This summer, the impacts of climate change are being felt all over the world — including record-breaking heat waves in the U.S., South America, Europe, and Asia, intense wildfires in Hawaii and Canada, widespread flooding in India and Pakistan, and 100-degree ocean temperatures off the coast of Florida. 2023 is on track to be the warmest year ever recorded.  

As addressing the climate crisis becomes increasingly urgent, the National Academies held a summit in July to kick off Climate Crossroads — a major new initiative to help the nation meet the challenges of climate change by harnessing the full complement of expertise and skills across the Academies and catalyzing actions among a more diverse range of stakeholders and decision-makers.  

“Convergence is exactly what we need to embrace to address this climate emergency,” said National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt. “We need to reach out to the biomedical community to talk about climate change in terms of personal health, to engineering to talk about new technology, and to the social scientists to motivate people to take action.” 

The summit brought together climate researchers, executives in business and philanthropy, and community organizers deeply involved in supporting those who are already grappling with the negative impacts of climate change. “It’s been really nice to step outside and to reach across disciplines, because I think that’s absolutely what’s needed in order to tackle a super wicked problem like climate change,” said Angel Hsu, assistant professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  

New Partnerships to Drive Climate Action
Proactive leadership on climate requires knowledge and insight from partners across the social, economic, and governmental spectrum. “What got us here isn’t going to get us there, and we need an additional partner at the table,” said Lucas Joppa, chief sustainability officer at Haveli Investments, in response to a question about private actors setting their own climate standards amid continued resistance to regulation from certain sectors. “We need to think about how we can meaningfully incentivize or regulate people to no longer emit egregious amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.” 

Instead of trying to create brand new partnerships or “reinventing the wheel,” those seeking to act on climate should start with the frameworks that are already in place, said Sacoby Wilson, professor and director of community engagement, environmental justice, and health at the University of Maryland. “There’s a lot of infrastructure that’s already out there, and I think it’s important to engage with that infrastructure,” he said. By identifying the existing relationships between nonprofits, governments, foundations, and communities, scientists can communicate knowledge through trusted channels and “then bring additional resources or expertise to fill the gap.” 

Sustained Community Engagement
Creating new partnerships is just the first step toward ensuring increased impact of the National Academies’ climate work. Sustained, productive relationships with communities and other stakeholders that have historically been left out of conversations about climate change will help make sure their actual needs are met. 

“It’s about asking communities what they’d like to accomplish and then being an ally in accomplishing those things in ways that are good for the community, good for the Earth, and good for science,” said Raj Pandya, vice president for community science and director of the Thriving Earth Exchange at the American Geophysical Union. “Sometimes working with and beginning with community priorities is a pragmatic choice.”  

Stakeholders also bring their own essential knowledge to the fight against climate change. “Communities are knowledge producers, so I think there’s some value there in trying to think about what it would mean if we put both types of knowledges on the same platform,” said Miriam Gay-Antaki, associate director of the University of New Mexico’s Center for Community Geography.  

“This is a real opportunity for us to listen to and center the work around those who are most vulnerable and susceptible to climate impacts,” said Amanda Staudt, director of the National Academies’ Climate Crossroads initiative. 

A strong focus on how climate change affects human health and well-being is also essential, said National Academy of Medicine President Victor Dzau. “When we first started on this about four years ago, not a lot of people talked about climate change and human health … and consequently we decided that something needs to be done,” Dzau commented during the opening panel. “[We] just want to shine a light on the human toll — what you care about — and this is why we got involved.”  

A Strategy for the Future
“The people that are going to solve our problems are probably not in the audience today,” said National Academy of Engineering President John Anderson, pointing out the importance of providing future generations the support needed to fully address climate change for decades to come. 

Along these lines, the National Academies laid out a plan for climate leadership in the years ahead. One of the initiative’s first efforts is the Climate Crossroads Congressional Fellowship, a program in its inaugural year aimed at providing current congressional staff with a solid grounding in the science, engineering, and health dimensions of climate change.  

The work of Climate Crossroads will be guided by an advisory committee representing the wealth of disciplines and expertise needed to capture the scope of climate change — including climate science and impacts, the science of social change, human and planetary health, energy policy and economics, environmental law and justice, and journalism and communications.  

“There’s an opportunity for us to accelerate action by … bringing different disciplines together to combine their expertise, bringing different sectors together to co-develop future pathways, and bringing communities together to learn from each other,” said Staudt.  

Related Resources 

• Climate Crossroads Summit 

• Climate Resources at the National Academies