Most people agree . . .

Most people agree that the old, intergovernmental formula of science administration has run its course---that, reflecting a nineteenth century concept of science as passively observing and describing nature, it has lost its efficacy. This leads, on the one hand, to catastrophic gaps between knowledge and action, as was the case when scientists fully well knew what was happening to the blue whale, but politicians failed to act on that knowledge and brought this marvelous beast to the edge, or past the edge, of extinction. On the other hand, it engenders duplications of effort that degenerate into waste. There are today at least thirteen intergovernmental agencies and fourteen committees at the world level that are dealing with matters of science and technology within the U.N. system, and sometimes their frames of reference are literally the same.

Elisabeth Mann Borgese, introductory essay to her edited volume Pacem in Maribus (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1972), xvii.