Multidisciplinary science funding is more than ever a planetary priority: reflections from the Make Our Planet Great Again (MOPGA) program
Christina Richards, Barbara Ervens, Camille Parmesan, Pierre Amato, Christhel Andrade, Gayane Asatryan, Venkatramani Balaji, Ashley Ballantyne, Marc Barbier, Stéphane Blanc, Oliver Bossdorf, Frédéric Bouchard, Julien Boucharel, Christopher Cantrell, Emilie Capron, Chloe Carbonne, Marion Carrier, Davide Ceratti, Heechae Choi, Konstantinos Christoforodis, James Clark, Ludmila Cojocaru, Louis Derry, William Dewar, Titouan Dubo, Jhan-Carlo Espinoza, Alexey Fedorov, Alessandro Forte, Giuliano Giambastiani, Alessandra Giannini, Andreas Goldthau, Alberto González-García, Virginie Guemas, Lorie Hamelin, Eric Hill, Amir Hoveyda, Lara Hughes-Allan, Sanjay Jatav, Ugo Javourez, Jed Kaplan, Nilanka Keppetipola, Rainer Kiko, Thomas Lauvaux, David Lazarus, Carol Eunmi Lee, Redouane Lguensat, Philippe Lucas-Picher, Monalisa Mallick, Joenio Marques da Costa, Irina Melnikova, Guillaume Monnain, Volkan Özen, Ignacio Palomo, Madalin Parepa, Anna Possner, Delphine Renard, Valéry Ridde, Orestes Rivada-Wheelaghan, Gabrielle Rodrigues de Faria, Benjamin Sanderson, Clemens Scheer, Philip Schulz, Stavana Strutz, R Subramanian, Katsumasa Tanaka, Núria Teixidó, Matthias Tesche, Helmuth Thomas, Sara Todorović, Yutsung Tsai, Bruno Turnheim, Takaya Uchida, Vincent Vadez, Pierre Valla, Isolde van Riemsdijk, Lionel Villard, Emmanuel Vincent, Chien Wang, Henry Wu, Michael Zuerch
Global change poses “wicked problems” that have become ever more complex, pervasive, and damaging. Developing innovative solutions increasingly require diverse research approaches. The Franco-German Make Our Planet Great Again (MOPGA) program was designed to create a unique international network of top-level research, from fundamental to solution-oriented projects. MOPGA stands out from other large research initiatives by focusing not on a singular central research challenge but on facilitating multidisciplinary interactions between traditionally separated fields. MOPGA recognized that social, natural and engineering sciences share a unifying aim to address global change. In addition to addressing timely and innovative research questions within disciplines, MOPGA worked to improve communication across disciplines via annual meetings for all laureates and their research groups, scientific board exchanges, and public online seminars. Drawing on our MOPGA experiences, we discuss how such exchanges should be extended to meet the needs identified by the scientific community, international policy-makers, and regional stakeholders. In the current political landscape of scientific suppression and heightened mistrust in scientific expertise, the need for such bold, independent and collaborative scientific initiatives is greater than ever.