What are the emerging trends and gaps in research on climate change and sustainability?

Interdisciplinary approaches to Earth climate research are well underway today. The field of environmental communication has emerged and is evolving. Universities offer courses specifically about environmental policy, there are environmental law programs, and climate scientists do collaborate across disciplines (e.g. technological development and quality assurance/effectiveness research). One of the main barriers is all the red tape; many scientists want to collaborate but their institutions don’t allow it or don’t offer a simple path for doing so. Scientists also need to justify every minor bit of funding they receive and cannot explore outside that scope when inspired, for example.

As a strategist and designer, I see the need for integrating climate and sustainability research into the design and product / system planning field. Adequately preparing early in career designers and product professionals can help them (and us all!) make important design choices that can make or break the sustainability of everyday systems, from transport and supply chain, to shipping, to the actual products themselves. Excited to see this field integrate more.

I believe we are under utilising cloud computing, and machine learning to optimise our response, from a global perspective. Better data leads to better outcomes. This requires international co-operation free from the prejudices of nation states and United Nations attitudes to developed and developing countries.

Who are the stakeholders here? Who are the “users and beneficiaries of research”? That’s too broad. There’s the general public, who won’t be applying research as is implied here, then there’s companies like energy suppliers who would apply the research. It’s unclear what the message is here in this section, and it makes climate science sound like an emerging field with no real vision.

As Courtney mentioned below, equity and accessibility must be considered in how the solutions are crafted. A good researcher knows that diversity and inclusivity should be a cornerstone of data collection and solutioning, but many who create policies and solutions ignore very real exclusions and barriers that are "unseen" due to status quo.

Another crucial piece that must be mentioned is environmental racism. Those who decide policy related to environmental concerns and those who study environmental impact need to consider the ways in which people of color are excluded from the narrative. Both to avoid doing that in the future and to re-assess existing policies and infrastructure. “Impact and outreach” has to emphasize seeking out feedback from stakeholders in low-income or vulnerable areas as well. Historically these people have been ignored and their communities have suffered the brunt of both climate change and disasters - like the train derailment in East Palestine - that arise because people in power dictate where the tracks go (NIMBY-ism).

More should be done to fund solar cells research - commercially viable cells are, though commendable in the progress we have made, are still at 20-23%. Harvesting the sun's output is still the most viable energy source out there at the moment.

This is exactly right. Most funding is too small to fund research for years. Grants also tend to fund projects, not people, so it can be hard to create and maintain research groups that work on problems together. Long-term funding is often not all that long term, but is on the order of ~2–5 years before renewing is necessary. In which case, the renewal process takes away from the research being done.

This has only worsened since the pandemic, when this toxic feedback loop strengthened: anti-vaccine advocates were amplified by fake news which went mainstream which grew the anti-vax population etc. Policy should follow scientific evidence, not money, not opinion.

This section on “things to do” goes beyond things scientists should do and into things that lobbyists, policymakers, local government officials, and the media should do. I think it’s important to point those individual groups out. Doing so would also speak to the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach to climate change research.

Time to tear down the silos. American research is so anti collaborative, so turf defensive and ethically deficient. Research should be done to seek truth, not profit.