Brazil is becoming a valuable source of new science that stems from its relationship with its rich natural resources, according to a report from an independent think tank based in the United Kingdom.
The report, Brazil: the natural knowledge economy, was written as part of the Demos think tank's wider Atlas of Ideas research project, which has already studied China, India and South Korea. (http://www.demos. co.uk/projects/atlasofideas/overview; http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Brazil_ NKE_web.pdf) The next phase of the project will consider the science, research and technology capacities of 15 Islamic countries.
Kirsten Bound, the report's author, said at its launch: "Because we don't hear about it doesn't mean that nothing is happening in Brazil."
She pointed out that although Westerners may believe that the Wright brothers invented the aeroplane in 1903, Brazilians are taught that it was actually invented in 1906 by a local called Alberto Santos Dumont. (A fierce historic debate about the issue apparently turns on the definition of a practical aircraft.) What isn't in dispute is that in 2005, Brazilian aerospace company Embraer launched the first commercial aircraft to fly on biofuels, a feat that drew on more than 30 years of local development work on extracting ethanol from sugarcane.
"In Brazil, the key competitive advantage comes when the two ends-resources and knowledge-come together," Bound said.
Brazil's resources include a land mass that makes it the fifth largest country in the world and a population of 186 million, 85 percent of whom live in urban areas. The country has a stable economy, which the World Bank predicts will grow 4.6 percent per year between 2006 and 2010. In 2005, literacy rates were 89 percent, 93 percent of households owned a TV, 462 people out of every thousand had a mobile phone, and 156 per thousand had Internet access.
Education is being strengthened in Brazil, so the country will produce 20,000 Master's degrees and 10,000 Ph.D.s in 2009. Recent policy initiatives include introducing laws to subsidize companies that hire Master's and Ph.D. students; efforts to improve links between university research and industry; and a strong attempt to increase the country's R&D intensity. Under the Programme of Accelerated Growth in Science, Technology and Innovation, introduced in November 2007, Brazil will also invest $20 billion by 2010 in a bid to increase R&D spending from 1 to 1.5 percent of GDP.
Science and Innovation Concentration
Although science and innovation activity is becoming distributed throughout Brazil, Bound's analysis suggests that six states-S�o Paulo, Rio De Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, Parana, and Santa Catarina-account for around 80 percent of this activity. Much of the work is concentrated in the southeast of the country, especially in Sa?o Paulo, which hosts five of Brazil's top eight universities. Yet Manaus, a city of 1.6 million in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest, is home to a thriving microelectronics industry, as well as the National Amazon Research Centre. Other regions are home to clusters in aerospace technology, telecommunications and IT, health, biotech and pharmaceuticals.
Bound argues that Brazil's combination of natural and intellectual resources means it is well positioned to address important global issues such as the energy crisis, food shortages, climate change and environmental preservation: "It's the shift from learning to fly to learning to deal with the consequences of doing so."
For example, the country has been developing sustainable biofuel technology since 1975. According to Prof. Luiz Augusto Horta Nogueira of the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Itajuba? in Minas Gerais, Brazil now produces 16 percent of its total energy needs from bioethanol (made from sugarcane) and bioelectricity (made from bagasse, a sugarcane residue). This is the equivalent of 780,000 barrels of oil a day.
More than 30 million Brazilian cars run on ethanol or an ethanol/gasoline mix. The yield of ethanol per unit area planted has increased 2.6 times over the past 30 years, with further improvements expected.
"Ethanol is now cheaper than gasoline, being competitive with oil at $45 per barrel," Nogueira said, and is produced without subsidies. Brazil has also been careful to husband its sugar cane resources, introducing new varieties to maintain biodiversity, finding ways to use wasps to control a key sugarcane pest, and developing new logistical and management techniques to cut costs.
"For every unit of energy we put into this system, we get eight to ten times as much energy out," said Nogueira. He compared that to the output of corn biofuels, which he claims only deliver 1.3 times as much energy as is used to produce them.
Global Energy Provider
Nogueira laid out an ambitious analysis of Brazil's potential to become a global energy provider without affecting food production. He said that Brazil's total area is 851 million hectares (MHa), of which 355Mha, or 42 percent, is farm land. Of that, 76.7MHa, or 9 percent of the total, is cultivated, with just 3.6MHa, or 0.5 percent, used for sugarcane for ethanol. Nogueira estimated that 23MHa of land would have to be given over to sugarcane in order to provide 10 percent of global gasoline requirements.
"There's a large amount of room to increase our sugar cane crop without affecting food production," he said. "Area restrictions are not our natural constraint."
Nogueira also pointed out that Brazil was well placed to grow this crop because of its high natural rainfall, an issue with which other areas, such as the western United States, may struggle.
"Biofuels, when properly produced, offer an effective approach to face the new challenges produced by climate change, energy and food security and socio-economic activation in developing countries," he added.
Cultural Diversity Another Resource
Bound argues that Brazil's cultural diversity could be seen as another resource that could be called on to enable international collaboration. Brazil has the largest Japanese population outside Japan, a large Ukrainian population, and is home to the world's largest Italian restaurant: "There's no fear of taking the best from all cultures and using it."
Brazil's ambassador to the UK, His Excellency Carlos Augusto Santos-Neves, applauded the Demos report, in part for reflecting the complexity of the situation in Brazil and in part because of its efforts to highlight the link between Brazil's future prospects and its land.
"We have an obsession with our territory. We feel the need to understand what our territory and our country is all about," he said. "The idea of a natural knowledge economy fits well with Brazil's intellectual tradition of [valuing] people who explain what Brazil is."
The ambassador also made a pitch for the value of using Brazilians to address Brazilian issues. "Where we have used resources and looked for explanations that belong to our country, we have been successful," the ambassador said. "Where we have imported ideas, we have been less successful. We do well when we are very close to our obsession with our territory."
Bound suggested that Brazil had the opportunity, while it is in the global spotlight caused by the coining of the term BRICS, to accelerate its economic growth through sustainable innovation in ways that might provide a lead for others.
"If Brazil gets the natural knowledge economy right it could have lessons for all of us," Bound concluded.
[Sidebar]
TechTalk
"Innovation is about doing it yourself-internal start-ups, acquisitions, and partnering."-John Chambers, chairman and CEO Cisco Systems, Inc., on CNBC.com, Sept. 3
[Author Affiliation]
Luke Collins writes about science and technology from London, England Luke@lukecollins.org
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