inclusion in policy discussions. Civil society organizations campaign for a place in negotiations.

Yet participation is rarely an end in itself. The larger question is what participants do once they arrive. As participation accumulates over time, institutions assign participants different roles and statuses. But those advantages ultimately matter because they affect something else: the ability to shape priorities.

Agenda-setting is one of the least visible forms of influence in international governance. Most attention focuses on votes, treaties, resolutions, and public announcements. Long before decisions are taken, however, participants compete to define which problems deserve attention, which issues require action, and which solutions appear legitimate.

The ability to shape those conversations is unevenly distributed. At the Africa–Europe Science Collaboration Forum, discussions repeatedly returned to questions of ownership, priority-setting, and control. Participants debated who defines research agendas, who benefits from scientific cooperation, and who determines which problems receive funding and political attention.

Aline Mugisho, an agribusiness expert working with CGIAR innovation networks, warned that international cooperation can continue to reflect donor priorities even when partnerships appear collaborative. “Knowledge sovereignty is a non-negotiable,” she said. “We need to own the knowledge we produce.”

The concern was not whether African institutions were participating. They were. The concern was whether they were helping define the agenda, a distinction that appears across many international systems.

Agendas are often shaped long before formal negotiations begin. Research priorities influence what evidence is available to policymakers. Funding decisions determine which projects move forward and which remain ideas. Expert panels define the questions that governments later debate. Scientific assessments help establish which risks appear urgent and which receive less attention.

Many of the most consequential decisions occur before governments cast votes or adopt resolutions. The influence of agenda-setting is often most visible when participants successfully change how an issue is understood — or where it is discussed.

Pacific island nations led by Vanuatu spent years pressing international institutions to treat climate change not only as an environmental challenge but as a matter of international law and human rights. The effort began outside the traditional climate negotiation process and gradually moved through the United Nations system, first reaching the General Assembly and then the International Court of Justice.

In July 2025, the court concluded that countries have legal obligations under international law to protect the climate system. A subsequent General Assembly resolution in May of this year welcomed the court’s findings and called on governments to comply with those obligations under international law. The vote was overwhelming: 141 in favor to 8 against, with 28 abstentions. Those opposed were Belarus, Iran, Israel, Liberia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Yemen.

The achievement was not simply a diplomatic victory for a small island nation. It helped redefine the terms of the debate. The ICJ opinion marked the first time the court comprehensively addressed climate change through the framework of international law and human rights. The judges declared that a "clean, healthy and sustainable environment" is a human right and said greenhouse gas emissions pose "an existential problem of planetary proportions."

Questions that had previously been discussed primarily through the language of emissions targets, climate finance, and political commitments were increasingly framed through legal responsibility, human rights, and potential reparations.

Vanuatu did not merely join an existing conversation; it helped change the conversation itself. Recognizing the importance of agenda-setting, some organizations have begun investing in the capacity to operate at the boundary between science and policy.

Quebec recently launched a network of science diplomacy research chairs designed not only to support research but to train advisers, negotiators, and intermediaries capable of working across scientific and diplomatic communities.

Projects that the program funds must have international partners and external funding, embedding cross-border collaboration into their structure. The initiative reflects a broader recognition that participation alone does not guarantee influence, and a shift in how science diplomacy is understood. It is a capacity that can be built and sustained, not merely an informal collaboration across borders.

“You have to repeat and repeat and repeat,” Québec’s chief scientist Rémi Quirion said in an interview, because policymakers “have so many things on their minds.”

The ability to shape priorities depends on expertise, relationships, institutional knowledge, and the capacity to connect different communities. Similar questions are emerging in artificial intelligence governance.

Governments remain the formal actors in international negotiations, but increasingly they depend on technical expertise concentrated inside a small number of companies. The debate is no longer simply about who participates in governance discussions. It is increasingly about who defines the risks, priorities, and governance challenges that policymakers are attempting to address.

The result is a more complicated governance landscape. Companies are not simply subjects of regulation. They are becoming participants in governance processes themselves.

That does not mean governments are losing authority. It does mean that agenda-setting is becoming more distributed. Decisions about safety, risk, standards, and oversight increasingly emerge from interactions among governments, companies, researchers, standards bodies, and international organizations.

The United Nations has responded by creating new mechanisms intended to broaden participation in those conversations. Secretary-General António Guterres has argued that the future of AI “cannot be decided by a handful of countries” or left to a small number of powerful actors.

In late May, Pope Leo XIV warned in Magnifica Humanitas, the first encyclical of his papacy, that AI risks concentrating economic and political power, normalizing warfare and undermining human dignity if governments fail to establish stronger international oversight.

Joining the pope at the Vatican press conference, Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah argued for broader scrutiny of AI development.

“We need more of the world — religious communities, civil society, scholars, governments — to do what His Holiness has done here: to take this seriously, to look closely, and to push events in a better direction,” Olah said.

“We need informed critics who will tell the labs when we are failing,” he added. “We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.”

The concern is not only who participates but also who helps define the questions being asked. Over time, some participants move beyond participation itself. They frame debates, define priorities, convene coalitions, and influence how problems are understood before formal negotiations begin.

By the time governments debate solutions, participants have often spent years competing to define the problem itself.

As Pacific climate advocate Vishal Prasad observed after the General Assembly endorsed the International Court of Justice’s climate opinion, “The journey of this idea from classrooms in the Pacific to The Hague and the United Nations gives us continued hope that when people organize, the world can be moved to act.”

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Brando Okolo wants to expand what counts as science diplomacy.

For the head of science, technology and innovation at the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD, international scientific cooperation should extend beyond research partnerships and diplomatic dialogue to include industrial development, entrepreneurship and the ability to turn knowledge into technology.

“I think the current definition of science diplomacy is a bit narrow,” Okolo said in an interview on The Science Diplomat Podcast. “Everywhere where you can find a dot representing science, diplomacy should be in a position to choreograph relationships around that dot.”

Africa is still developing its own definition, one that Okolo expects to encompass industrial cooperation, communications, health and energy.

His perspective reflects an unusual career spanning both continents. A materials scientist and chemical engineer by training, Okolo spent 26 years in Germany, studied in Leeds and taught for five years at the German University in Cairo. He later became an entrepreneur in additive manufacturing before moving into African science policy.

Those experiences now inform how he approaches relationships with scientific partners in Europe, Asia, North America and the Middle East — and particularly his view of what equality should mean between Africa and Europe.

“For me, equality would mean that you have an equal flow of scientific assets, both from the African side to the European side,” he said. “The mobility of scientists has to be friction-free both ways, in my opinion, and the buildup of science infrastructure has to be equal as well.”

The A.U.-E.U. Innovation Agenda is one mechanism for pursuing closer cooperation, but Okolo described it as “only one instrument out of a multitude of instruments” connecting African and European science.

Those relationships are also changing as Africa develops deeper scientific ties elsewhere.

Okolo recalled a research landscape in the 1990s centered much more heavily around Europe and North America. Today, African researchers are increasingly publishing with counterparts in China, South Korea, Japan and India.

“What this means is that Africa has more options,” he said. “Not that Africa’s relationship with Europe or with North America has been diluted. No. It means that Africa has more options.”

That shift has implications for Europe.

“Europe should begin to see Africa as an investment, and Africa should see Europe as an investment as well,” Okolo said. “If Europe fails, it’s not in Africa’s interest. And if Africa fails, it’s not in Europe’s interest.”

He sees demographic change adding urgency to that relationship, pointing to a future in which Africa accounts for a much larger share of the world’s workforce and young people. He also foresees a growing economic relationship among Africa, China and India.

“Twenty-five years from now, we’re going to have a new market size of about 5.5 billion people within an India, China and Africa market space, and it’s an attractive market space,” he said.

For Okolo, however, greater geopolitical choice matters only if it is accompanied by greater technological capability.

He sees potential in technologies such as artificial intelligence and additive manufacturing to shorten the path toward industrialization. Combining AI-assisted design with more decentralized manufacturing, for example, could allow African economies to build production capacity without reproducing every stage of older industrial models.

“I hate to use the word leapfrog, but to design a much shorter path from non-industrialization to industrialization, in my opinion,” he said. That technological ambition still begins with research.

Okolo pointed to the United States and China as examples of the relationship between sustained investment in R&D and technological leadership, including China’s growth in research and manufacturing around electric-vehicle batteries.

“There’s a correlation there that if you invest more in research, one of the key dividends of that is being able to be a technology champion,” he said. But his own career convinced him that research cannot stop at publication.

At 42, while teaching at the German University in Cairo, Okolo decided he wanted “to do something else with my life.” He returned to Germany and helped establish a company developing 3D printers, software and materials for high-performance polymers.

“There was just no way I could have had that level and depth of experience as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as somebody within the leadership of a tech startup,” he said, “if I was still domiciled within the university environment.”

That experience now shapes his conception of science diplomacy. “Most scientists are undiplomatic, and most diplomats are not scientific,” Okolo said.

He wants science diplomacy to develop into a more deliberate field of training, with curricula designed around the skills needed to work between science and international relations. For Africa, he would add another competency.

“I’m beginning to see a science diplomat who has an understanding of entrepreneurship,” he said. “Because those fantastic research outputs need to be driven by an entrepreneur.”

African institutions are also encouraging countries to appoint science attachés to their embassies so officials with scientific understanding can identify opportunities and build relationships abroad.

Okolo only recently began applying the term science diplomat to himself. “I didn’t know I was one until the beginning of this year,” he said.

Preparing a master class on the subject changed that. As the official leading science, technology and innovation within AUDA-NEPAD, he came to see diplomacy as part of the responsibility that accompanies the job.

“It’s kind of got planted in my consciousness that you’re actually a science diplomat.”

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Issue No. 19 | Monday, August 24, 2026

Good morning,

Welcome to The Science Diplomat Playbook, your Monday morning guide to what’s shaping the week ahead in global science diplomacy.

The lead

Governments gather in Geneva on Monday for the 12th Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty, opening a week of negotiations that will look beyond the mechanics of regulating international weapons transfers toward a more fundamental question: how should countries measure whether the treaty is actually achieving its purpose?

More than a decade after the ATT entered into force, nations that are party to the treaty are developing a five-year strategy intended to establish priorities, indicators and ways of tracking progress. But the process is also exposing gaps in the architecture used to evaluate the treaty itself. The draft strategy is scheduled for formal discussion on Thursday.

Unlike several other international conventional-arms agreements, the ATT has no dedicated periodic review conference. Its annual meetings examine implementation through working groups on treaty implementation, transparency and reporting, and universalization, but consultations convened by the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research and Panama found that important aspects of implementation are not being systematically assessed.

Among them is the treaty’s ability to respond to technological change. The ATT requires its member nations to review developments in conventional arms, yet no mechanism currently does so systematically. Researchers point to changes involving weapons components, technology transfers and knowledge shared through joint and licensed production as areas where gaps in national regulation could emerge.

One proposal would use countries’ existing reports as the basis for voluntary peer reviews aimed at identifying gaps, assistance needs and best practices.

The question takes on added significance this week as researchers begin an initiative intended to produce the first comprehensive evaluation of the ATT’s impact on national transfer controls, efforts to prevent weapons diversion and international cooperation.

The conference week also brings the release of the ATT Monitor’s 2026 assessment of treaty implementation, including analysis of national reporting and how governments assess risks involving explosive weapons in populated areas.

The broader question is whether an international regime designed to make the global arms trade more responsible has the institutional machinery to determine whether it is succeeding—and to adapt as weapons and the arms trade change.

Major processes to watch

Arms Trade Treaty — CSP12 looks toward the treaty’s next five years

Member nations meet through Friday, with attention turning from the opening general debate to diversion, transparency, international assistance and the proposed five-year strategy. The question to watch is whether countries begin building more systematic ways to measure the treaty’s performance or leave those questions to future meetings.

Mongolia — COP17 moves from local demands to high-level negotiations

The U.N. desertification summit enters its final week after mayors and regional leaders adopted the Ulaanbaatar Declaration, calling for a stronger role for local governments in global land policy. The declaration is due to feed into the conference’s high-level discussions.

Attention now moves to ministers. Monday’s high-level segment includes a dialogue on innovative financing for healthy land and drought resilience, while Wednesday brings a ministerial dialogue on restoring rangelands and supporting pastoral communities.

That creates a useful second-week question for the Playbook: whether demands for more local authority, better measurement and greater access to finance make their way into the decisions governments take before COP17 closes on Friday.

Geneva — Experts update the rules for dangerous goods on Europe’s waterways

Government and technical experts meet at the Palais des Nations to review the international rules governing the transport of dangerous goods on inland waterways.

The ADN Safety Committee will consider implementation and interpretation of the agreement, special authorizations and derogations, expert training, classification societies and amendments to its technical regulations.

It is the quieter side of science diplomacy: governments converting technical expertise on safety, materials and transportation into common rules that allow hazardous cargo to cross national borders.

Security Council watch — Food security returns to the peace and security agenda

The Security Council holds a high-level debate on Tuesday on the role of conflict in driving global and local food crises, bringing food security back into discussions of international peace and security.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and the World Food Program are expected to brief as Council members examine how warfare disrupts food production, supply chains and humanitarian access, and what role the Council can play in reducing those effects.

The debate comes during a week in which the Council will also address the humanitarian consequences of the conflict in Sudan and developments in the Middle East, Syria and Lebanon. Members are separately expected to continue discussing a draft resolution on the impact of digital technologies on violations against children in armed conflict.

Signals

• Measuring a treaty’s effectiveness requires different tools from monitoring whether countries comply with its rules.

• International arms-control regimes face a recurring problem when technology changes what can be transferred faster than governments update what they regulate.

• Cities and regions are challenging the national-government bottleneck in land-restoration finance by seeking more direct access to funding.

• Cross-border safety rules depend on continual technical revision, from how dangerous goods are classified to when governments permit exemptions.

On the calendar

Aug. 24–28 — Arms Trade Treaty CSP12 (Geneva)
Member nations review implementation of the treaty and consider a proposed five-year strategy, alongside new work evaluating its overall impact. → Program

Aug. 24–28 — ADN Safety Committee, 48th session (Geneva)
Experts review and update international regulations governing dangerous goods transported on inland waterways. → Agenda

Aug. 17–28 — UNCCD COP17 (Ulaanbaatar)
The desertification summit enters its high-level and concluding week, with ministers addressing land finance, drought resilience, rangelands and pastoral communities. → Program

Aug. 10–Oct. 2 — IPCC Working Group I First Order Draft expert review (Global)
Experts continue reviewing the first draft of the physical-science contribution to the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report. → Review information

Closing

You’re reading The Science Diplomat Playbook, a weekly briefing mapping the institutions, technologies and governance systems shaping international cooperation.

Season 1, Episode 7 — Brando Okolo on science diplomacy, African innovation, and building scientific power

Scientific progress does not end with producing knowledge. For Brando Okolo, head of science, technology and innovation at the African Union Development Agency—NEPAD, the larger question is what happens next: who turns research into technology, who builds the companies and manufacturing capacity, who owns the intellectual property, and who helps set the standards that shape the future.

In this conversation, Okolo draws on a career spanning materials science, additive manufacturing, entrepreneurship, academia and African science policy to examine how scientific capacity translates into economic and geopolitical influence. He argues for a broader conception of science diplomacy that encompasses industrial cooperation, health, energy and communications, and describes diplomacy as the work of building relationships around science and negotiating the institutions and partnerships needed to make cooperation possible.

The conversation also explores Africa’s changing position in global science. Okolo discusses what genuinely equitable Africa-Europe scientific partnerships would require, the continent’s expanding relationships with China, India and other scientific powers, and the potential for artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing to shorten the path toward industrialization. He says Africa’s growing range of international partnerships creates more options rather than diminishing its relationship with Europe, while making the case for a relationship in which both continents view the other as a long-term investment.

The discussion concludes with Okolo’s view that science diplomacy itself needs to evolve. He calls for more deliberate training of science diplomats and for a model that connects scientific cooperation with entrepreneurship, investment and economic development. Reflecting on his own move from academia into entrepreneurship and policy, he also considers what young scientists need to move ideas beyond publications and into the world.

Themes covered:

• Science diplomacy and Africa’s changing global role

• Building scientific and technological power

• Equity in Africa-Europe scientific partnerships

• Research, commercialization and industrial capacity

• Artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing

• Entrepreneurship as part of the scientific enterprise

• Training the next generation of science diplomats

Recorded on August 7, 2026.

Co-hosted by Amna Habiba, Bupe Chikumbi and John Heilprin.

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When delegates gathered in Hiroshima for the 48th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in May, one issue concerned applications from Canada, Belarus, and Turkey for Consultative Party status. All three were already parties to the Antarctic Treaty. The question was whether they had demonstrated sufficient scientific activity in Antarctica to qualify for a different role within the system.

The distinction is easy to overlook. The Antarctic Treaty has 58 parties, but only 29 “consultative parties” who can participate directly in the treaty’s decision-making process. Others can attend meetings and participate in discussions but do not occupy the same position. Scientific activity serves as one of the criteria for moving from one category to another.

The arrangement reflects a feature of international institutions that often receives less attention than budgets, voting procedures, or geopolitics. Participation is rarely a simple matter of being present or absent. Most institutions create different categories of participants, each carrying different rights, responsibilities, and expectations.

The Arctic Council provides another example. Its members are the eight countries that border the Arctic, yet membership is only one part of its structure. Six Indigenous organizations are considered “permanent participants” with consultation rights built into the institution itself.

Other countries, including China, participate as “observers.” China has invested heavily in Arctic research and diplomacy and has held observer status since 2013, but observer status is not membership. The council recognizes different kinds of relationships to the Arctic and assigns different forms of participation accordingly.

The International Seabed Authority approaches the issue differently. Created under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea to govern mineral resources beyond national jurisdiction, the authority is often described as administering part of the “common heritage of mankind.” The phrase suggests universal ownership. The institution itself is more structured.

Governments participate as members. Mining companies participate through contracts and sponsoring countries. Scientific experts contribute assessments. Environmental organizations advocate for conservation and precaution. They do not enter the process in the same way or exercise the same functions.

In the Antarctic Treaty system, scientific activity can elevate a country’s standing. In the International Seabed Authority, participation is organized around legal relationships: membership, sponsorship, contracting, expertise, and observation. The sorting happens before any negotiation begins.

Space governance presents a different challenge. The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space brings together more than 100 countries to discuss the legal, technical, and policy dimensions of space activities. Yet not all participants arrive with the same relationship to space.

Some operate launch vehicles, satellite constellations, or planetary missions. Others are building their first space agencies or developing their first satellites. The Philippines recently described signing the Artemis Accords and joining additional international initiatives as part of its effort to become a more active stakeholder in global space governance.

At the same time, Philippine officials emphasized the importance of ensuring that developing countries are not only present in discussions but able to participate meaningfully and share in the benefits of emerging space activities.

That concern extends beyond any single country. U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs Director Aarti Holla-Maini has warned against the assumption that space governance belongs only to nations with satellites or space agencies.

“Many countries around the world do not have the capacity to do this kind of work,” Holla-Maini said. A “critical mass” of countries, she argued, remains outside meaningful participation in discussions that affect the future of space activities.

Large scientific enterprises create their own categories. Recent decisions surrounding participation by Russia and Belarus at CERN highlighted questions that usually remain in the background. The CERN Council decided to conclude its cooperation agreements with Russian and Belarusian institutions in 2024 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Scientific cooperation is often presented as borderless, yet even highly international research institutions depend on rules governing membership, association, collaboration, and access. CERN noted that while institutional relationships would end, relations could continue with individual scientists of Russian or Belarusian nationality affiliated through other organizations.

For scientists entering such systems, those distinctions are often encountered long before they become visible from the outside. CERN physicist Archana Sharma has described arriving at the laboratory as entering “a structure which has its own rhythm and its own norms and hierarchies.” Participation, she noted in an interview, involves learning how decisions are made, how credibility is established, and how influence is earned within an existing system.

The answers vary from one institution to another. Geography matters in the Arctic Council. Scientific activity matters in the Antarctic Treaty system. Legal standing matters in the International Seabed Authority. Capability shapes participation in space governance. Membership and institutional affiliation matter at CERN.

What unites these systems is that participation is rarely treated as a single status. Institutions create categories: members, observers, consultative parties, non-consultative parties, permanent participants and sponsoring countries. Each category reflects a judgment about who belongs and what role they are expected to play.

The result is that participation often begins long before anyone enters a meeting room. By the time discussions start, institutions have already decided not only who can participate, but what kind of participant they will be.

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Issue No. 18 | Monday, August 17, 2026

Good morning,

Welcome to The Science Diplomat Playbook, your Monday morning guide to what’s shaping the week ahead in global science diplomacy.

The lead

The world's overlooked land treaty moves into the spotlight.

Governments gather in Ulaanbaatar on Monday for COP17 of the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, opening two weeks of negotiations over a resource that sits beneath many of the world’s most pressing environmental and development challenges: land.

Up to 40% of the world’s land is already degraded, affecting food production, water supplies, livelihoods and economic stability. The talks will bring together the convention’s 197 Parties alongside scientists, Indigenous peoples, pastoralists, farmers, businesses and civil society to address land restoration, drought resilience, rangelands, food systems and soil health.

The meeting shows how broadly the land agenda now reaches across environmental and development policy. COP17 will examine science-policy integration, technologies and financing while linking degradation and drought to food and water security, migration and political stability.

Mongolia gives those negotiations an unusually tangible setting. Nearly 77% of its territory is affected by degradation, while its vast rangelands support pastoral livelihoods that depend directly on the health of the ecosystems governments are trying to protect and restore.

COP17 also takes place during the U.N. International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, putting greater attention on ecosystems that cover more than half the Earth’s land surface and directly support the livelihoods of roughly 500 million people.

The conference is the first of the three Rio Convention COPs taking place in 2026, ahead of the biodiversity and climate meetings later this year, giving Ulaanbaatar an early opportunity to test how governments connect land, biodiversity and climate policy rather than treating them as separate negotiating tracks.

Major processes to watch

UNCCD — COP17 puts land degradation at the center of environmental diplomacy

Governments gather in Ulaanbaatar for COP17 of the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, opening two weeks of negotiations on land degradation, drought, restoration and the future of the world’s rangelands.

Held during the U.N. International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, the conference will examine how science, financing, technology and local knowledge can support land restoration and resilience. Mongolia gives the negotiations a particularly relevant setting: its vast rangelands support pastoral communities while facing substantial pressures from degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change.

The meeting also gives the often less-visible third Rio Convention an opportunity to connect land policy more directly with the climate and biodiversity agendas.

Germany — IJCAI-ECAI brings the global AI research community to Bremen

Thousands of AI researchers gather in Bremen for the 35th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, held jointly this year with the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Workshops and tutorials began over the weekend, with the main conference running Tuesday through Friday.

The program ranges across frontier AI research while devoting dedicated tracks to human-centered AI, AI for social good, health, robotics and the use of AI to enable other critical technologies. Research on privacy, security, fairness and ethics also features in the conference’s workshops and tutorials.

IPCC — Expert scrutiny of AR7 continues

The first expert review of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report enters its second week.

Scientists worldwide are examining the draft assessment of the physical science of climate change for accuracy, balance, clarity and comprehensiveness. The review continues through Oct. 2 before the report advances through subsequent stages of the IPCC assessment process.

Security Council watch — Technology, climate and succession

Several processes outside the Security Council’s formal meeting schedule intersect with science, technology and governance this week.

Council members are expected to continue negotiations on a Greek-drafted resolution addressing the impact of digital technologies on violations against children in armed conflict. An informal expert group on climate, peace and security also meets Thursday to examine the Horn of Africa.

Meanwhile, the selection of the next U.N. secretary-general moves forward. Council members meet candidate Olara Otunnu on Thursday before conducting their second confidential straw poll on Friday, providing another indication of support among the candidates seeking to succeed António Guterres.

Signals

• LLand degradation is gaining greater visibility as a problem connecting climate, biodiversity, food security and development policy.

• AI research is expanding into domains where questions of public interest, accountability and governance are becoming part of the scientific agenda itself.

• Climate and security are becoming more closely connected within institutions whose mandates were not originally designed around environmental change.

• The Security Council’s consideration of digital technologies and children in armed conflict shows how technology governance is spreading into established areas of international law and security.

On the calendar

Aug. 10–Oct. 2 — IPCC Working Group I First Order Draft expert review (Global)
Experts worldwide review the first draft of the physical-science contribution to the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report. → Review information

Aug. 15–21 — IJCAI-ECAI 2026 (Bremen, Germany)
The global AI research community gathers for the 35th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, with special tracks spanning human-centered AI, AI for social good, health, robotics and critical technologies. The main technical program runs Aug. 18–21. → Program

Aug. 17–28 — UNCCD COP17 (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia)
Governments meet for the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification’s biennial conference, focusing on land degradation, restoration, drought resilience and the world’s rangelands. → Overview

Closing

You’re reading The Science Diplomat Playbook, a weekly briefing mapping the institutions, technologies and governance systems shaping international cooperation.