Collaborative research: core support for future earth capacity and engagement in international global change research

This $652,363 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) supports capacity building and engagement activities for U.S. scientists conducting global change research through Future Earth. Future Earth will provide strategic communications, publications like the award-winning Anthropocene magazine, and convenings like the Sustainability Research and Innovation Congress to connect the global scientific community studying sustainability challenges. It will also continue the Earth Leadership Program to train mid-career scientists in sustainability science leadership. This funding will allow Future Earth, led by the non-profit organization based in Fort Collins, Colorado, to further its mission of ensuring the results of global change research impact broader decision-making worldwide through expanded outreach and collaborations between the natural, social and engineering sciences and stakeholders.

Abstract

This project supports future earth to provide capacity building and engagement activities for US scientists working in global change research. Future earth harnesses the insights and capacity of the global scientific community to address global problems and ensures that the results of this work extend beyond academic communities and impact broader decision processes. Future earth efforts are based on the recognition that modern sustainability challenges require coordinated research efforts bringing together the world's best researchers in the natural, social, behavioral, and engineering sciences, and connecting these researchers with the needs and capacities embedded within a wide range of stakeholder institutions and communities. Future earth?S global initiatives, include a flagship capacity building program (earth leadership program), far reaching communications products (anthropocene magazine), and strong collaborative data-platforms. By elevating the spread and impact of scientific results and connecting these results with constituencies in business, government, and civil society, future earth?S work supports better decision making around the world. This work also connects US researchers with a vast and rapidly growing network of leading international scholars in global change research and provides direct access to new knowledge and initiatives. Much of this work is supported through strategic communications that extends the reach of sustainability science published around the world, and delivers the very best global science in the right format, and at the correct time, to shape global outcomes. This project will include the publication of the award-winning anthropocene magazine which consistently brings the very best sustainability science to the broadest possible audience around the world, and the establishment of the sustainability research and innovation congress - the first global convening supporting global connections between sustainability science and innovation communities around the world on an annual basis. Finally, future earth will continue leading the earth leadership program, which builds on the 20 years of success of the leopold leadership program, and focuses on training diverse cohorts of high-impact mid-career scientists to reach beyond their disciplinary expertise to become sustainability science leaders. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.