BRICS countries to enhance scientific co-op

KLEINMOND, SOUTH AFRICA - The first BRICS Science, Technology and Innovation Ministerial Meeting kicked off in Kleinmond, about 90 kilometers southeast of Cape Town, with the aim of promoting cooperation among BRICS members.

The meeting, which will last until February 12, is bringing together science ministers or deputy ministers from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The meeting "is a clear demonstration of our commitment to intensify cooperation in science, technology and innovation within the BRICS framework", South African Minister of Science and Technology Derek Hanekom said at the opening speech.

The meeting was one of the activities agreed to in the declaration and work plan adopted at the 5th BRICS Summit held in Durban in March 2013.

The ministers will identify and discuss mutual interests and future directions of cooperation in science, technology and innovation (STI) within the framework of BRICS, enhancing the ability of each country to address the challenges of global competitiveness and leadership in frontier sciences and new technologies, and promoting equitable growth and sustainable development through strategic cooperation, conference sources said.

"The BRICS countries are recognized as the future growth engines of the world economy. It is clear that this kind of expansion will necessarily need to be accompanied by enhanced levels of technological integration into the global community and, without a doubt, will create huge opportunities for science, technology and innovation as critical growth and development drivers of the future," Hanekom said.

He said the high-level meeting of ministers taking place today represents the culmination of the process of operationalizing the working mechanisms of the science, technology and innovation sector.

Hanekom stressed the need for BRICS countries to develop new and renewable energy.

"As the future engines of global growth, BRICS countries will need reliable access to modern energy services to power their rapidly growing economies, while at the same time containing the environmental impact," he said.

At the meeting, the BRICS ministers will table a memorandum of understanding aimed at strengthening cooperation between the five countries in science, technology and innovation and addressing common global and regional socioeconomic challenges through appropriate funding and investment instruments.

To achieve this goal, the five countries will use shared experiences and complementarities, the co-generation of new knowledge and innovative products, services and processes, Hanekom said.

The meeting will also seek to promote joint BRICS partnerships with other strategic actors in the developing world.

The meeting will issue the Cape Town Declaration as the framework for future cooperation.

On the second day of the event, the BRICS ministers will visit the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) site in Carnarvon, where the MeerKAT (the precursor to the SKA) is being constructed.

The SKA, the world's biggest and most sensitive radio telescope, will be jointly built by South Africa and Australia/New Zealand.

The telescope is actually a combination of thousands of dishes and antennas, whose total collecting area will be approximately one square kilometer, giving 50 times the sensitivity and 10,000 times the survey speed of the best current-day telescopes.

It will address unanswered fundamental questions about our universe, including how the first stars and galaxies formed after the big bang, how dark energy is accelerating the expansion of the universe, the role of magnetism in the cosmos, the nature of gravity, and the search for life beyond the earth.