I was part of a team that wrote an opinion piece almost a decade ago on the need to alter the reward system in academia to incentivise translation of research to real-world implementations. After all these years, it is even more evident that India’s investments in climate research are still not optimal to meet the needs of its economic development goals, its commitments to the Paris Agreement, and the transitions needed to reach net zero by 2070. The infrastructure and workforce for climate research is taking the Western approach, that of rewarding individual accomplishments rather than incentivising teamwork for building climate solutions.
Vernon Ehlers was an American physicist who went on to become an elected Congressman. He coined the phrase “Valley of Death” to refer to the seemingly uncrossable chasm between invention and innovation. The phrase has since been used in many contexts where there are wicked problems that do not have real solutions. Examples of wicked problems range from guns to education, abortion, healthcare, etc. Societies tend to resolve them with some agreements between multiple stakeholders, often requiring them to be re-resolved after some time.
Climate change is one such wicked problem. Numerous agreements are signed and climate change or its impacts get press every day despite the deadly wars and political mayhem that demand front-page coverage. The glass-half-full view of climate action would be that humanity is hard at work to resolve climate change with mitigation, climate finance, global warming targets, and such. The glass-half-empty pessimism arises from the fact that greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb, bringing disaster across the planet. Humanity will continue to try and resolve this problem again and again with no clear vision of the future as yet emerging as of yet.
Lack of solutions is the real crisis
The Valley of Death in climate change lies, of course, between the massive body of scientific papers and reports and the discouraging delays in practical solutions. Continued loss of lives and livelihoods point to the glacial speed with which research translates to solutions, especially for the most vulnerable populations that have hardly contributed to climate change and the species that have to either adapt or die. Climate communities do not miss any opportunity to remind the public that things will only get worse in the coming years and decades.
The consequences of the impact of climate change are manifest not just in food, water, and health, but also on culture, socioeconomics, politics, sports, and all terrestrial and marine ecosystems. In the meantime, the climate science community itself is drowning in the relentless onslaught of accumulating publications while the general public is gasping for air in the never-ending bad news about climate change.
Geopolitics and global hegemonies are focussing mostly on national interests and economic alliances, while climate commitments are just stumbling along. The emergence of climate nationalism is a worrying problem, since it comes with the drive to ensure energy security and economic protections for individual nations that are often at odds with global priorities. Even the most climate progressive countries reject available solutions such as EVs from other countries in order to protect their own industries. For good measure, sustainability and net zero are slogans touted by corporations and countries, often based on technologies that are either not available yet or are not ready for prime time. Progress on net zero and sustainability are not convincingly evident in practice anywhere other than in publications about the fantastic pathways that are being prepared to reach there.
Can academia step up to build bridges across the Valley of Death from climate research to climate solutions? Plenty has been written about the current system for research and rewards and its inability to bring science to societies. The Industrial Revolution set us on a path of innovations that made life easier but without worrying about emissions and environmental damages. It also cemented individual glory as the sole paradigm for defining success. This culture then crept into the world’s research systems smoothly. Academic and research centres of all flavours place emphasis today on individual accomplishments as measured by the number of publications, patents, PhDs trained, or research funding brought in.
Paradoxically, more and more universities are setting up sustainability units with dazzling mission statements about interdisciplinary science, community and stakeholder engagements, and new degrees in sustainability. Industries, corporations, and philanthropic organisations are also happy to pour funds into these spaces to earn credits for supporting climate solutions and sustainability. But there are no clear signs yet of concrete bridges that can be used to cross over from research to solutions and finally to actually implement them in the real world.
The key question is: will the current reward systems focussed on individual accomplishments lead to the bridge being crossed? While there are more and more nominal interdisciplinary project teams, they are based on time-bound fundings; they amass more and more knowledge that does not translate to solutions and just settles at the bottom of the Valley of Death.
Focussed research and community engagement
To actually move from research to solutions in academic systems will take enormous and coordinated efforts between governments, communities, funding agencies, private sector, and academia. One idea is to imagine problem-focussed interdisciplinary research teams that include faculty, researchers, PhD students, governments, communities, NGOs, and the private sector.
For example, if the problem is to help a village with climate adaptation, the team will have to include students, climate scientists, adaptation experts, social scientists, the local government, funding agencies, engineers (both public and private), etc. All sectors from water to food, energy, health, transportation, and infrastructure will have to be represented with experts in each field working together to deliver a complete solution that includes implementation and testing. Such a solution will then have to be codified and published so that it can transferred and implemented elsewhere, as appropriate.
The rewards could then be a series of PhDs, publications and reports, and individual and team awards. Continued community engagement will emerge into living labs on location, which will serve as training grounds for students, NGOs, health and extension workers, as well as government officials. Business and employment opportunities in all sectors of climate adaptation should also be rewarded with continued funding for academia.
This cannot remain a theoretical concept anymore. Academia cannot just preach about a climate crisis and the need for urgent government actions while blaming politicians for being derelict in their duties. Climate scientists must lead by example and meet societies on the other side of the valley of death with actionable research that actually translate into solutions for the present and future.
Raghu Murtugudde is Emeritus Professor, University of Maryland; Visiting Professor, Kotak School of Sustainability, IIT Kanpur.
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