A few days ago I went back to leafing through the Green Book of Science, Technology and Innovation , published in 2001 as a reference document for the National Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation. Coordinated by Cylon Gonçalves da Silva and Lúcia Carvalho Pinto de Melo, the document resulted from a broad effort of reflection on the role of science, technology and innovation in the future of the country. I participated closely in that process, coordinating the technical team responsible for the conception and drafting of the text.
The subtitle of the Green Book was straightforward: Science, Technology and Innovation: a challenge for Brazilian society . Right in the introduction, an expression appeared that perhaps best summarizes the spirit of that effort: "the necessary debate". The idea was simple and ambitious at the same time. Brazil needed to discuss, in some depth, what should be the place of knowledge, science, technology and innovation in its development project.
Personal memories require care. I can't deny that rereading it provoked some nostalgia and even a touch of vanity in the face of a work that marked an important moment of reflection on the country. But, once that first impression—which is quite human—was overcome, the prevailing feeling wasn't the satisfaction of rediscovering a text from the past, which was also a milestone in my personal and professional journey. It was primarily the discomfort of realizing that many of the questions posed there remain open. Even acknowledging that Brazil hasn't stood still, the greater unease is realizing that, despite the progress, in many aspects we have fallen behind the transformations of the world.
A country that has moved forward
Brazilian science has expanded. Postgraduate studies have grown. Scientific production has gained density in many areas. Important institutions have consolidated. State research funding foundations have expanded their role in several states. Tropical agriculture has advanced, supported by research, technology, and organizational capacity. Public health, despite its difficulties, has shown scientific and institutional strength in critical moments. The environmental agenda, previously often treated as a side issue, has become central. New companies, networks, laboratories, and skills have emerged. The vocabulary of innovation is no longer foreign to public policy, universities, and the productive sector.
But it was, as so often happens among us, a Brazilian-style progress: real and relevant, but incomplete, asymmetrical, and marked by discontinuities. We advanced in some areas and fell behind in others. We built islands of excellence, but we did not always manage to connect them to the economy and society as a whole. We created important capabilities, but we frequently subjected them to budgetary instability, administrative fragmentation, and fluctuating political priorities.
Therefore, acknowledging progress does not eliminate the discomfort. On the contrary, it makes it more serious. The problem can no longer be formulated as a simple lack of capabilities. Brazil has universities, research institutes, innovative companies, respected researchers, successful experiences, and relevant natural, productive, and institutional assets. The question is different: how to transform these capabilities into strategic direction? How to convert knowledge into development? How to make science, technology, and innovation not just a sectoral policy, but a constitutive part of a national project?
More than a science and technology document
A rereading revealed that the Green Book was not merely an inventory of the Brazilian science and technology system. Nor was it a list of demands from the scientific community, although it recognized the importance of strengthening universities, research institutes, laboratories, funding agencies, and qualified human resources. Its ambition was greater: to consider science, technology, and innovation as constitutive dimensions of a project for Brazil.
This was evident in the very architecture of the document. Alongside the themes most directly associated with science and technology policy, there were issues such as quality of life, economic development, education, social inclusion, the environment, regional development, productive capacity, international integration, and institutional challenges. What was at stake was not only how to produce more knowledge, but how to transform it into well-being, sovereignty, democracy, and development.
In this sense, the Green Book expressed an idea that remains relevant today: science, technology, and innovation cannot be treated as a separate sector, nor as mere ornamentation of modernizing discourses. They permeate health, agriculture, industry, energy, education, defense, the environment, urban life, work, and public communication. The fundamental question was what kind of country we wanted to build and what capabilities we needed to develop so as not to be merely late consumers of technologies, production models, and agendas defined outside of Brazil.
This project was far from being closed or finished. Rather, it was a call for debate. But it had a quality that is lacking today: it sought to articulate the future, knowledge, and national development. It spoke of competitiveness, but also of inclusion. Of innovation, but also of inequality. Of international integration, but also of autonomy. Of economic growth, but also of quality of life. Of scientific institutions, but also of society.
Many of these themes remain central to the Brazilian agenda. The training of highly skilled human resources, innovation in companies, reduction of regional inequalities, scientific education, energy transition, environmental sustainability, adding value to biodiversity, sovereignty in critical technological areas, the articulation between universities and the productive sector, and the construction of institutions capable of coordinating long-term strategies remain open challenges. Without a project capable of integrating these dimensions, the country will continue to accumulate important competencies without fully transforming them into development.
Questions that remain open.
The problem is that these issues remained unresolved while the world shifted in scale. It's not about demanding answers from the past for problems that didn't yet exist, nor about assuming that the Green Book could have anticipated everything. It's about recognizing that old Brazilian weaknesses were being overcome by new urgencies.
In 2001, the internet was still a promising and expanding field, biotechnology mobilized hopes and controversies, nanotechnology appeared as an emerging frontier, and climate change had not yet shaped politics and the economy as it does today. Now we talk about artificial intelligence, digital platforms, energy transition, climate emergency, bioeconomy, new geopolitical disputes, fragmented production chains, semiconductors, food security, health sovereignty, and critical technologies. The vocabulary has changed. The urgency has increased. But the fundamental question remains: will Brazil be merely a late adopter of technologies produced abroad, or will it be able to forge its own path, combining knowledge, production, inclusion, and sustainability?
This question is even more crucial because science and technology no longer occupy only laboratories, universities, or specialized departments. They organize daily life, the economy, public communication, work, and democracy itself. Disinformation, platform dependence, technology-mediated precarization, digital surveillance, the climate crisis, and competition for strategic resources show that innovation is neither neutral nor automatically virtuous. It needs to be guided by values, institutions, and public choices.
The continuity that was missing
The Green Paper may have become outdated in several respects. It would be strange if this hadn't happened, because strategic documents are not written to remain untouched. The text itself acknowledged that the guidelines for a decade would need to be reviewed before the decade ended. What mattered most was perpetuating the debate and preserving the strategic focus of science, technology, and innovation policies.
That is precisely where its permanence lies. The debate remains necessary because Brazil still oscillates between great ambitions and low capacity for sustained execution. We are capable of producing sophisticated diagnoses, but we have difficulty converting them into direction. We create relevant institutions, but we frequently subject them to budgetary instability and administrative fragmentation. We celebrate success stories, but we do not always learn from the conditions that made them possible. We recognize the importance of innovation, but we still hesitate to confront the obstacles that limit its diffusion in the productive fabric and in social life.
Reopening this conversation doesn't mean going back to 2001. It means building upon what has been constructed since then and asking, with less naiveté and more urgency, what still needs to be built. Today's Brazil is more complex, more urban, more connected, more exposed to global transformations, and more pressured by environmental, technological, and social crises. It also possesses capabilities it didn't have before, or had on a smaller scale. Precisely for this reason, it cannot be satisfied with small-scale answers.
Upon rereading the Green Book , it didn't seem to me that its main contribution was predicting the future. No one predicts the future so far in advance. Its contribution was to affirm that the future needed to be discussed as a collective task. Twenty-five years later, this is perhaps the most relevant lesson: science, technology, and innovation only become a transformative force when they are part of a societal project.
The conversation was necessary. It still is—perhaps now more than ever.
This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Unicamp.
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