Opinion – Why? Economês in good Portuguese: Science plays a key role in Brazilian development

Fired in 1982 from the mechanical industry in which he had worked for eight years, engineer Odil Garcez Filho opened a cafeteria on Avenida Paulista, in São Paulo, and named it “The engineer who turned juice”. The establishment became famous and lasted five years, until Garcez sought other businesses in commerce and construction. In 2001, at age 51, he died of leukemia.

I have a friend who is a food engineer, professor and currently rector of the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Antonio José Meirelles, whom I called “the engineer who turned into alcohol” in an article in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, in 2000. I considered his emblematic experience of what would need to occur on a larger scale in Brazil.

Since then, my wanderings around the world have led me to find experiences that have much in common with his, particularly in countries that have shown success in climbing the per capita income ladder, such as South Korea and China. In all of them, I found trajectories connecting technological innovations, new products and processes, to an origin in scientific investments.

Antonio José defended his doctoral thesis in 1987, in Germany, later becoming a professor at Unicamp. Using the frontier of knowledge available at the time, he developed an unprecedented way of producing anhydrous alcohol, for which he won the Young Scientist award. With the work of expanding the operational scale, carried out together with other engineers, manufacturers of equipment for the sector and plants willing to experiment, his thesis and his original experiments would become responsible today for more than 30% of Brazilian production. of anhydrous alcohol, due to its ability to reduce energy consumption and/or double production. This experience well illustrates both the need for so-called “institutions that bridge science and innovation”, and the gains arising from scientific research efforts at universities or research institutions.

In 2008, when I was vice president at the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank), I visited what was then a prototype solar panel production in South Korea, which became a production and export success. In common with the case of Antônio José, it had its origins in the scientific studies of a Korean engineer who, together with fellow engineers, decided to use them to adapt and improve, on an operational scale and adapted to local circumstances, a patent registered at the of Delaware, United States. The point to emphasize is the relevance of Korean public investment in the scientific training of its country.

I covered this in a chapter in my most recent book, on globalization and the steep ladder of per capita income. The successes of South Korea and China are related, in more general terms, precisely to local efforts to build capacities to adapt, recreate and innovate on top of scientific and technological knowledge made available via globalization.

Since 2000, R&D spending has skyrocketed in China and international patent inventories have built up in Korea. These countries have joined traditional leaders in sectors such as electrical and optical equipment, and especially Korea, in machinery and equipment. Climbing the technological ladder would not have been possible without the counterpart of local educational and scientific investments in these countries.

My years as vice president at the World Bank also gave me the opportunity to get to know innovation ecosystems, such as the one around universities in the state of Massachusetts, in the United States. Innovation ecosystems correspond to environments where different actors interact around innovation. They are hubs that bring together infrastructure, human capital and finance, constituting R&D environments in search of solutions to company and market problems, creating products, services and projects that respond to such needs. They incorporate institutions that bridge science and innovation, a bridge built from scientific knowledge.

In Brazil, an example of a promising project in this direction is at the “International Hub for Sustainable Development (HIDS)” in Campinas, São Paulo, physically next to Unicamp. With support from the IDB, HIDS will form a chain where, in addition to Unicamp, Sirius (National Synchrotron Light Laboratory, the main particle accelerator ring in the Southern Hemisphere), the Telecommunications Research and Development Center (CPQD), the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), the Agronomic Institute of Campinas (IAC) and the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC-Campinas). According to the creators of the project at Unicamp, in 2014, the HIDS will be a kind of “Free Knowledge Zone”, around which companies that develop innovative technologies and education will be located.

Look. The Brazilian economy has been struggling for decades with a profound “productivity anemia”, for reasons such as insufficient education, unfavorable business environment, lack of infrastructure and a far from adequate pace in the adaptation and creation of technological innovations. From what we have already observed in this article, it is clear the lack of scientific investments and reinforced bridges between these and the economy.

Productivity anemia fuels and is reinforced by “obesity in public spending”, with the state spending a lot, but poorly in terms of its impact on productivity and economic growth in the country. It is necessary that fiscal containment efforts include a reordering of spending that preserves and expands investments in science.

Today, investment in science is below the world average: 1.26% of GDP, against 1.79% of the world average. In 2020, the Federal Government invested, in Science and Technology, an amount smaller than the volume of resources applied in 2009.

Science must participate in the reconstruction of Brazil.

This column was written for the #scienceinelections campaign, which celebrates Science Month. In July, columnists give up their space to reflect on the role of science in the reconstruction of Brazil.