TY - JOUR
AU - Collins, Scott L
AB - Climate change is widely regarded by the scientific community as a significant threat to human health and well-being. Scientific evidence for human-caused climate change is beyond dispute. Nevertheless, on 1 June 2017, President Donald J. Trump announced that the United States would unilaterally withdraw from the Paris climate accord. This announcement would make the United States the only country in the world to not sign onto the Paris accord. Apparently, this was part of Trump's strategy to Make America Great Again. Shortly after Trump's announcement, Emmanuel Macron, the new president of France, denounced Trump's decision and announced that climate researchers were welcome in France. To put some substance behind that invitation, Macron announced a new funding competition, which he called Make Our Planet Great Again, or MOPGA (www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpvUFeILOdM), available to scientists in other countries willing to move their research programs to France. The total amount of funding available is €30 million. Shortly thereafter, a request for proposals (RFP) was quickly developed and issued, with the first set of submissions due 1 October 2017 (www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/fileadmin/aap/2017/aap-ia-mopga-2017-en.pdf). The RFP called for research in three general areas: Earth system sciences, climate and sustainability sciences, and energy transition. Investigators were to develop proposals in collaboration with scientists at government and academic institutions in France. On 12 December 2017, Macron hosted a One Planet Summit in Paris, to which he invited business and political leaders. Arnold Schwarzenegger was invited. Trump was not. Macron announced the first set of 18 winning projects during this summit, and not surprisingly, many of the awardees were currently based in the United States. The awards are 3–5 years long and range from €1 million to €1.5 million. Although announcements of research awards are not normally newsworthy, the outcome of the initial competition received widespread coverage not just in the typical science media but also from CNN, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Fortune.com, The Hill, CBS News, and so on. In some cases, reporters reached out to the principal investigators to ask what motivated them to apply for and accept the awards. Often, the explicit message was the desire to work in a country that values science. Why am I reporting here on MOPGA? I had the privilege of serving as part of the complex review process organized by Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR; the French National Research Agency). The initial applicants were screened by Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS; the French National Center for Scientific Research) scientists on the basis of accomplishments to date. Proposals were then invited from a subset of initial applicants. These proposals received expert peer review. Then, the proposals and reviews were evaluated once again by a high-level committee to make final funding recommendations. So those receiving awards really had to survive a very rigorous review gauntlet. It was certainly an honor for me to be part of a research program that so explicitly respected and valued science. I do not know whether President Trump will Make America Great Again for all of us, and I doubt that €30 million will Make Our Planet Great Again. But I nonetheless admire Macron and the French scientific community for this initiative. Vive la France! © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - Making Our Planet Great Again
JF - BioScience
DO - 10.1093/biosci/biy004
DA - 2018-02-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/making-our-planet-great-again-5yi8DN6hZX
SP - 51
EP - 51
VL - 68
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -