The Breakthrough Institute has named
Calestous Juma the recipient of the 2017 Breakthrough Paradigm Award.
Professor Juma will accept the prize on stage at the Breakthrough Dialogue in Sausalito, California, next June.
The Paradigm Award recognizes accomplishment and leadership in the
effort to make the future secure, free, prosperous, and fulfilling for
all the world’s inhabitants on an ecologically vibrant planet. Past
recipients of the award include Mark Lynas, Emma Marris, Jesse Ausubel, Ruth DeFries, and David MacKay.
Calestous Juma is Professor of the Practice of International Development
at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Science, Technology,
and Globalization Project at the Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs.
Professor Juma was chosen in recognition of his scholarship and thought
leadership in biotechnology and innovation. Of all global impacts on the
environment, none has a bigger footprint than food and agriculture, and
few scholars are better prepared to discuss and advise our agricultural
future. With his acclaimed 2011 book, The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa,
Juma offered an essential and refreshing look at agriculture in
emerging economies. Technology, entrepreneurship, and emerging regional
markets, he wrote, would combine to create an economic, social, and
environmental revolution in sub-Saharan Africa.
This year, Oxford University Press published Professor Juma’s new book, Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies,
which chronicles 600 years of case studies on emerging technologies and
the social resistance they ignite. Those familiar with modern
discussions around nuclear power, transgenic crops, vaccines, and other
controversial technologies have likely experienced frustration with what
can seem at times to be regressive opposition to new technologies. But
what is fascinating about Juma’s new book is the respect, curiosity, and
skill with which he diagnoses these social tensions. In our bitterly
divided debates about new technologies, his emergence as a voice of
reason, wisdom, and civility is most welcome. Adam Thierer of George
Mason University calledInnovation and Its Enemies “the best
book on technology policy of the past decade." "It takes one of the
leading lights on innovation—Calestous Juma—to truly understand the
forces that oppose it,” said the Scripps Research Institute’s Eric
Topol.
Professor Juma’s ground-breaking research on science and technology has
been recognized by the United Nations Environment Programme and the
Royal Academy of Engineering. He has been elected to several scientific
academies including the Royal Society of London, the US National Academy
of Sciences, the World Academy of Sciences, the UK Royal Academy of
Engineering, and the African Academy of Sciences. He is a former
Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the
founder of the African Centre for Technology Studies in Nairobi.
So it is only fitting that Professor Juma will join us for next summer’s
Breakthrough Dialogue, the theme of which is “Democracy in the
Anthropocene.” In this seventh iteration of the Dialogue, we will
confront the question of achieving progress and innovation at a time
when many voices are questioning both the benefits of new technologies
and the efficacy of the institutions that have historically driven human
progress. For ecomodernists, the question becomes not only whether we
can overcome these democratic hurdles to progress, but what will be
necessary for democratic institutions and civil society to embrace the
ongoing processes of modernization and technological change that will be
necessary to accelerate the transition to an equitable, modern,
low-impact future.
(You can read more about our vision for next year’s Dialogue here.)
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