News & Views item - May 2007

 

 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy Sports Some Further Trappings for French Science. (May 31, 2007)

    Next week the G8 summit will meet in the German spa town of Heiligendamm, with Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, hosting the meeting.

Alain Juppé to head super ministry of ecology an sustainable development.

And as if on cue the 15 member cabinet determined by France's new President, Nicolas Sarkozy and led by Prime Minister François Fillon, will have not only Science and Higher Education represented by a cabinet minister, Valérie Pécresse, but ecology and sustainable development, have been moved to a top-rank "super ministry", with a former prime minister, Alain Juppé, as head.

 

Juppé's "super ministry" will hold sway over transport, urban and rural planning, energy policy, as well as the  ecological areas of biodiversity, water and pollution.

 

In addition, Nature points out that Prime Minister "Fillon, a moderate conservative, is himself no stranger to these areas: he served as research and higher-education minister in 1993–95 and 2004–05."

 

And the journal goes on to say, "Much of the credit for getting the environment so high on the political agenda must go to Nicolas Hulot, a highly popular TV environmentalist, journalist and writer. During the presidential election campaign, the Nicolas Hulot Foundation asked candidates to sign up to a ten-point ecological pact pledging a radical revision of policies, including energy, transport and agriculture, and to address climate change, species extinction, pollution and other environmental issues. In the face of Hulot's massive popular support (polls showed that had he run, he could have won as much as 10% of the vote), candidates, including Sarkozy, queued up to sign."

 

It is of course very early days and just what will be accomplished as regards, research, higher education, environmental protection and sustainable development remains to be seen, but at least the indications are there that changes for the better are on the agenda.

 

How France deports itself at the G8 meeting ought to give some first clues as to what President Sarkozy intends, and Nature has some advice for Chancellor Merkel who says she:

wants the leaders at Heiligendamm to agree a concrete plan on how to substantially lighten this load [of greenhouse gas emissions] in the next couple of decades. [She] should learn lessons from what happened to UK prime minister Tony Blair when he sought to pursue the same agenda at the G8 at Gleneagles, Scotland, two years ago: by accommodating US resistance and talking compromise, he achieved precisely nothing. [Merkel] should hold her ground, refuse to include inadequate climate-change language in the final communiqué and, if necessary, dismiss G8 protocol and break publicly on the issue with Bush and any allies he can muster.

In Nature's opinion, the G8 are uniquely placed to lead the United Nations' upcoming climate summit in Bali to achieve a robust and effective follow-up to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

 

However, to a marked extent that leadership will be greatly influenced on just how much pressure the Democratic majority in the US Congress can or cares to bring to bear on the Bush Administration.