Target 17.6: Science and technology cooperation
Enhance North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation on and access to science, technology and innovation and enhance knowledge sharing on mutually agreed terms
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Knowledge sharing on mutually agreed terms depends partly on how patent-holding companies license. The Medicines Patent Pool, established in 2010, had by the end of 2020 supplied 18.55 billion doses through voluntary licenses from 10 patent holders to 23 generic manufacturers. Those licenses reached 148 countries and saved an estimated 1.96 billion dollars. Pharmaceutical, technology and agricultural firms therefore hold a helpful lever, and owners can vote for access-oriented licensing. Most STI cooperation nonetheless flows through public research funding and intergovernmental programs, so owners help at the margin.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
1 campaign on record
Resolutions asked Moderna and Pfizer to study transferring COVID-19 vaccine technology and manufacturing know-how to lower-income regions and to share technical knowledge with the World Health Organization, and asked Johnson & Johnson to explain how public research funding had affected its pricing and what it meant by distributing vaccine on a 'nonprofit' basis.
With People's Vaccine Alliance
Result: This source does not report the vote outcome for the 2022 annual meetings.
Moderna agreed to sell 500 million vaccine doses to COVAX and 110 million to the African Union and committed not to enforce its patents during the pandemic, which Oxfam called insufficient; Pfizer partnered with South Africa's Biovac for fill-finish production, though Biovac could not produce the active vaccine ingredient itself; Johnson & Johnson's nonprofit-basis distribution remained limited to emergency pandemic use with details Oxfam said were still unclear.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.