Exclusive"Climate does not care about our politics, but our politics will have to adapt to climate" (Ed Carr, SEI)

What does the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from the International Scientific Bodies, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, mean for researchers based in the U.S.?

Perhaps surprisingly, it does not mean much. First, the IPCC is comprised of UN Member States, and the United States remains one of them. It means that U.S. citizens are still able to participate, so the U.S. withdrawal does not change the ability of a scientist to work on the IPCC. The second point is that this administration already removed all of the travel funding that was in place to support any scientist who wanted to work on the IPCC many months ago, before the withdrawal. Second, we have already developed alternative funding sources to support the travel of scientists to these IPCC meetings. Concretely, the only people who might have been affected are the scientists who worked for the U.S. government, as it can tell its employees not to travel to meetings. Practically, this has no impact on any of us. I am supposed to go to an IPCC expert meeting in March, and as I am talking to you, my plans remain the same.

You said you already developed other ways to fund the research travels: what are they and will they be able to fill the funding gap left by the U.S. government funds?

I want to highlight here that the scientists who participate in the IPCC as authors are not paid for their time. The only support we used to get from our government was the funding to travel to IPCC meetings. It was very early in the Spring of 2025 that this administration was not going to provide that financial support anymore. So several organisations, among which ten U.S. institutions, came together in a network called the U.S. Academic Alliance for the IPCC. That body nominates U.S. scientists for the IPCC, which is what you have to do to get someone to become an author, and it has organised funding for the travel of participating scientists. Now, instead of going to the U.S. government through the United States Global Change Research Programme, we have to reach out to the U.S. Academic Alliance for the IPCC.

You declared, last week, "an administration can pull funding, but it can’t erase expertise". But may some of the 66 organisations targeted by the U.S. withdrawal struggle to survive?

I am not familiar with all of the organisations put in that executive order, so I can't speak for a lot of them, because I don't know what kind of financial situation they will find themselves in. What I can say is that there is a large scientific community working on climate change and on biodiversity loss. That community, at least the part that resides in the United States, has spent decades building up expertise and knowledge, building up important research questions, and working to answer them. No matter what this administration does, we will still be here working on those questions, as we think it is important.

It could get harder to do that work. This administration has reshaped the scientific funding landscape dramatically over the past year. There is no question that it is more difficult today to fund research on climate change and biodiversity loss than it was a year ago. It will impact the work that gets done, but the idea that it will simply remove all U.S. expertise from these areas is not going to happen. A lot of us are finding ways to continue doing this work with new partners, philanthropic funding, and partners in other countries. Many of us were already working internationally. I, for example, have spent most of my career working in Sub-Saharan Africa. This will slow down work that is really important at a time when we should be going faster, not slower. It is true, but I strongly believe the scientists in the U.S. will continue to make significant contributions, even at a really difficult time.

Do you fear a "snowball effect" with progressively less research interest in climate change as other topics take the lead of the political and international agenda?

One thing that we have observed is how everything is connected in this world. The U.S. government is not only causing challenges inside the country around funding for its research, but its geopolitical behaviour is creating scientific funding problems, as, for example, NATO countries now feel they have to reprioritise their budgets more toward defence. When they do that, some of that money is coming out of research.

Perhaps some people who were thinking about going into a career working on climate change will decide it is not worth it, and there may be some people working on climate change now who decide that this topic is not something that they can continue working on. It is possible, but climate change and its impacts are real. Every year, we see that those impacts are not confined to distant places anymore. They are impacting people's lives, like how much we pay to insure our houses in the United States, and it's impacting the well-being of people who live near our coasts. It's resulting in more severe storms in the Midwest with tornadoes. People are increasingly aware of this problem.

In the short term, there is a lot of disruption, but I don't think that it will continue in the long-term, because the climate does not care about our politics. The climate is going to do what it does, and our politics will have to adapt to that. It is hard to tell someone who has just seen their insurance costs skyrocket that there is no reason to work on climate change when the insurance companies are openly saying that climate change is making it very difficult for them to insure things now. Climate change contributes to the affordability crisis in the U.S., and people are increasingly understanding that.

What is the political interest behind the removal of funding for research?

One continuous trend with our current government that I don't think people are paying enough attention to is that when you are trying to remove funding for science, what you are really doing is removing evidence. You are reducing our understanding of the world around us, and that makes it impossible to have evidence-based policies. It also makes evidence-based politics impossible, because you don't even have people agreeing on what is happening in the world. Without data, without evidence, it is impossible to have a shared understanding of how the world works.

This administration has been undermining the evidence base for policy since it took power, which is extremely concerning. Because without evidence, people can claim anything they want, make policies in any way they want, and no one can debate with them whether or not it makes sense. If there is a rationale behind this action, it is more than just political signalling. It is trying to remove any evidence that might contradict what this administration wants to do. If I am worried about one lasting impact, it is this change to the culture of policy, and the wilful damage being done to data sets and our ability to gather new data.

In the end, climate change is a problem of politics and people, not a scientific problem. We know what is causing it, and we already have plenty of solutions. It is a question of politics why we are not already implementing those solutions. That part worries me, because this is not something that a scientist has expertise in. This is where we need politicians. This is where we need civil society organisations that are good at this kind of work to step up and help.