Ali Imam Majumder

Former Cabinet Secretary, the Government of Bangladesh

There can be no denial of the imperatives for building global knowledge for attaining sustainable development. The need for development and sharing of such knowledge has become more crucial in the wake of the global pandemic situation. This may lead to two outcomes: renewed imperative for global knowledge production, dissemination, and sharing of information, and on the other, increased protectionism. This would certainly drive countries to revisit their development goals and agenda for sustainable development emphasizing inclusion, equality, and justice.

The interplay of ‘hierarchy’ and ‘market’ from a governance perspective may further falter in absence of a proper knowledge ecosystem in this global turbulent time unless the free flow of knowledge is shared. Several challenges constrain and risk development and sharing of such a knowledge ecosystem. Unless it is open access, scientific, and free from parochial and partisan standpoints, it will have dents on credibility, reliability, and trustworthiness.

However, knowledge production would call for more investment in research and publication. The global pandemic situation has definitely put a huge burden on the economies, therefore, may push knowledge production and dissemination further costly. Along this line, protecting intellectual property rights, leveraging open access information to curb digital divide and ensure free flow of information shows greater promises of building a knowledge-based society across the globe.