1. Rethinking
Development by
Leveraging Global
Knowledge
Alex Dehgan
S&T Adviser to the
Administrator of the US Agency
for International Development

2. 6 Concerns
5 Trends
5 Opportunities

3. Redefining National Security
Global > Local

4. Meta-analysis of Biological Impacts
• Correlated 90% changes in 28,800
biological processes against
observed temperature increases.
• Looked at alternative causation due
to landuse changes.
• In biological systems, changes
include shifts in spring events (for
example, leaf unfolding, blooming
date, migration and time of
reproduction), species distributions
and community structure.
Additionally, studies have
demonstrated changes in marine-
ecosystem
• In a few hundred years, people have
released amounts of fossil carbon
that took the planet hundreds of
(Rosenzweig et al., Nature, May 15, 2008) millions of years to store.

5. Increased Variability of Climate Responses
• Increases in flood risk due to
intensification of the global
water cycle.
• Milly et al, Nature (2002) found
that during the 20th century,
“great floods”, increased
substantially.
• Great floods were 1:100 year
floods with basins > 200,000
km2.
• Consistent with climate model.

6. H1: Climate + Environment = Nonlinear Impacts
Habitat loss can cause some
extinctions directly by removing
all the individuals over a short
period of time.
Alternatively, it can be
indirectly responsible for lagged
extinction by facilitating
invasions, improving hunter
access, eliminating prey,
altering biophysical conditions,
and increasing inbreeding.

7. Loss of Biodiversity
•Loss of Pollinators, Increased invasive
species, increased disease risk, loss of
economically important species.
•Only 2.7% of the approximately 1.9
million named, extant species have been
formally evaluated for extinction by the
IUCN.

8. Emerging Infectious Diseases
•New diseases are emerging at a
"historically unprecedented" rate of
one per year. In the last five years
alone, WHO has documented more
than 1,100 epidemics including bird
flu, polio and cholera.
•60% of recent EIDs are zoonotic, of
those, 71.8% originate in wildlife.

9. Global Agriculture
9 Billion people by 2050, 70-100% More Food,
New Growing Middle Class in Brazil, India, China,
Indonesia. 70% of harvested crops are fed to livestock
in developed countries.
109 ha of Natural Systems will be converted to global
agriculture. Loss of Natural Ecosystems equal to the US
total Area. Losses from Latin American (Cerado, Amazon)
and Sub-Saharan Central Africa.
Loss of 1/3 Remaining tropical and temporate forms,
savannahs, etc.
2.7x Phosphorus added, 2.4x Nitrogen, 2.7x Pesticides,
Eutrophication has huge impacts on coast waters.
Irrigated Area increased by 1.9x

10. Water Challenges
2.8 billion of the world’s poor – half the developing world’s
total population continue to live without access to an
improved source of drinking water (0.9 billion) or basic
sanitation facility (1.9 billion) as of 2008.
Unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation account for
nearly 10 % of the global burden of disease. In developing
countries, about 1.6 million children under the age of five
die annual from diarrheal diseases caused by unsafe water.
Agriculture. 60-70%+ of water use goes to Agriculture.
Problems of salinity. Worldwide, some 17 percent of
agricultural lands are irrigated, producing 40 percent of
total cereal production

11. Energy
2.6 billion people in the world, roughly 40%, don’t have
access to reliable electricity.
Challenge that many of these are present within groups
of small communities with low population densities.
Challenge of economic viability of operating a utility grid.
Question: What happens when
the bottom billions connect to
the grid and want air
conditioning?

12. Shifts to Developing
World
Less Developed Countries will have changed from 2x the
population of Developed Countries in 1950, to 6x by 2050.
Virtually all the population growth in the next 45 years
will be in less developed regions. Half of the Global
Increase will be in 9 Countries: India, Pakistan, Nigeria,
DRC, Bangladesh, China, Uganda, Ethiopia, and the US.
51 countries or areas, most in the economically more
developed world, will lose population between now and
2050.

13. 2. Democratization of Science

14. Cost of Whole Genome Sequencing
•Cost of sequencing the
human genome, 13
years, 2.7 billion 1991
dollars.
•Cost of sequencing a
single genome soon,
<$1,000
•Complete Genomics is
developing a sequencing
system that will increase
its throughput to 80
genomes per day.

15. Computing Power (increased power,
decreased cost, exponential)
The power of computing is increasing exponentially, while
the cost is decreasing exponentially
Moore’s Law: The number of transistors that can be
placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles
approximately every two years.
Cheap Storage
Computing power of the internet – parallel processing

16. Connectivity: Mobile
5 Billion Cell phones around the world – they are now gateways to
human knowledge, tools to create music and artwork, the are sensors.
In Africa:
It took nearly 20 years to attract the first 100 million
subscribers
It took less than 3 years to attract the next 200 million
subscribers. Leapfroging.
2012: 13 Million fixed Landlines, 500 M+ mobile phone
subscriptions.
Developing Countries.
In 2000 the developing countries accounted for around one-
quarter of the world’s 700m or so mobile phones.
By the beginning of 2009 their share had grown to three-
quarters of a total which by then had risen to over 4 billion.

17. Connectivity: Internet
Increase in Africa: 2,968%, Penetration: 13%
World Average: 528%, Penetration: 32%

18. Crisis Camp Haiti: Random Hacks of Kindness
 Base layer map for Port Au Prince: This
project would create a new collection of
imagery and a new base map for NGOs and
relief agencies. Post available imagery to
share with the public for open source
applications.
 Family Locators for Quake Victims
 Faster relief information and data sharing
 CrisisCamp will brought together domain
experts, developers, and first responders
around improving technology and practice
for humanitarian crisis management and
disaster relief.

19. The Age of Big Data
New York Times, Feb. 12, 2012
•Knowledge and the form of knowledge are expanding
exponentially
•Increase in sensors and opportunities for input.
•Genomics
•Remote Sensing
•Amount of Data may be now doubling every 2 years
•Understand process from patterns

20. Data.Worldbank.org

21. Potential for Decentralization of Manufacturing
3D Printers
Maker’s Fairs and DIY

22. Rethinking Development by Leveraging
Global Knowledge

23. Premises
• Development has become a living condition where billions
of people have access to a few centuries of human
technological progress, but where another few billion
people do not.
• There is an accelerating gulf between those who are
connected and those who are not.
• Challenges are increasingly global, and require global
partnership to address. They are also opportunities.
• Challenges are multidisciplinary and fluid
• There are great ideas in the developing world. We need
to jointly define the problems and the solutions together.
This is required for our own economic growth.

24. Crowd-Sourcing the World
• How do we bring new solvers into
development? How do we find new
technological solutions that may exist
in other fields.
• How do we better capture existing
knowledge and solutions and apply
them to development? How can we
capture indigenous innovation?

25. Saving Lives at Birth
A woman dies
from childbirth
every 2 minutes
• The onset of labor marks start of high-risk period for mother and baby until at least 48 hours
after birth. Each year –
 150,000 maternal deaths
 1.6 million neonatal deaths
 1.2 million stillbirths
• Majority of deaths in low and middle income countries – less than half of these mothers
deliver in hospitals

26. We seek groundbreaking ideas
The Challenge that can LEAPFROG conventional
approaches in three areas…
technologies.
Roadblock: lack of medical technologies
appropriate for the community or clinic setting
Target: bold ideas for science and technology
advances that prevent, detect or treat
maternal and newborn problems at the time of
birth.
service delivery. demand.
Roadblock: too few trained, Roadblock: mothers in resource-poor settings
motivated, equipped and often lack information about services they
properly located health staff and need, what they can do, and benefits from
caregivers accessing health care or adopting healthy
behaviors.
Target: bold ideas for new
approaches to high-quality care Target: bold ideas for empowering and
at the time of birth engaging pregnant women and their families

27. DevelopmentXChange – Overview
Three Day Event
Key components
Competition: 75 finalists compete for funding by
displaying and explaining project to selection
committees (“interview”) (CLOSED)
Innovator Workshops/Networking: Structured
discussions/workshops to engage finalists on key
challenges (business plan support, M&E, capacity
building for scale, BCC, accessing financing, Agenda at a Glance
etc.) (CLOSED)
Development Exchange: Innovations displayed in
open marketplace; opportunity to network and
exchange ideas with finalists, innovators, funders
and development experts (OPEN TO PUBLIC)
Award Ceremony/XChange Talks: Series of “TED-
like” talks combined with select innovator
presentations (INVITATION ONLY)
27

28. Open Source Collaboration
• Saturday: Innovating Innovation: Open Source
Successes for Neglected Diseases and Beyond.
• Give away everything you know, and more will come
back to you.
• Using Open Source Collaboration, Journals, Research
design to create opportunities for participation in
resource-poor environment. Clear advantages to allow
for faster advancement of fields.
• How can we use this for promoting knowledge based
collaborations with the developing world?

29. Connecting the Unconnected
• Digital Science Libraries (CRDF Global, State, USAID)
• Open Access Journals.
• Open Data Bases (genetics, biodiversity, remote sensing)
• Real-time Google Earth.
• I-Tunes U
• MIT Open Courseware
• Stanford AI Class (Sebastian Thun & Peter Norvig) –
now through Udacity
• Grand Challenge for Development: Education &
Agriculture
• Khan Academy: Free world-class education to anyone

30. 122,383, 239 lessons delivered

31. Opportunities Global for Scientific Partnerships
• Nature of Science is increasing collaborative as the
problems require crossing more disciplines and bringing
together more data.
• PEER (www.nas.edu/peer). NSF-USAID. Scaling the
Bilateral S&T model to 79 developing countries around
the world. (Drs. Annica Wayman, Frederico Prado, Mark
Doyle). Almost 500 applications, from >50 countries.
• Bilateral S&T Programs: India, Egypt, Pakistan

32. Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research
(PEER)
A grants program to enhance partnerships between NSF-funded
Scientists and their Developing Country Collaborators.
US Scientist receives an NSF NSF Award supports the
award to do research in research and training of
country X US Scientists and Students
USAID Award supports
Partner scientist in country X in-country scientists, students,
applies to USAID for support and institutions.
to facilitate collaboration.
- PEER will align with areas of joint USAID and NSF priorities.
- USAID leverages NSF investment and merit review.
- Will build research capacity at local institutions.

33. Current Models of Universities (and Science)

34. Next Generation CGIAR
• Creative, Open, Multidisciplinary, Entrepreneurial.
• Universities as laboratories for applying science,
technology, and creativity to development.
• Universities as incubators.
Go to: www.usaid.gov/universities

35. Thank you.