Climate research struggles to find funding

(Climate News Network, 17 Feb 2020) Climate research is the poor relation of the academic world. Since 1990 it’s won less than 5% of the research funds available.

LONDON, 17 February, 2020 – With the crisis of global heating now widely recognised as one of the most challenging issues facing the world today,  you might assume that vast amounts of money are going into climate research.

But researchers at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)  and the University of Sussex in the UK say the reality is very different.

In a study published in the journal Energy Research & Social Science, they report how they examined a dataset containing details of 4.3 million research funding awards made from 1950 to 2021. In total, the awards were worth more than a trillion US dollars.

After sifting through copious amounts of material, the study’s authors estimate that in the period between 1990 and 2018, only from 2.4% to 4.6% of the total global research funding made available was devoted to investigating aspects of climate change.

External link

Climate News Network, 17 Feb 2020: Climate research struggles to find funding