“Sustainability scientists and environmentalists must defend academic freedom”

Rising global autocratization (centralization of government power that limits political freedom) is putting sustainability science and science-based environmental policymaking at risk. This is the message of a new commentary in Nature Sustainability that argues that declining academic freedom now undermine the very foundations on which global environmental action depends.

“Protecting objective, science-based data will require new forms of international collaboration that are free from undue national government influence, as well as public defence of the unique role that objective, science-based data can play in environmental policymaking,” says Thomas Elmqvist, Centre professor and co-author of the study.

Elmqvist and his co-authors, Robert McDonald, Dagmar Haase and David Maddox, note that sustainability science emerged during an exceptional period from the 1980s to the 2010s, when academic freedom and international cooperation expanded and enabled major global environmental agreements. Since around 2010, however, these conditions have weakened, with more countries moving towards autocratic governance and restricting universities, civil society and independent research. Currently, autocratization is going on in 42 countries home to 2.8 billion people, while democratization is taking place in only 18 countries.

This shift challenges two core assumptions of sustainability science: that the state of the global environment can be assessed objectively through international scientific collaboration, and that global environmental problems require multinational, science-informed solutions.

In some countries, scientists are increasingly portrayed as political elites and empirical evidence is sometimes even dismissed as just another opinion. Against this backdrop, the commentary concludes that sustainability scientists and policymakers cannot remain passive.

“We do not believe that sustainability scientists and environmental policymakers can simply carry on and keep our heads down,” they write.

On the contrary, the authors strongly urge both scientists and policymakers to react to the political tide by actively supporting academic freedom, scientific integrity and dialogue on sustainability.

While local action may be effective for some issues, global challenges such as climate change still require strong international collaboration and active defence of academic freedom and scientific integrity.