Equity in climate scholarship: a manifesto for action

The 2021 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: code red for a healthy future

“…Additionally, of the 1000 scholars listed by Reuters as the most influential on climate change, only 122 were women. 33 There is an urgent need for gender-sensitive responses to the health dimensions of climate change. These responses are underpinned by the collection and reporting of data that is sufficiently disaggregated, granular, and intersectional to reveal local inequities-eg, data disaggregated not only by gender but also by geography, age, ethnicity, class, and other markers of marginalisation and vulnerability.…”

Funding flows for climate change research on Africa: where do they come from and where do they go?

“…Climate change is increasingly framed as both a form and a product of colonization. Schipper et al (2021) have noted the persistence of inequitable partnerships and colonial models of scientific practice, where researchers from the Global North often claim senior authorship rights, and researchers from the Global South are relegated to the status of local research assistants and data collectors. Our findings extend this notion to climate change research funding in Africa which also follows geographies of colonial legacy and locates power unequally, privileging researchers at institutions in Europe and the USA.…”

“…This article is also relevant for several other branches of literature: on climate change as both a product and form of colonialism (Abimbola et al, 2021;Gram-Hanssen et al, 2021); on the role of developing country researchers in joint research, the power to set research agendas and the decolonization of science (Schipper et al, 2021;Trisos et al, 2021); on the importance of colonial legacies such as languages for current funding flows; on the allocations of climate change research funding on grounds of vulnerability, exposure or risk (Chen et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2018;Kling et al, 2021;Sarkodie & Strezov, 2018); and on biases such as the 'streetlight effect' in climate research involving developing countries (Hendrix, 2017). In the course of the article, we relate our analysis and findings to all these issue areas.…”

Shifting power through climate research: applying decolonial methodologies

“…A second way forward, in the context of a preliminary literature review, is to actively include indigenous schools and scholars from the Global South for future citation. Scholars from the Global South seldom receive the same recognition as scholars from the Global North, even for studies on climate change in the Global South (Schipper et al, 2021). More generally, it is important to recognize that secondary data sources are representative of the methods used to collect, store and analyse Unequal power dynamics must be addressed from the start: when researchers apply for funding.…”