The (marginal) role of social science and the misallocation of climate research funding

[Benjamin Sovacool]

Dear all,

 

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.

 

Our new article analyses a new dataset of research grants from 332 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.

 

Read the whole analysis here, available open access to all:

 

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

 

Sincerely,

 

Benjamin Sovacool and Indra Overland