In a democracy people have the right to contribute to the decisions of society. However, to make their decisions, they need information. Science can greatly help society to provide much of this information. Therefore the public must be informed openly about research and its wider implications. Science also has to meet and listen to people's needs and each country's priorities. Therefore the scientific community should have the right to discuss research budget distribution with governments.

Education of communication skills will help scientists fulfil their responsibility to provide information to other members of society. However, one should never forget that science is only one voice of those formulating the common will.

Although it is important that a scientist has a social conscience, the ability of a scientist to increase happiness is limited. A scientist or an engineer can address or solve only problems of scientific or technological nature, whereas social scientists can propose only specific policies or identify problems, which, in many cases can indeed alleviate the hardships of people. Nevertheless the other sources of human misery are beyond the reach of the traditional domain of science. This is the domain of value systems of a society which only the society as a whole can change. Science is embedded in a social environment and cannot. alone. bring about change. Ultimately, science is not the only form of human knowledge. Traditional forms of knowledge are equally valuable.

The bond between peace-efforts and the scientific community should be strengthened. The year 2000, the International Year of Culture of Peace, marks a good opportunity for this new commitment.

Developing countries' scientists should encourage governments to pay more attention to wider access of primary and continuous education. A holistic approach to education can bring an early understanding of science and its impact on the environment, whereas an illiterate society can hardly understand the work of scientists.

In institutions of higher education, a deterioration of standards can be observed. University staff are judged almost exclusively on the basis of scientific work. Good teaching is often not rewarded in career tenns, and the real losers of this process are the students. Educational activities have to be valued more. Institutions should ensure that all members of the academic community engaged in education are provided with appropriate training, resources and support.  There is an increasing economic pressure on most universities. In many countries universities, in an attempt to be more efficient, are being reorganised along the lines of companies. Although there are a few positive effects of this, the main consequences are that expenditures are cut so that staff is reduced, while the number of students is largely increased. Wider access to higher education, however, should be accompanied with efforts to maintain standards.

The constant fight for grants, and the administration of small, fragmented grants, cause scientists to spend more time with paperwork and less .Yith true scientific work. There is too much competition in certain branches of science today. The well-known saying "publish or perish" expresses the pressure to produce a large number of partly irrelevant publications instead of taking time to think more profoundly. In addition, the exponential rise in the number of publications makes it very difficult for potential readers to filter out useful information. Evaluation based on the number of publications has a further undesirable side-effect : it hampers the free flow of information because of the fear of priority debates.

Another problem is the increasing compartmentalization of thought. With the astonishing degree of specialization. most scientists become experts in a very narrow field, and are often unable to think in a broader context. Thinking about the whole can lead to deeper insights. The aforementioned pressures, however, make such an approach difficult. We hope that in the future the importance of interdisciplinary research will increase and the holistic approach to problem solving will gain ground against purely analytical thinking.

A significant portion of science is funded today from private sources, which are, understandably, more interested in direct applications than long term basic research. It is very important, however, that govermnents keep supporting longer term (i.e.: longer than an election cycle) fimdamental research and install a legal framework which promotes the mobilization of private fimding for this purpose. We believe that such long-term projects can contribute to sustainable growth.

Although military R&D serves certain (real, imagined or artificially created) needs of society, we believe that there is need for companies or govermnent institutions to help transfer these results to the civil sphere.

III.   Mechanism for implementing the Recommendations of the Forum