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SCIENTIFIC DIPLOMACY

GLOBAL CONTEXT AND THE ROLE OF SCIENTIFIC DIPLOMACY


Climate change, food security, global health, data and technology governance: many of the challenges shaping our present do not respect national borders and require responses grounded in evidence, dialogue, negotiation, and cooperation. Within this context lies scientific diplomacy, defined as the field of international relations in which science and foreign policy intersect.

BEYOND COOPERATION

Its meaning therefore goes beyond the mere implementation of international projects. It is rooted in the recognition that science, beyond producing knowledge, can become a lever to facilitate public decisions and foreign policy, to open and maintain channels of collaboration even in times of tension, building trust among actors who have different interests but shared challenges. At the same time, diplomacy can create fertile conditions for the sharing and co-construction of knowledge, through agreements, programs, mobility, funding, and institutional frameworks that make cooperation possible and enhance its continuity. From this perspective, three fundamental dimensions are commonly defined:

  • Science in diplomacy: technical-scientific expertise supporting foreign policy decisions and objectives.
  • Diplomacy for science: diplomacy as a tool to enable international scientific collaboration and projects.
  • Science for diplomacy: scientific cooperation contributing to improved relations among countries.

Considering the multidimensional nature of scientific diplomacy, a bidirectional relationship between science and diplomacy emerges. Indeed, they respectively constitute tools capable of facilitating, mediating, and co-constructing scientific progress (diplomacy), on the one hand, and supporting foreign policy (science), on the other. All this also explains why the relevance of scientific diplomacy has progressively increased. Major global issues require coordinated solutions, yet the governance landscape has become more complex: alongside states, universities, agencies, international organizations, companies, and civil society actors are also involved. In this sense, scientific diplomacy is not an abstract label: it is a set of practices that seeks to translate different languages — that of research and that of institutions — and to bridge often incompatible timelines, such as the pace of scientific research and the urgency of political decision-making.

CISAO AND SCIENTIFIC DIPLOMACY

For CISAO, scientific diplomacy is above all this: building bridges. Enhancing mobility, research, and higher education as spaces of encounter, where academic networks, cooperation, and development mutually reinforce one another. Within this framework also fall the projects currently pursued by CISAO: AEYA – Africa-Europe Youth Academy, aimed at strengthening youth leadership skills applied to sustainable development initiatives and consolidating ties between Africa and Europe; and UNITAFRICA, which promotes academic cooperation, training, and research between Italian and African universities, investing in long-term institutional relationships.

AEYA and UNITAFRICA demonstrate, each in its own way, how scientific diplomacy can become practice: networks that consolidate, skills that circulate, new generations acquiring tools to act within their own contexts, and academic collaborations that become long-term infrastructures.

For CISAO, investing in these pathways means strengthening an idea of cooperation grounded in science, education, and equitable partnerships, where the production of knowledge is not an end in itself, but a lever to build solutions, opportunities, and dialogue.