Chapter 3. The Contribution of International Scientific Cooperation

Abstract

To wonder about “the contribution of international scientific co-operation to environmental health policies” first implies to define the specific meaning of each word of this title. The first two parts of the paper specify that i) relevant scientific disciplines must include soft sciences (human and social sciences) as well as hard ones (biomedicine, physico-chemistry of the environment, mathematical modelisation, etc.) and ii) disciplinary scientific research is less concerned by itself in the evoked co-operative process than ability to proceed to operational syntheses of all available knowledge (all disciplines included) when one wishes to act (i.e. to define and to perform genuine policies). Therefore one has to learn how to organise international “collegial” expertises about the environmental health issues to be treated.
The last part of the paper suggests that the choice of such issues should result ideally from a permanent dialogue between decision-makers and the concerned populations – those living in the North and also those – too often forgotten – living in the South...