Giving Compass' Take:

• While advances in science and technology have delivered new tools in the fight against climate change, experts say one of the ‘most urgent unsolved puzzles’ is getting people and institutions to actually use those tools.

• When it comes to changing attitudes, social norms and economic incentives to fight global heating, many options are on the table. How can donors and policymakers work together to make the fight against climate change more accessible?

• Here's how funders can use a climate-lens to strategically address these issues. 


To fund, or not to fund? That is the question for organisations backing research on the world’s climate crisis — the question they must ask about every proposal that crosses their desks.

A new analysis of money that governments and independent organisations spend on climate change research indicates that just 5 per cent of funds over the past three decades have gone toward projects studying political, psychological, economic and other social science dimensions of mitigation. Most climate research funding instead flows to the natural and physical sciences.

That’s a lopsided picture, argue Indra Øverland and Benjamin Sovacool, the two European social scientists who authored the paper. While advances in science and technology have delivered new tools in the fight against climate change, the researchers contend, one of the “most urgent unsolved puzzles” is getting people and institutions to use those tools and stop global temperatures from spiking higher than 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) over preindustrial levels.

“Natural scientists and policymakers tend to just assume that if the natural and technical sciences identify the problem and solutions, society will automatically solve the problem,” Øverland, head of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs’ Centre for Energy Research, wrote in an email to Ensia. “I think the past three decades have proven that assumption does not hold.”

Published in the journal Energy Research & Social Science, the study reviews grants from hundreds of government agencies and other organisations around the world that fund academic research, such as the European Commission and the U.S. National Science Foundation. Grants assessed were from the Dimensions database.

Read the full article about getting traction against climate change by Andrew Urevig at Eco-Business.