The survey’s findings were striking in their clarity. When respondents ranked 25 priority topics on a 1-to-5 scale, education, energy development, and food supply emerged as the height of global concern. These were followed by health and medical care, population distribution, and mobilizing public participation in decision-making. The behavioral and social sciences dominated the fields of interest at 37%, suggesting that even then, experts recognized that humanity’s greatest challenges were fundamentally about people, not just technology or resources.

What’s most revealing about the 1974 priorities is what they tell us about that historical moment. The survey captured a world still reeling from the 1973 oil embargo, haunted by the specter of overpopulation (the “population bomb” fears were peaking), and awakening to environmental degradation. The emphasis on energy and food wasn’t academic—these were existential anxieties rooted in immediate material scarcity. Education ranked first, reflecting an era-specific faith that knowledge and schooling could solve civilizational problems. Public participation in decision-making, ranked sixth, revealed a democratic idealism about including ordinary people in governance.

Yet perhaps most fascinating was what received the lowest priorities: outer space exploration and vulcanism (earthquakes) ranked near the bottom, even among earth scientists. In 1974, humanity wasn’t yet preoccupied with asteroid impacts or space colonization as survival strategies. The future seemed to belong to those who could feed themselves and power their societies here on Earth.

Fast forward to 2026, and the conversation has transformed in ways both predictable and surprising. Climate change—barely mentioned in 1974 (though ecology appeared as an “other” category added by respondents, with 119 additions focused on environment)—now dominates global discourse. We’ve replaced anxiety about scarcity with anxiety about excess: excess carbon in the atmosphere, excess heat in our systems, excess consumption. The existential threat has shifted from “will we have enough?” to “will the planet survive what we’ve taken?”

Energy remains critical, but now the priority isn’t development and use; it’s transition and sustainability. And as of right now, with the crisis in Iran, highly political. Food supply persists as a concern, but now intertwined with climate, land use, and biodiversity. Health and medical care, always important, has been turbocharged by pandemic awareness and the recognition that biosecurity and equitable healthcare access are civilization-level concerns.

The biggest shift, however, may be in what we’ve learned about education. While still valued, we now recognize that schooling alone cannot solve our problems—that education must be coupled with behavioral change, institutional reform, and global coordination. The 1974 optimism that knowledge translates to action has been tempered by fifty years of knowing better without doing better.

Remarkably absent from the survey is artificial intelligence and technology, which barely existed in 1974 and dominates anxious conversation today. The 1974 survey included space sciences at just 2%, yet today we debate whether AI could be our greatest existential risk or our greatest hope. This omission is humbling: we’re likely as blind to 2074’s critical concerns as the 1974 respondents were to ours.

Perhaps most sobering is the continuity in unmet needs. That 1974 emphasis on income distribution and consumption (ranked seventh) remains urgent today. Social discrimination, clarification of value norms, and control of violent coercion—all high priorities fifty years ago—still plague us. We’ve made progress on some fronts; we’ve stalled on others; we’ve created new problems while solving old ones.

What McHale called the development of an “appreciative system” in society—continuous appraisal and assessment of human activities—feels more necessary than ever. Yet the survey’s greatest insight may be the very act of asking what matters, of creating forums for global consensus-building on priorities. This is itself a priority, and an ongoing mandate of the 91������, today. The 1974 respondents from 72 countries found surprising agreement on what mattered most, transcending specialization and national interest. Whether we could generate that same consensus today, in an age of algorithmic filters and political fragmentation, remains uncertain.

The 1974 WAAS survey reminds us that priorities reflect the anxieties and hopes of their moment. We cannot return to their concerns; we cannot escape ours. But we can honor their effort to think systematically about the future and ask ourselves the same hard question they posed: what do we believe humanity most urgently needs? And then, we must actually do something about it.

The economies that most need innovation are often precisely the ones whose institutions make it hardest to invest in it. Understanding why – and what can be done – is one of the defining policy challenges of our era.

A Paradox at The Heart of Development

More than half the world’s population lives in middle-income economies – societies that have escaped extreme poverty but have not yet reached the living standards of high-income countries, and many risk never doing so. The culprit, increasingly, is not a shortage of capital or labour. It is a shortage of productivity growth: the capacity to produce more with what already exists.

Brazil is the country I know best, and it illustrates the paradox with unusual sharpness. Brazilian agriculture is a world-class performer: sustained public investment in tropical biotechnology and precision farming lifted agricultural productivity by roughly 35 index points between 2007 and 2024. Yet industrial and services productivity – the sectors that account for virtually all of Brazil’s domestic economic impulse – grew by barely a fraction of that over the same period. The result is an economy that exports innovation to global commodity markets while struggling to distribute its benefits to the majority of its citizens.

What causes this divide? And, more importantly, can deliberate policy close it?

The Monetary Double Dividend: A Finding That Surprised Us

Our research set out to quantify the macroeconomic returns to Brazil’s principal innovation policy instruments – the Lei do Bem, a long-standing tax credit program for industrial R&D, and federal public investment in knowledge infrastructure. What we found exceeded our initial expectations, not in the magnitude of the direct productivity gains, but in the way those gains compound through the monetary system.

When innovation raises total factor productivity, it reduces firms’ marginal costs and com-presses inflation. Under Brazil’s inflation-targeting regime – maintained continuously since 1999 – the central bank responds to that disinflationary signal by reducing the pol-icy interest rate. That rate reduction, in turn, stimulates private investment and amplifies the original output gain through a second channel that conventional supply-side analysis misses entirely.

We call this the monetary double dividend. The counterintuitive finding with the broadest policy relevance is that the mechanism is stronger in economies with high neutral

real interest rates. Brazil’s famously elevated real rates – long viewed as the country’s principal growth impediment – turn out to be the amplifier that converts a supply-side improvement into a substantial and persistent macroeconomic dividend. The implication is not that high interest rates are desirable. It is that, in an economy already burdened by them, supply-side innovation policy constitutes a means of unlocking monetary space that tight financial conditions have otherwise closed.

A coordinated innovation package – combining RBD tax credits) public investment) and direct innovation grants – raises GDP by over nine per cent at peak and delivers a welfare gain equivalent to a permanent 3.3 per cent increase in household consumption. These are not marginal adjustments; they are structural transformations.

Knowledge, Institutions and The Limits of Policy Instruments

I want to be candid about what our research also reveals, because intellectual honesty is what WAAS asks of its members.
The policy instruments for raising innovation exist. Brazil’s Lei do Bem has been in operation for two decades. The technical knowledge of effective R&D incentive design is broadly available. The monetary transmission mechanism is well understood. And yet the productivity gap persists.

The binding constraint, our evidence suggests, is not the toolkit. It is the institutional ecosystem within which instruments operate: the depth of university-industry linkages, the quality of intellectual property enforcement, the degree of integration into global value chains, and the absorptive capacity of firms to convert innovation inputs into sustained productivity gains. Without these foundations, R&D subsidies become transfers rather than investments, and the monetary double dividend remains theoretical.

This is precisely the kind of challenge that WAAS is uniquely equipped to address – not because it requires further econometric research, but because it requires a transdisciplinary dialogue that economics alone cannot sustain. Questions of institutional trust, educational quality, social cohesion, and the governance of knowledge are as much questions of art, philosophy, and political science as they are of macroeconomics. The disciplinary silos of academic specialization are exactly what this Academy was founded to transcend.

What I Hope to Contribute

Joining WAAS at this moment is both a privilege and a responsibility. The middle-income trap is not a Brazilian problem. It is a global challenge affecting billions of people across Latin America, Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. Its resolution will require exactly the kind of transdisciplinary, value-centered, and institutionally conscious thinking that this Academy has championed since its founding.
In the years ahead, I hope to contribute to WAAS’s work in three directions.

First, by bringing rigorous empirical evidence about what innovation policy actually achieves – not in theoretical models, but in the complex reality of a large emerging economy characterized by deep inequalities and layered institutions. Second, by translating that evidence into policy recommendations that are actionable for finance ministers, central bankers, and development institution leaders operating under genuine fiscal and political constraints.

And third – most ambitiously – by examining whether the monetary double dividend extends to green innovation: whether productivity gains from low-carbon technology can simultaneously raise output, reduce inflation, and accelerate decarbonization, generating a triple dividend with profound implications for sustainable development.

The challenges confronting humanity in the coming decades demand that rigorous knowledge reach decision-makers faster, more clearly, and with greater urgency than it currently does. I look forward to pursuing that goal alongside the distinguished community of Fellows and Associate Fellows of this Academy.

Underlying research. The findings discussed in this piece draw on: Oliveira, J.G.A., Andrade, J.P., Amorim, C.R., and Soares, V.A. (2025). “When High Rates Help: Innovation Policy, TFP, and the Monetary Double Dividend in Brazil.” Working paper submitted for peer review. Data and replication code are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Primary data sources: IBGE, BCB/SGS, MCTI/PINTEC, Receita Federal, SOF/STN, EPE/BEN, Penn World Tables 10.0. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the World Bank Group, its Executive Directors, or the governments they represent.

Three hours of one-on-one conversation covered the mission of the 91������ of Art and Science, its history and achievements, as well as the shared vision and intent between our organization and the “Satyarthi Movement for Global Compassion.” We discussed mutual orientations and compelling stories, including Satyarthi’s extraordinary 80,000 KM walk across 103 countries to campaign against child labour—a journey that culminated in Geneva in 1998 with the adoption of an unprecedented international convention banning slavery, bondage, and the worst forms of child exploitation.

The man who embraces me upon arrival in his hotel lobby and calls me brother has recently applied, with exceptional modesty, to become a fellow of the 91������. In his application, he wrote: “I deeply appreciate [the Academy] for its longstanding commitment to interdisciplinary dialogue and its contribution to shaping forward-looking, human-centred approaches to global development.” He continued, “Through my journey working alongside some of the most vulnerable communities, I came to a simple yet profound realisation: that the challenges confronting humanity cannot be resolved by intellect or power alone but require the transformative force of compassion.”

Karuna is the Sanskrit word for compassion—an inner strength that connects people through feelings and mutual understanding, transcending human boundaries and extending to nature itself. This concept also encompasses compassionate action: taking practical steps to solve problems with a sense of urgency. According to Kailash Satyarthi’s book “Karuna: The Power of Compassion,” leading with compassion requires wisdom, courage, clarity, and conviction.

The inner peace that Satyarthi describes so eloquently and has practiced throughout his life serves as the cornerstone of the sound human relations that the 91������ champions through its programs, particularly the Global Peace Offensive (GPO).  It rests upon our ability to connect with one another, explore common ground, and take action with a problem-solving mindset.

It is this shared foundation between the concept of compassion and the multilateral cooperation and reciprocity advocated by the GPO’s theoretical framework that can lead to conflict transformation and lasting human security.

Centered on these concepts of fostering harmony and peacebuilding, we will have the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue about the present and future state of world affairs.

All the foundations are in place to engage in a fundamental transformation of the existing international order into a supranational community dedicated to human wellbeing.

My key takeaway from this fortunate encounter with Kailash Satyarthi is that Global Compassion can serve as a powerful instrument for the Global Peace Offensive—an actionable principle that can effectively transform systems of governance, education, business, and technology. This force for good can help ensure that progress remains inclusive, equitable, and aligned with the broader goals of justice, equality, sustainability, and peace.

The reflection process has only just begun—we shall remain in touch! 

In the meantime, Kailash Satyarthi’s nomination to the 91������ embodies our shared commitment to advancing human dignity, justice, and peace through collaborative global action.