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Venezuelan researchers have called for international help to ensure that the country’s current political crisis does not endanger its scientific progress and its natural environment.

In a letter to the journal Nature, the president of the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC), C. Mendoza, and IVIC secretary-general, J.A. Urbina, warn that the scientific system has been seriously disrupted by the crisis. For example, salaries, funding and basic services such as electricity, transport and the Internet are no longer reliable.

They call on the scientific community to exert pressure through learned societies and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), to raise funds to help Venezuela researchers to meet commitments abroad, to back environmental groups and to “[remain] patient while we return to normality”.

Link to letter in Nature

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