Science Diplomacy: where chemistry is crucial

The interactions between the worlds of science and of diplomacy have increased in scope and significance over recent decades, leading to a focus on understanding the emerging field of science diplomacy1-4. Just over ten years ago, the United Kingdom’s Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science met to clarify what is meant by this term, science diplomacy, and to stimulate further study and analysis. They proposed a schema identifying three aspects of science diplomacy. Despite being criticised by scholars in Europe through the recent European Union project on science diplomacy4, the taxonomy proposed by the Royal Society and AAAS is widely used. The three aspects are science in diplomacy, science for diplomacy, and diplomacy for science. This classification into three separate types of science diplomacy is inevitably imperfect since many activities in science diplomacy are complex and stretch across these three classifications.