President Trump may not have a science advisor right now, but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson does. His name is Vaughan Turekian, and he was appointed to the post in 2015. It's not a very old job; it was created by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright in 2000. It's also not a very common job; only seven foreign ministers in the world have a science advisor.
Paul Berkman, an oceanographer turned science diplomacy expert at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, would like to see that number grow. He points to the fact that seventy percent of the planet - Antarctica, plus the ocean beyond national waters - is international territory, that nations have to work together to manage.
Plus, more and more of the most pressing issues we face are global or transnational, and entangled with science. Climate change is one clear example. Population growth and control is another.
And then, there are issues, like human genome editing. It's not a global issue in the same way that climate change is. Technically, the U.S. and China could adopt diametrically opposed policies regarding genetic modification of people. But, science and medicine happen everywhere, and people can travel. So, many scientists have argued we need to address the issue multi-nationally.
Beyond any one specific issue, Berkman sees the world on the brink of a new era in which governance lets go of short-term, local thinking, and begins to operate on global, long-term scales. He points out that children alive today will likely live to see the twenty-second century. Governments need to act accordingly, and they need the help of scientists to do so.