Our Recently Funded Research Projects
Higher Education’s Role Accelerating Climate Action in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)
Partner/Funder:
Research Fellow:
Marco Antonio Berger García
In 2020, Second Nature partnered with Partners of the Americas to convene a group of leaders representing a wide variety of sectors, countries and regions in Latin America and the Caribbean to discuss how higher education institutions could help accelerate climate action. We were supporting research to synthesize the initial findings of the initial “Co-Creation Committee,” and supplement these findings with additional research.
Read the final report in English and Spanish.
Public Perception about Higher Education’s Role in Accelerating Climate Action in the US
Partner/Funder:
In 2021, we worked with Ohio State University and Rutgers University to develop a survey deployed to the American Population Panel to to test public perception about the role of higher education institutions in accelerating climate action. This will allow us to understand the values that currently exist in the public, to understand where there may be mismatches with what is currently happening or possible for higher education, and to establish a baseline for tracking changes in that opinion over time.
Impact of Shifting Federal Priorities of Climate Research Enterprise
Partner/Funder:
Research Fellows:
April T. Burrage
Anna Goldstein
This research project assessed how new federal investments in climate and energy research can have the most impactful results on the academic research ecosystem, and how senior leadership in higher education can support institutional research enterprise designs that align with the goals of these investments.
Researchers compiled and analyzed a dataset of over 1800 recently awarded federal climate solution grants to universities and colleges, totaling $1.42 billion dollars, and performed stakeholder interviews with key federal and higher education leaders to produce five recommendations.
The final report The Future of Academic Research on Climate Solutions, which was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and produced in collaboration with researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Energy Transition Institute, evaluates the current climate research landscape supported by the and highlights key levers to improve the effectiveness of academic research for climate solutions. Read the report here.
Questions about any of these projects? Contact us.