By: Linwood Pendleton, Cornelia Krug, Giles B. Sioen, Judit Ungvári, Valiyaveetil Shamsudheen Semeena, Zeenat Niazi

From the perspective of most environmental and climate scientists, there has never been a greater need for solutions-orientated science. The pressing and simultaneous crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, forever chemicals, and the ubiquity of plastic in our bodies and ecosystems have created an unprecedented demand for science and knowledge sharing. 

Unfortunately, the growing need for science now confronts a growing retreat in science funding. Dramatic cuts to research jobs and science funding have left much of the scientific world reeling, especially those who generate and use climate and environmental science. The effects go beyond jobs lost, grants rescinded, and data erased. These events have left many wondering whether science still matters. While the pace and scale of cuts at US science agencies are shocking, America is not the only place where funding for science by national governments has come under attack. The French budget for science and higher education has been greatly reduced in recent years. The UK is eyeing substantial reductions in research funding for 2025. On the other side of the planet, science funding in Australia is at a 20-year low as a proportion of GDP. Science funding has also declined in Japan, accelerating the search for private sector funding models.

While funding for science is in decline across many national governments, the demand for science has not abated. Science continues to drive commerce and innovation. Transportation companies plan maritime shipping routes based on oceanic and atmospheric models and data. Farmers and fishers use weather, ocean, and climate data to plan for tomorrow and years out. States, provinces, cities and local governments use climate and environmental science to inform their climate adaptation, infrastructure development, and more. People use weather and climate data to figure out where to live, how to heat their homes, and even where to go on vacation.

The impact of a steady contraction in government support for science will largely depend on how we react to this change.

This shifting landscape of science funding may have created an opening for a larger array of actors to become new leaders in science and science funding. In the USA, the scientific expertise that continues to be shed by the U.S. federal government has not yet been lost forever. Agile and forward-looking states like Maryland have started snapping up fired government workers, including scientists. Small countries, like the Cook Islands, are luring back scientists who have studied abroad to work in government and to run local meteorological offices. Small research centers in lower- and middle-income countries and in Indigenous communities have created places for researchers with local ties to work and conduct scientific investigations that are better suited to local needs.

While people are right to push back against these affronts to science and to mourn the loss of beloved programs and jobs for scientists (many of whom are our dear friends), it would be unwise not to seize this opportunity to think about how we might rethink the global science enterprise to create a system of funding that is more resilient to changing political winds.

A top-down system of science funding, where we rely on a small number of national governments, has created a fragile system for providing the climate and environmental science the world needs.

This is a good time to reimagine a more resilient global science enterprise with a more diversified portfolio of funders; one where smaller countries, states, municipalities and the private sector play an even larger role in providing key resources and science jobs. To succeed in a more decentralized world of science funding, scientists will need to adapt. We will have to build new relationships with these new centers of science funding. We will need to get to know new people and ways of working. The way we write proposals will undoubtedly change. A new, more decentralized funding structure for science will likely require researchers to be closer to decision-making, potentially accelerating transformations for sustainability. Many science jobs may move out of universities and government research centers and into local government and corporate offices.

The future effectiveness of a more decentralized system of science funding will depend on what science gets done, where, and by whom in the future.

Of course, corporations and non-state governments do not have the same mandate to support the kinds of science that can best be considered as massive, global public goods. We still need national governments to provide leadership and funding for climate, atmospheric, and many types of ocean science, yet these are types of science that are experiencing the greatest funding shocks in some parts of the world. 

The time to act is now. We have to be intentional and proactive in building a new, more decentralized funding system for science. Bright minds at all levels need to think carefully about their role in the new scientific world order. Pradumna Bikram Rana has proposed a new decentralised approach to global economic governance he calls Bretton Woods 2.0. We need a similar rethinking for how we fund science, especially the Earth Science that is needed to achieve a sustainable planet and a sustainable society. A more decentralised scientific enterprise will be a more resilient one. New ideas like Flipping the Science Model: A Roadmap to Science Missions for Sustainability, as reported by the International Science Council, couldn’t be more timely.