SCIENCE-LATAM: Argentina and Brazil Step Up Cooperation

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Viviana Alonso

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 3 2000 (IPS) - Argentina and Brazil, the largest members of Mercosur, South America’s leading trade bloc, have decided to step up scientific cooperation in areas like nuclear and space technology and create mechanisms for carrying out joint projects.

“Although scientific and technological cooperation with Brazil has always existed, the question now is to give it a new impetus and a new orientation,” Roberto Pascual, in charge of inter- institutional relations in Argentina’s National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), told IPS.

The CNEA is one of the agencies involved in the projects that the two largest partners in Mercosur (Southern Common Market – also comprised of Uruguay and Paraguay) plan to design as part of a common agenda for scientific and technological cooperation.

Discussions on the common agenda got underway last month in Brasilia, at a meeting between Brazil’s Minister of Science and Technology, Ronaldo Sardenberg, and Argentina’s Secretary of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation, Dante Caputo.

Over the next three months, Argentine and Brazilian officials will discuss the guidelines to govern the joint ventures, and at a mid-April meeting in Buenos Aires, they will hammer out the proposed agenda to be submitted to presidents Fernando de la Rúa of Argentina and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil.

But officials will also attempt to move forward in the search for a solution to the chief problem presented by joint research and development: the harmonisation of national legislation on intellectual property and patents.

Sardenberg stressed that making the laws and regulations of the two countries compatible was essential, because “without a common legal basis there is no way to strengthen our association.”

Both Brazil and Argentina, however, consider it premature to discuss a common patent law, a question that falls to the parliaments.

Caputo underlined that “there is a political determination to make a qualitative leap in scientific and technological relations, going beyond cooperation and focusing on partnership.” In order to do that, he added, “we must begin to define the projects to be implemented.”

“With greater strength, we will be able to do more business,” said Sardenbeg, who expressed to Caputo his country’s interest in Argentina’s engineers and other professionals and skilled workers.

More than 700 Argentine researchers have been working on projects in Brazil in recent years, and the question of the exchange of professionals figures high on the agenda.

Cooperation in nuclear energy, biotechnology, space activities and information technology has drawn the greatest interest from both countries.

Pascual said conversations had taken place in Brasilia on the possibility of Brazilian companies taking part in finishing the Atucha II nuclear plant, located in the northern part of the province of Buenos Aires. Some 640 million dollars are needed to complete the plant.

The works on Atucha II, which once finished will meet seven percent of Argentina’s energy needs, ground to a halt when the plant was 80 percent completed.

“We are awaiting a decision by the Argentine government to finish it,” said Pascual, who pointed out that an Argentine company was participating in the construction of Brazil’s Angra II nuclear plant.

Both Sardenberg and Caputo ruled out the possibility of building a joint Argentine-Brazilian nuclear plant, although they added that they were always open to new proposals.

For now, the firmest idea is for projects boosting trade in nuclear energy-related products and services.

Brazil, meanwhile, has expressed interest in reactivating the Argentine-Brazilian Biotechnology Centre (Cabbio), in which official and private research groups have been working on projects focusing on production, mainly in the areas of health, agriculture and biochemical engineering.

Trade in foodstuffs is key for Mercosur’s two big partners, and a large part of Cabbio’s projects have focused on the development of transgenic foodstuffs.

Cabbio, created in 1986, has been implementing binational projects highlighting cooperation between the scientific and business sectors, while training Argentine and Brazilian professionals.

From 1987 to 1999, the centre developed more than 65 joint projects involving, for example, monoclonal antibodies, transgenic corn, citric canker, triple vaccination, reagents for hepatitis B, in vitro production of embryos with health guarantees, and markers for tumorous cells.

One of Cabbio’s main undertakings involves the Bank of Microbial Strains and the Bank of Microorganisms, that preserve specimens representing the region’s biodiversity in their collections, which constitute a catalogue of existing species available for use by science and technology, and by the productive sector as well.

But despite the important role it plays, Cabbio has lost momentum lately, a problem both countries appear determined to overcome.

On another front, the Argentine and Brazilian space agencies signed an agreement in 1998 on developing a binational satellite and launching Argentine experiments aboard Brazilian rockets.

One example of cooperation in outer space is Argentina’s scientific applications satellite (SAC-C) equipped with cameras, which underwent testing in Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research and will be launched on Apr 13 in the United States.

With respect to information technology, Brazil, which is seeking to boost its software exports, will study, along with Argentina, the possibility of linking the two countries’ computer networks through a regional fibre optic system.