CNPq - Threatened Science

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'CNPq was the starting point for the development of science in Brazil'

Rui Albuquerque worked for 37 years in the body, which he believes was also fundamental for the creation of the CNPEM complex

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Internal installations of Sirius, new 4th generation Brazilian electron accelerator
Internal installations of Sirius, new 4th generation Brazilian electron accelerator

“CNPq was the starting point for the development of science in Brazil, more than 60 years ago, and for this complex that we have today”, says professor Rui Albuquerque, who continues to teach undergraduate courses at the Institute of Geosciences (IG) from Unicamp while advising the General Directorate of CNPEM – National Center for Research in Energy and Materials. The CNPEM, the complex he refers to, houses on 53 hectares of the Campinas High Technology Pole II (near Unicamp) a set of four world-renowned research centers: the National Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS), the National Biosciences Laboratory (LNBio), the National Biorenewables Laboratory (LNBR) and the National Nanotechnology Laboratory (LNNano), with Sirius, a new 4th generation Brazilian electron accelerator, in the final stages of construction.

Rui Albuquerque is the last of three guests to analyze the importance of the CNPq for the National Science and Technology System and the serious crisis that currently threatens it – previously we published the opinions of Lea Maria Strini Velho and André Tosi Furtado. Albuquerque gives his opinion based on the experience of someone who worked at CNPq for 37 years, with brief interregnums since he was hired in January 1978 (two years before the headquarters were transferred from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília) until he formally retired from the body three years ago. years. “It was the CNPq that made the implementation of the Synchrotron possible, creating a group to build an electron accelerator ring in December 1984. The first measure was to change the name of the project, which was called the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory – 'radiation' would give a lot what to talk about, and light, after all, is a form of radiation”, says the Unicamp professor, who was then the agency's Planning superintendent, with good humor.

As inventor of the LNLS, which was created as a CNPq Institute, Rui Albuquerque handled the first contract in Brazil for the transition from a public body (Sínchrotron itself) to the administration of a social organization (OS), ABTLuS (Brazilian Association of Synchrotron Light Technology). An OS must carry out activities of interest to the State, in this case, at the service of the community of academic and industrial researchers. “CNPQ made a contract with Funcamp [Fundação de Desenvolvimento da Unicamp], which hired employees, technicians, engineers and some researchers – under the coordination of project manager Cylon Gonçalves da Silva – and then handed over management of the Laboratory to ABTLuS. As we created several national laboratories, the organization stopped being just about synchrotron light and started to be called CNPEM. It’s just a little of the history of the complex, for whose creation CNPq was fundamental.”

Albuquerque recalls that in the 10 years he worked at the headquarters in Brasília, from 1980 to 1990, the CNPq functioned as an executive secretariat of the National S&T System, helping to formulate public policies in the area. “The CNPq Council – which was a body of the Presidency of the Republic – had representatives from all ministries. It had technical coordination and also around 40 advisory committees, each with four or five scientists, to take care not only of the characterization of groups deserving of grants and infrastructure aid, but also to carry out assessments of how science could be integrated into problems. national and productive dynamics.”

Given this capillarity of advisory committees, the professor observes, there was a natural tendency to allocate resources to their own areas, but this competence was also used for strategic problems. “When it is possible to formulate broad questions, for example, about what to do with the Amazon, researchers in the field of physics asked themselves how to solve energy problems in the region; they stopped thinking about thematic areas and organized themselves to think about Brazilian problems. It was important that there was this capillarity, which brought a much greater knowledge of the dynamics and possible applications of Brazilian science than that possessed by technicians from CNPq alone, or from the recently created Ministry of Science and Technology.”

To explain the prestige achieved by the CNPq, Rui Albuquerque goes back to 1974, when the body became the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNDCT) and became the secretariat of the National S&T System. It was reorganized with support from the Ministry of Planning, with Delfim Netto as a minister especially concerned with the area. “The military government created the Council and, due to the strength of the brand, maintained the acronym CNPq, which also became a foundation to guarantee greater flexibility. Science and technology secretariats were established in each of the ministries and all ministers met on the CNPq Council. An S&T policy and a different system of scholarships and research grants were developed in relation to Capes. All this with great resources from Finep, which was initially a BNDES fund and later became an independent organization. There was an aggregation of interests around a turnaround in the system and linking S&T to development.”

Rui Albuquerque, professor at Unicamp and advisor to the General Directorate of CNPEM
Rui Albuquerque, professor at Unicamp and advisor to the General Directorate of CNPEM

Inflection point

According to the professor at the Department of Scientific and Technological Policy (DPCT) at Unicamp, this competence of knowing the evolution of areas of knowledge, using them to develop policies to support the transformation of the Brazilian productive and social base, was lost from 1990 onwards. “There was a turning point, at which it was decided to transform the CNPq from a body for promoting S&T and for reflecting and formulating guidelines for scientific policy, into a fund for paying grants and grants. The ministry would start to reflect on Brazil, when we know that the position of minister is political in nature and subject to constant change – memory is lost. And the CNPq never recovered this function of understanding how the scientific order is and how to apply it to the Brazilian reality.”

Albuquerque remembers that the MCT changed a lot of ministers, each of them bringing their advisors, who needed to be re-taught how to deal with science and technology problems. “The ministry no longer knew how to make use of either the CNPq, its science reflection arm, or Finep, its innovation reflection arm. During the administration of Sérgio Rezende (2005-2010), the MCT began to take on the issue of development, directly investing the money in projects it considered strategic. When the ministry takes more than half of the development resources for itself, without giving clear responsibilities to the main agencies and without using them as implementers of the S&T policy, the system is destroyed. For example, in the last eight years, we have had nine ministers, which is completely irrational from the point of view of formulating long-term policy – ​​as it must be in the area of ​​S&T, where there are no quick answers.”

The situation of the CNPq did not improve throughout the first decade of the year 2000, despite the substantial increase in research support, in the opinion of the Unicamp professor, who points out a poor and incomplete use of resources when this body was given responsibility to implement the Science without Borders (CsF) program. “It wasn't exactly the PT, but the program completely disorganized the advisory committees and the criteria of merit and articulation with problems of the Brazilian reality disappeared: training people abroad for what areas, to solve what problems? None of these analyzes were carried out, the objective was just to get people abroad. In a way, this strategy was a blow to the CNPq as a body for reflection on scientific policy.”

In the current government

Assessing the first eight months of the new government, Rui Albuquerque sees as a central issue the lack of clarity regarding the role of the State and a tendency to transform it into a minimal State, reducing its coordination function and its budget. “In 46 years of working in the public sector, I have never seen a planning area say, like now, that we need to plan the role of the State with decreasing budgets. The speech we heard in Brasília is that next year's budget will be 10% smaller than this year's; Even if the economy grows, the order is to plan this decrease in multi-annual plans. There is no perspective of organization and investment in S&T for new things, in innovation, but rather to reduce the national public budget, which is a very strange approach.”

The IG professor understands that such a government directive reduces its ability to influence actions that coordinate the country's development, transferring this role to private companies. “In the area of ​​science and technology, the situation is terrible: 'if you need new resources, don't look for resources in the State'. New actions would be made possible by companies, which obviously do not aim at the public interest but rather at the guidelines of their area of ​​activity. When the State is not clear about what S&T is for, does not give importance to the training of competent human resources to build the future and resorts to private capital to overcome this decrease in the budget, it is certainly letting large corporations define their strategy, abdicating of the exercise of its sovereignty.”

“Thinking quickly”, Rui Albuquerque considers that a possible solution would be to recover the MCT's coordination capacity in formulating policies and articulating with other ministries, including the Economy. “We must see this super-crisis as a moment to rethink the system, which in recent years has been completely disorganized. Take advantage of the experiences of the past and build the future, not only with scientists, but also with representatives of the productive sector and the executive branch who indicate how the S&T area can contribute in each ministry, thus creating consensual structures that support research of a supra-governmental nature , not from a government, but aimed at the country.”

Scholarship cuts

For the immediate future, and given the deep cut in scholarships announced by the government, the Unicamp professor believes it is important to clarify the difference between the role of CNPq and the role of Capes. “When it is said that CNPq gives master’s and doctoral scholarships, and Capes too; that CNPq has scholarships that strengthen postgraduate programs, and Capes too, it is clear to those who do not know the system well that it is possible to combine the two agencies, as they 'do the same thing'. The essential thing, in this scholarship crisis, is to show that Capes is a body of the MEC, which will strengthen the higher education system, and that the CNPq is a body of the MCT, which will organize investments around strategic programs.”

Albuquerque adds that in the case of CNPq, specifically, the advisory committees must be reorganized so that scholarships are not just for postgraduate programs. “For example: for an Amazon development program, the area of ​​human sciences is essential, there is no point in distributing scholarships only to biologists, who will focus on the immediate technical aspect; for the development of drugs from plants, we must involve the areas of biology, health, infrastructure, transport, granting packages of master's, doctorate, post-doctoral scholarships - I learned from the president of CNPq that the body currently has 17 types of scholarships many different. With this, Capes would finance the higher education system and CNPq would get closer to financing solutions to long-term problems.”

According to Rui Albuquerque's expectations, the National S&T System will have fewer resources from the State in the coming years, which reinforces the need to change the model. “We must take advantage of the experience of all these years to rethink the role of the CNPq and also the way in which the State provides resources for the area. The motto over these 30 years has always been to strengthen infrastructure and expand the scientific area. It is a motto that no longer has support within the public financing model. Asking for more resources so as not to simply cut scholarships and research grants is a slogan that will have less and less echo. We need to arrive at a logic that demonstrates that science and technology activities have positive impacts on economic and social development, simultaneously with the expansion of knowledge”.

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Audio description: panoramic image of the internal area of ​​the Sirius particle accelerator, captured in a curve to the right. The place is well lit, with several lights on the ceiling. To the left of the image, there are tubular iron structures, joined as if to form an extensive circular track. The tracks are affixed to high concrete columns, measuring around fifteen meters. The floor of the place is quite regular and smooth, and is completely free. On the right, in a circular format, grid and concrete wall. Image 1 of 1.

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