The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) has implemented their 6-week Diplomacy 4.0 – Beyond the Digital Frontier training program since 2019, most recently from 8 April 2024 to 19 May 2024. Developed and implemented by Prof. Paul Arthur Berkman – Science Diplomacy (Module 6) has been the concluding week since this multilateral diplomacy programme began.
The learning objectives with Module 6 are framed with skills, methods and theory of informed decisionmaking as the engine of science diplomacy, for participants to:
- Understand the context of our globally-interconnected civilization across the 21st century, especially in view of ‘exponential change’ over diverse time scales
- Consider science as the ‘study of change’ to be inclusive (who, what, when, where, why and how) across the natural sciences, social sciences and Indigenous knowledge, as knowledge systems that have evolved over millennia for the purposes of decisionmaking;
- Contrast informed decisions that operate across a ‘continuum of urgencies’ versus un-informed decisions that operate only at a moment with limited value before-through-after inflection points, as observed with the COVID-19 pandemic;
- Apply common-interest building as an essential negotiation strategy – in balance with negotiation strategies that emphasize conflict resolution – to promote cooperation and prevent conflict (two sides of the ‘coin of peace’); and
- Contribute as a science diplomat with research into action – as an observer and participant – brokering dialogue among allies and adversaries alike across the spectrum of subnational-national-international jurisdictions.
The Common-Interest Building – Training Game has been the core learning activity with Science Diplomacy (Module 6), utilizing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as a pedagogic playground with nearly two dozen training sessions during the past five years, often with the diplomatic corps of nations through their Foreign Ministries.
