document

news

NATURE | VOL 404 | 9 MARCH 2000 | www.nature.com 113

Some commentators say Mayor is admiredfor his transformation of Unesco and hiscommitment to democratic values andfreedom of information.

In 1993 the US General Accounting Officereviewed the management of Unesco andsaid that the organization had a culture ofmanagement reform. They found thatsignificant progress had been made in theimproving administration procedures.

John Fobes, chairman of Americans forthe Universality of Unesco, says thatMatsuura comes with only limitedexperience of Unesco through the WorldHeritage Program and will need time to findhis way. Fobes’ group has been reporting onthe organisation since the demise of the USNational Commission for Unesco in 1984.

Fobes says his group agrees that, evenwith the management problems facingMatsuura, it would be best for the US towork inside Unesco as soon as possible. Healso hopes that additional specific projectpartnerships will be sought between USentities and Unesco.

In outlining his plans for reform,Matsuura remarked that “we have a house tolive in and repair at the same time. Some ofthe repairs cannot wait. The leakingplumbing and faulty wiring has to bemended straight away.”

“I must admit the real situation hasturned out to be much worse than Iimagined,” added Matsuura, who alsowarned that the culture of Unesco as a wholeneeded to be changed. Natasha Loder

London The new director of Unesco, the UnitedNations Educational, Scientific and CulturalOrganisation, has given a damning report onthe organization in his first diagnosis sincetaking office three months ago.

Addressing Unesco’s executive board lastmonth, Koïchiro Matsuura said that the top-heaviness of Unesco’s secretariat was“alarming”, that there was a “severemismatching of skills to actual needs”, thatthe structure of the organization defied “allmanagement principles and even logic”. Staffmorale, he said, was worryingly low. Headded that existing management practiceswere often questionable, lines of authoritywere unclear and transparency was applied“very unevenly”.

He also warned that Unesco was likely tooverrun on staff costs by $11 million over thenext two years. He blamed the projected costson the large number of appointments andpromotions made by director Federico Mayorshortly before leaving the organization.

Only one of Mayor’s 50 appointmentsand 55 reclassifications and personalpromotions — mainly to director level —conformed to staff rules and regulations.

When he took over, Matsuura placed afreeze on these ‘eleventh-hour promotions’and established a task force to examine eachappointment. Many staff were offended bythis. In January two members of staff wenton a ten-day hunger strike in the entrancehall of Unesco’s Paris headquarters(pictured, right).

Countries like the United States andSingapore, which are no longer Unescomembers, will be watching events closely to see if Matsuura can, as he says, cut costsand improve the management of the organization. This could justify their re-entry.

The US State department calledMatsuura’s address significant: “We toldMatsuura that it’s important he create anatmosphere in which the rules are followed,the trains run on time, and there is cleartransparency in personnel appointmentsand management practices”. But at the sametime, the US is not eager to see blame heapedon Matsuura’s predecessor.

“We would not want this regrettableconfusion and debate about eleventh-hourpromotions to cloud the remarkablepolitical turnabout Mayor brought about.”

China looks to west for economic growthBeijingScientists are to play a leading role in a cam-paign launched by China to develop its eco-nomically disadvantaged western region.The region, covering an area of 5.4 millionsquare kilometres, includes the Tibetan andLoess plateaux, and is home to many ofChina’s poorest people. It also includesShaanxi, which was the centre of ancientChinese civilization in the Tang dynasty athousand years ago.

The science ministry has been allocated50 million yuan (US$6.1 million) to spend inthe western region over the coming year. Itplans to build laboratories and engineeringcentres in local universities, to create an earlywarning system for monitoring ecologicaland environmental changes in key parts ofthe region, to set up an agricultural informa-tion network, and to conduct demonstrationprojects for boosting new technologies inenvironmental protection.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences willalso invest 250 million yuan in its own devel-opment plan for the region to complement atraining programme for PhD students itlaunched four years ago. Funds for that pro-gramme will be almost doubled.

The academy’s new programme will studythe mechanism of environmental deteriora-tion in western China and establish pilot projects for sustainable development. Theacademy will also select practical technolo-gies, such as water saving and clean energytechnologies, to be used in the region, says LiRui, deputy director of the academy’s Insti-tute of Water Conservation near Xi’an, thecapital of Shaanxi.

The State Council, China’s central gov-ernment, has set up a special committeechaired by the prime minister, Zhu Rongji, toguide a government-wide campaign to buildup infrastructure in western China. Fundingwill come from the issue of 100 billion yuan

in long-term treasury bonds, announced on5 March.

But the committee faces a daunting task.Although Shaanxi has China’s third highestdensity of universities and research institutes,young scientists prefer to move east, wheresalaries and working conditions are better.

“Strong in science does not necessarilymean strong in economy,” says Li. “We needto find ways of applying scientific results, andusing science to guide economic develop-ment.” Technology transfer is particularlydifficult in the western provinces, whereindustries are mostly state-run and tend to beburdened with debt, he says.

However, Li remains optimistic that someof the problems will be solved. “We will giveincentives to encourage researchers fromeastern institutes to take part in research pro-jects in the west, and western researchers arealso encouraged to conduct exchanges withtheir eastern colleagues.” Tian Xuewen

Unesco ‘worse than I imagined,’ says new director

Desperate move: hunger striker Brinda Runghen.

PIE

RC

E, C

OO

PE

RP

IX

© 2000 Macmillan Magazines Ltd