The Duty to Conserve, Develop and Diffuse Science

"Shall include." A floor, not a ceiling. These three are compulsory, and a State that has done them is not thereby finished; other steps may still be necessary.

"Those necessary." The measure is what the object requires, not what is convenient or affordable in the abstract. Resources come in through article 2(1), not through a discount hidden in the word necessary.

"Conservation, development, diffusion." Three separate duties, and a State can be doing well at one and failing another. They are taken one at a time below.

"Of science and culture." Science is not separated out for weaker treatment. The same sentence governs both, which is the same structural point article 27 of the Declaration made by putting science in a cultural article.

What the three words mean

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the treaty body that supervises the Covenant, put the distinction between abstaining and acting as plainly as it can be put:

States parties should not only abstain from interfering in the freedom of individuals and institutions to develop science and diffuse its results. States must take positive steps for the advancement of science (development) and for the protection and dissemination of scientific knowledge and its applications (conservation and diffusion).

Conservation is protection and preservation. It covers scientific knowledge already produced and the things that hold it: data sets, specimen and seed collections, archives, laboratories, instruments, and the trained people without whom none of it can be read. Knowledge that exists in a form nobody can any longer reach has not been conserved, and a State that lets that happen has failed this limb even though it never obstructed anybody.

Development is the advancement of science: research funding, research infrastructure, the training of scientists, and the institutional conditions in which inquiry can be carried on. The Committee treats this as a duty to promote actively, through education and investment in science and technology, through policies and regulations that foster research, and through the allocation of resources in budgets.

Diffusion is spreading science and its applications so that they reach people. The Committee names the instruments of diffusion in terms: libraries, museums and network access, a research infrastructure with adequate resources, and adequate financing of scientific education. It goes further and says that States should promote open science and open source publication of research, and that research findings and research data funded by States should be accessible to the public.

Which of the three duties this is

Every human right generates three duties on the State: to respect, to protect and to fulfil. Article 15(2) is the Covenant's own statement of the third. The Committee says so directly, that the duty to fulfil is reinforced and specified by article 15(2), which provides that States parties must take steps for the conservation, the development and the diffusion of science.

That is worth holding on to, because it tells a student where to put the paragraph in an answer. A question about censorship of a researcher is answered under article 15(3) and the duty to respect. A question about a private laboratory discriminating is answered under the duty to protect. A question about a State that produces no science, teaches no science and shares no science is answered here.

What a State actually has to do

The Committee's general comment turns the three words into obligations concrete enough to be argued about. Six of them are worth knowing by name.

1. Fund it. Allocate resources in budgets, and give priority in the allocation of public resources to research in the areas of greatest need in health, food and other basic needs, especially for vulnerable and marginalised groups.
2. Legislate for it. Develop a participatory national framework law on the right that includes legal remedies for violations, and adopt a national strategy or action plan that includes a strategy for the conservation, the development and the diffusion of science.
3. Teach it. Ensure that people have access to the basic education and skills necessary to understand and apply scientific knowledge, and that scientific education in public and private schools respects the best available scientific knowledge.
4. Open it. Make every effort to ensure equitable and open access to scientific literature, data and content, including by removing barriers to publishing, sharing and archiving scientific outputs.
5. Carry it to people. Make knowledge of scientific progress and its applications broadly available through schools, universities, technical colleges, libraries, museums, print and electronic media and other channels, with specific programmes to overcome problems of access related to age, language or cultural diversity.
6. Defend it. Promote accurate scientific information, refrain from disinformation and disparagement intended to erode public understanding of and respect for science, and adopt mechanisms protecting people from false, misleading and pseudoscience based practices.

Two further points from the same source correct a common assumption about who owes this. Open science, the Committee says, cannot be achieved by the State alone: scientists, universities, publishers, scientific associations, funding agencies, libraries and the media all have a role, especially for research financed with public funds. And it warns that all States should contribute to the common task of developing science to the maximum of their available resources, because recommending that poor States focus exclusively on applied science actually increases the gap and the unfair distribution of knowledge and power between States.

Going backwards

Because the obligation is to move forward, moving backward is itself a breach unless it is justified. The Committee holds that there is a strong presumption that retrogressive measures are not permissible, and it gives examples that map onto this paragraph precisely: removing programmes or policies necessary for the conservation, the development and the diffusion of science; imposing barriers to education and information on science; imposing barriers to citizen participation in scientific activities, including misinformation intended to erode public respect for science; and adopting legal and policy changes that reduce international collaboration on science.

Where such a measure is unavoidable, the State must show that it is necessary and proportionate, keep it in place only so long as it is necessary, ensure that disadvantaged groups are not disproportionately affected, and still guarantee the core obligations.

A worked example

The State of Ashwara ratified the Covenant. Three things happen in the same year.

The archive. Ashwara's National Crop Research Institute holds a seed collection assembled over sixty years, with the field records that make it usable. The Finance Ministry withdraws the maintenance grant, the cold storage fails, and part of the collection is lost. Nobody was obstructed and nobody was excluded. This is still a breach, of the conservation limb, because the State allowed knowledge and the material that carries it to be destroyed. It is also retrogressive: a functioning programme necessary to the conservation of science was removed.

The research budget. Ashwara funds a prestige robotics laboratory and nothing at all on a parasitic disease that affects two million of its poorest citizens and almost nobody elsewhere. That is a development question, and the answer is not that the robotics laboratory is forbidden. It is that public resources must give priority to research in the areas of greatest need in health and other basic needs, and a State that spends everything where the need is least has to justify that allocation.

The findings. Dr Meera Iyer, employed at a State university on public money, establishes a low cost diagnostic method for that same disease. Her results appear in a journal that charges a fee no district hospital in Ashwara can pay, and her data is not deposited anywhere. The State's science curriculum, meanwhile, has not been revised in twenty years. That is the diffusion limb twice over, once because research funded by the State is not accessible to the public and once because the population is not equipped to use it.

Ashwara's answer, and its limits. The State pleads progressive realisation and limited resources. That plea is available and is sometimes good: article 2(1) measures the obligation against the maximum of available resources. It does not answer the first item at all, because closing a working archive is a retrogressive act needing strong justification rather than a failure to expand. It answers the second only if Ashwara can show the allocation was reasoned, and it does the third no good whatever, because depositing publicly funded data and results costs almost nothing.

Distinctions

What beginners get wrong

Reading it as a paragraph about culture. The words are "science and culture" and the Committee's whole general comment is built on the science half. Nothing about the paragraph is confined to the arts.

Treating "shall include" as a complete list. It is a minimum. A State that has done these three things may still owe other steps under article 2(1).

Thinking a State discharges it by having universities. The duty is to conserve, develop and diffuse. A country with excellent universities whose findings never reach its own district hospitals has done the second and failed the third.

Assuming it is programmatic and unenforceable. The Committee states that this right, like every other right in the Covenant, is enforceable and therefore justiciable, and that States should establish mechanisms and remedies for violations by omission as well as by act. Whether courts in fact do this is a separate and much weaker story, which the closing chapters of Module IV take up.

Confusing diffusion with publication. Publishing a paper diffuses it to people who can already read papers. The Committee's examples run from libraries and museums to curricula and translation, and diffusion is measured by whether the knowledge arrives, not by whether it was released.

Quick revision

• Article 15(2) ICESCR: the steps to be taken shall include those necessary for the conservation, the development and the diffusion of science and culture.
• Conservation protects what exists; development advances it; diffusion spreads it and its applications.
• It is the Covenant's own statement of the duty to fulfil, reinforced and specified.
• Concrete duties: fund research where the need is greatest, legislate a framework and a plan, teach science, open access to publicly funded findings and data, carry knowledge through libraries, museums, media and curricula, and defend the public against pseudoscience and disinformation.
• Retrogression is presumed impermissible: closing programmes, raising barriers to science education, or cutting international collaboration all count.
• Resources are measured under article 2(1), to the maximum of what is available. Poverty affects the pace, not the existence, of the duty.

Test yourself

1. Set out article 15(2) and explain what it adds to article 15(1)(b). Article 15(2) provides that the steps to be taken by States Parties to achieve the full realisation of the right shall include those necessary for the conservation, the development and the diffusion of science and culture. Article 15(1)(b) states an entitlement; standing alone it could be satisfied by a State that obstructs nobody and provides nothing. Article 15(2) adds the positive side, requiring the State to preserve existing scientific knowledge, to advance it and to spread it and its applications, and it is the Covenant's own specification of the duty to fulfil.

2. A State says it cannot afford a national research programme. Is that an answer? Partly, and only to the extent it is true. The obligation under article 2(1) is measured to the maximum of available resources, so a poor State is not required to match a rich one. But the plea does not excuse inaction, it does not excuse allowing existing scientific collections and data to be destroyed, which is retrogressive rather than merely slow, and it does not excuse the steps that cost almost nothing, such as making publicly funded research findings and data accessible.

3. Distinguish conservation from diffusion, with an example of a State that satisfies one and breaches the other. Conservation is the protection and preservation of scientific knowledge and the means of producing it; diffusion is spreading that knowledge and its applications so that people can reach and use them. A State that maintains a well kept national data archive which is closed to the public, taught in no school and reproduced in no library has conserved and has not diffused. The reverse also occurs: a State may publicise findings widely while allowing the collections that produced them to decay.

4. Give three examples of a retrogressive measure under this paragraph. Removing a programme or policy necessary for the conservation, the development or the diffusion of science, such as closing a functioning research archive; imposing barriers to education and information on science, including official misinformation intended to erode public respect for scientific research; and adopting legal or policy changes that reduce international collaboration on science. Each is presumed impermissible and requires the State to prove necessity and proportionality.

5. Why is it wrong to say the diffusion duty is discharged by publishing research? Because diffusion is measured by arrival rather than by release. The Committee names libraries, museums, network access, scientific education and the media as instruments of diffusion, requires research findings and data funded by the State to be accessible to the public, and calls for specific programmes to overcome barriers of age, language and cultural diversity. Publication in a journal that a population cannot reach, in a language it does not read, and with no education equipping it to use the result, leaves the duty unperformed.