Study: “The misallocation of climate research funding”

AESC members may be interested in this huge study that identifies how little government or foundation-based research funding related to climate change is going to social sciences as compared to natural sciences and technology:

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C will require rapid and deep alteration of attitudes, norms, incentives, politics and international affairs. Some of the most burning unsolved climate-change and energy transition puzzles are therefore in the realm of the social sciences. However, these are precisely the fields that receive least funding for climate-related research.

A new analysis of climate research financing sums up research grants from 333 donors around the world spanning 4.3 million awards with a cumulative value of USD 1.3 trillion from 1950 to 2021. Between 1990 and 2018, the natural and technical sciences received 770% more funding than the social sciences for research on issues related to climate change. Only 0.12% of all research funding was spent on the social science of climate mitigation.

Indra Øverland

The full analysis is openly accessible here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629619309119?via%3Dihub