Fighting for the Facts
“We aren’t just fighting climate change anymore — we’re fighting for the right to use facts to solve it.”
Editor’s Note: Every so often, a piece of science writing lands with the clarity of a warning bell that reverberates in your mind. The publication of Robert McDonald and colleagues’ new study in Nature Sustainability is one of those moments. They warn that the global framework sustaining environmental progress—i.e., the shared trust in science and international cooperation—is cracking under political pressure.
I asked Rob, a longtime friend and former colleague from The Nature Conservancy, to unpack what’s happening, why it matters, and what we can do about it.
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“The foundation of our work—objective science and global cooperation—is being dismantled by a rising tide of autocratization.” So writes Rob McDonald and his coauthors, as they argue that
that the very basis of the sustainability movement is under threat.
In their article, “Uncharted Political Waters for Sustainability”, they explain that for decades, two big assumptions guided the field:
- That the environment is a global entity that we can measure objectively, and
- That the world’s biggest problems demand multilateral solutions—through institutions like the IPCC or the Paris Agreement.
But this bedrock foundation is now being eroded. Their paper tracks a decline in the Academic Freedom Index (AFI) and deliberative governance in many countries and argues that we are experiencing a “retreat from reason.” As governments grow skeptical of inconvenient data and dismissive of international forums, the science-to-policy pipeline breaks.
That’s why I’m especially glad Rob has agreed to talk with us about this research and what it means for those of us committed to science-based environmental progress. This timely challenge deserves our full attention. And it begs the question—what are we going to do about it?