The World Science Forum

Inspired by the success of the World Conference on Science organized by UNESCO and the International Council for Science in 1999, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences offered to host a series of follow-up conferences under the name of the World Science Forum in 2003. Every two years in the city of Budapest, UNESCO, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the International Council for Science (ICSU) provide a global forum for more than 400 leading scientists, policy-makers, non-governmental organizations, educational institutions and research bodies, leaders of culture and industry to discuss the challenges facing science in the 21st century. Ultimately, the World Science Forum aspires to become to science what the Davos Forum is to economics. (Read Tomorrow’s Davos of Science? )

It is no coïncidence if the forum falls on more or less the same dates every year. It is deliberately convened on or around 10 November each year, to mark World Science Day for Peace and Development – a day dedicated to science by UNESCO since the World Conference on Science.

The fifth World Science Forum is taking place on 17-19 November 2011 in Budapest.

The fourth World Science Forum took place on 5-7 November 2009. Dubbed “Budapest + 10”, it marked the 10th anniversary of the World Conference on Science. Within its Science Agenda-Framework for Action, the World Conference on Science made a series of recommendations for instigating a new ‘social contract’ for science in the twenty-first century. More than a decade years after their adoption, the Science Agenda and the Framework for Action continue to guide policy-makers around the world. In 2009, UNESCO decided to take stock of policy changes in UNESCO Member States over the 10 years since the conference. UNESCO prepared a questionnaire, The answers to which were subsequently analysed and presented to two events organized by UNESCO in 2009, the World Conference on Higher Education: the New Dynamics of Higher Education (UNESCO Paris, 6-8 July 2009) and the World Science Forum (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 5-7 November 2009).

A brief history

A brief History of the World Conference on Science and World Science Forum

Previous World Science Fora

Background on the World Conference on Science

Read about two networks born of the World Conference on Science:

Contact d.malpede(at)unesco.org

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