Open Science in a Time of Environmental Crisis
As we enter a period of unprecedented global environmental crises, the importance of environmental research has never been more evident. The new keywords of our time are increasingly worrying: rapid change, adaptation, resilience, tipping points, collapse.
Managing the transition of our societies to new global climates is a major challenge for decision-makers at national and international levels. How to design, implement and monitor effective policies that are economically and socially sustainable in the short term, and environmentally effective in the long term? Over the past centuries, science has provided the knowledge that has led to the current environmental crises (e.g. from the industrial revolution and the use of fossil fuels to the widespread use of chemicals). Today, science is the only way to support a knowledge-based transformation of our energy systems, economy and society in an environmentally and climate-sustainable way.
Promoting knowledge-based transformations is a road full of obstacles that more open science, FAIR data, shared models and interdisciplinary collaboration will help to overcome.
To name a few: the intrinsic complexity of the Earth system, the uncertainty of predictions due to the interconnectedness of the system and the non-linearity of its responses, the mismatch between the time and time scales of actions and effects, and, on the social side, the conflicts and polarisation fostered by the media.
For each of these complexities that limit our ability to deal with environmental crises, to mitigate them, and to understand their impacts, ideas and examples will be presented on how Open Data and Open Science are contributing, and can contribute further.
