For a scientific transition

Call for European researchers (pdf here)

As European researchers, we are regularly confronted with a wide gap between the research we are funded for and the research we consider should be urgently developed in the face of the climate crisis and the preservation of life on earth.

It will be futile to teach our students about sustainable development in relation to ecological issues if we do not provide the tools to implement it through our research.

A fact that has gone almost unnoticed can wake us up : The researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have just abandoned their ongoing work on very high-speed transport, which has been initiated by a competition organized by the billionaire Elon Musk. They have chosen to refocus their research on energy efficiency.

While we are continuing massively with "research-as-usual" dealing with issues that are sometimes useless or even harmful to transitions, a huge amount of work needs to be done in all scientific fields.

For example, in biology, a rebalancing of research is necessary in order to promote knowledge and sustainable use of ecosystems, whose real functioning has little to do with laboratory experiments and whose lack of knowledge leads to the development of false good solutions. Another example in economics and finance: research on the impacts of financial products and their regulatory frameworks on the environment and on societies remains almost non-existent, not to mention the adaptation of the financial system itself to the current fragility of the biosphere.

The inertia of the "Science Liner" is visible in the major international journals, which leave little room for themes related to transitions, particularly those requiring a multidisciplinary approach. Young researchers naturally aspire to publish in these journals and have difficulty orienting themselves on those research themes considered risky by conventional evaluations, but yet so urgent. Research teams are reluctant to sacrifice their academic visibility, which is the basis for the international ranking of their institutions, and are also neglecting these themes.

Without the direct support of the presidents of our institutions, publish or perish will continue to dominate and research teams will continue to depend on private funding, many of which prefer that the sensitive issue of changing production and consumption in our societies be avoided. As recommended by the Global Sustainable Development Report 2019, universities, policymakers and research funders must scale up support to mission-oriented research in sustainability science and other disciplines, with simultaneous strengthening of the science-policy-society interface.

We do not want to be trapped doing inappropriate research by the "effectiveness indicators". We want to transform our institutions to prepare our society for a rapidly changing world.

Including researchers from associations and other civil society structures, we propose to set up new research programs in each major school, university and research institution of which we are members.

We support fundamental research.

We ask that our states and the European Union stop funding allocated to research that promotes production that is incompatible with the necessary transitions.

We ask that research projects that promote sustainable transitions be given priority and not be forced to find private funding to access public funding. To support these projects, research teams working on the transition must no longer be judged exclusively on academic publications, but also on the ex-ante evaluation of the possible contributions of their research to solving our challenges, i.e. on the scientific risk they have the courage to take.

We, European researchers, thank all those who will support our request to decision-makers and the general public so that this collective issue of research orientation does not have a tragic outcome.

The question of the scientific transition is vital today.

List of signatories (here)

To be in the list of signatories, send an email to denis.dupre@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr specifying your function and your institution.

If you have a contact in major European newspapers to publish this call, do not hesitate to report it.