Delegates to the Megascience Forum, a 6-year experiment in stimulating international cooperation among science policy-makers sponsored by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), have recommended extending the forum's shelf life past its expiration date. At their final meeting last week, delegates offered to reincarnate themselves as a Global Science Forum that would add a new voice to perennial debates over issues such as climate change, land use, and food production. OECD ministers will consider the proposal in June.
The forum gathers research officials and top scientists into working groups on international scientific issues; its successes include sounding an early alarm about the dangers posed by commercial encroachment into bandwidths of interest to radioastronomers and a pending proposal to set up a global biodiversity information facility.
