July 14, 2026
Perspectives
By Amanda Staudt (American Meteorological Society), Sonia Wang (Data Foundation), Brittany Janis (Open Environmental Data Project and Public Environmental Data Partners), Dhruv Patel-Tupper (Aspen Global Change Institute), Hannah Liddy [AIMES (Future Earth) and Columbia Climate School], Emily Jack-Scott (Aspen Global Change Institute)
The U.S. Earth sciences community is in a pivotal and complicated moment. On the one hand, we have never had more information about our atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, cryosphere, rivers, and lakes. These insights are integral to the fabric of our lives and underpin economic progress. Earth sciences information provides daily benefits to individuals, governments, and corporations, from ensuring public safety and health to driving economic prosperity for companies and communities alike. Decades of federal investments in observations and data, powerful computers and forecasting systems, scientific research, and educational pathways have delivered enormous value to the American public and the world.
At the same time, U.S. federal support for the Earth sciences is declining, putting these capabilities and future advances in jeopardy. Recent shifts in federal priorities are creating acute challenges as government agencies lose staff at unprecedented rates, face significant budget declines, and struggle to disburse grants and contracts to external partners dependent on federal funding. Environmental and climate datasets have also become harder to access, with some discontinued or removed on the grounds that they no longer align with current federal priorities. Tools and public-facing information have been pared back or obscured, making it harder for communities, businesses, and decision-makers to understand the world around them. Programs that simply measure the state of our atmosphere, oceans, and ecosystems are proposed to be zeroed out. Even absent the current challenges, many Earth sciences agencies and critical programs have been contending with flat budgets for decades, perpetuating longer-term capacity gaps in the face of inflation.
This reality neglects the fact that our current Earth sciences capabilities are deeply interconnected and interdependent, spanning the continuum of fundamental scientific research to maintaining operational infrastructure year after year. Remove one piece, and the system degrades in ways that may not be visible until they matter most. For example, a flood forecast draws on observations of precipitation, soil moisture, river flow, and land-use data. Half a dozen agencies, one critical forecast that informs many decisions. What appears to be a simple public service is the product of decades of investment in observations, scientific research, technical infrastructure, and institutional coordination. The same is true of drought forecasts, hurricane warnings, wildfire risk assessments, and countless other products that help people make decisions every day. Making continued progress on the most critical scientific frontiers related to Earth sciences requires sustaining these interconnections and enabling even more deeply collaborative work. Many of the biggest remaining challenges cannot be solved with just one type of disciplinary expertise or small groups of scientists.
So, our community of Earth sciences researchers, practitioners, and users finds itself in this paradoxical moment where our work is more valuable and needed than ever before, but the backbone of federal support for that work is declining, tenuous, and fragmented. Demand for Earth sciences information is growing due to increasing impacts of severe weather, development in vulnerable areas, and population growth. Businesses and communities now need more sophisticated and detailed information for insurance, disclosure, supply chain, planning, and investment-related decisions, even as the very centers and government offices doing cutting-edge research to advance our capabilities are being dismantled.
People rely upon weather forecasts, for example, but have little idea how their own tax dollars provide critical support for the web of invisible, interconnected infrastructure (both human and technical) that makes those forecasts possible. Earth sciences information is a public good that often benefits the public in unseen ways (e.g., how we plan infrastructure, forecasts for farmers and land managers, and community resilience strategies). When open access to information erodes, the risks fall unevenly and the value of decades of strategic public investment is put at risk, at a time when the need for such information is greatest. Meeting this moment will require more than preserving existing capabilities. We must work across disciplines and institutions in more ambitious and novel ways to communicate the value of this work and build a broader understanding as to why it requires steady investment over many years.
Now is the time to mobilize for Earth sciences. Scientists need to re-engage with the American public on how information can be used and improved, build and scale new mechanisms to secure sustained funding, and develop coalition-based strategies designed to meet our shared goals of advancing a resilient and robust Earth science enterprise. A movement for Earth sciences would align and amplify the efforts of disparate entities to advance robust Earth observations, data, forecasts, research, education, and user services.
The seeds of a movement for Earth sciences are already germinating.
In building this movement, the Earth sciences community can learn from the experiences of other social movements, many of which have been studied extensively. Entire journals are devoted to examining what has led to the successes and failures of past movements.1 Successful movements in the past have accommodated a diversity of views and strategies, allowing multiple initiatives to be pursued in parallel toward a shared goal. This large-umbrella, network-of-networks approach that focuses on what we have in common, rather than our differences, is imperative for the modern Earth sciences movement.
As we contend with the potential collapse of past institutions, structures, and approaches for advancing science, we have an opportunity to redesign and rebuild the system in a way that addresses longstanding structural challenges and better serves the societal benefits that emerge from a robust Earth sciences enterprise. New ways to support radical collaboration recognizing the strengths and weaknesses across public and private entities will be key to the success of Earth sciences going forward. Federated systems help build resilience and can strengthen the knowledge commons that underpins our work.
In many ways, the Earth sciences community is ahead of the game. We have long recognized the benefits of collaborative science, and developed institutions and systems to support that kind of work. The Global Change Research Act of 1990 established the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which led the way for interagency coordination, and the National Climate Assessment as a means to connect scientists with users of their research. The Earth sciences community and users of their research have benefited from collaborative funding for decades, through investments such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and other large research labs, Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) centers, and Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs), to name just a few. The weather community has developed strong public-private-academic partnerships that have enabled the overall enterprise to thrive. This transdisciplinarity is increasingly expanding beyond what might be traditionally considered the Earth sciences; engagements with other disciplines, such as social sciences, health, and engineering, as well as with users of scientific research are becoming critical to addressing research and applications frontiers.
However, historical approaches to supporting science that rely primarily on reliable federal funding are struggling to meet the needs going forward. Many current mechanisms for funding science continue to favor narrowly framed, time-bound, discipline-specific projects, reflecting historical agency priorities or structures. These opportunities for deep technical depth are and will continue to be needed. However, as the range of needs across communities and sectors grows, especially for sustained information, federal funding for multidisciplinary, user-oriented centers and initiatives is insufficient. And, those programs that do receive funding often lack incentives or resources to collaborate with other related programs, leaving opportunities for cross-pollination and increased impact underexplored.
To make rapid progress, we need collaborative and coalition-based funding approaches. This could include new ways to help researchers to work with each other and to amplify their collective voices. Or it could include new ways to connect researchers with communities, both to shape and improve usefulness of research, and as a step toward rebuilding public understanding of and trust in science. These approaches can help funders see how a range of coordinated investments can align to support a whole that is greater than its parts. It also means moving away from short grant cycles toward longer time horizons and funding structures that incentivize contribution to shared infrastructure, rather than individual ownership of it.
Furthermore, we need to find constructive ways that for-profit companies and corporate foundations can engage with and support the broader community. These companies have a vested interest in the success of the Earth sciences. In many cases, their business models rely on sustained investment in freely available public observations, data, and modeling capabilities and the creative outputs of the research community. We need new systems and institutions that help for-profit entities contribute their extensive expertise and capacity toward shared goals for a thriving Earth sciences enterprise.
Movement generosity is the practice of working together with a range of partners toward shared goals, in a manner that pools access to and use of financial resources, insights, contacts, and convening power. Partners who practice movement generosity share intelligence, are proactive in connecting people, and are thoughtful in how they convene to support each other. In other words, the concept means using what you already have—networks, know-how, legitimacy, access—to support a broader movement. We believe that movement generosity should underpin a movement to reinvent how institutions sustain Earth sciences and put information to work in service of society.
The idea of movement generosity emerged from the inaugural convening that shaped Climate Reserve. In July 2025, the Aspen Global Change Institute convened thought partners spanning climate science, science policy, and community engagement to explore ways to sustain climate-related expertise and infrastructure amidst significant disruption, while also reinventing how the climate community approaches longstanding structural barriers. Among this group, there was collective and immediate interest to move forward in sustained collaboration, working across historic silos to have an impact greater than the sum of individual partner efforts. What emerged was a bottom-up, coalition-driven effort that is redirecting philanthropic dollars and climate expertise to the places where we can still meaningfully advance how we act on climate science to build toward a more sustainable planet.
In a time of rapidly shifting funding availability, it can be easy to adopt a scarcity mindset and become protective of one’s limited resources. We need to avoid this trap and instead strive for a collective impact mindset. Movement generosity embraces the notion that better ideas, a more vibrant professional community, stronger outcomes, and more effective use of resources result from active sharing and collaboration. It encourages shifting focus from the resources and capacities available to a single organization, working with its typical funders and audiences, to the resources and capacities accessed by many across the coalition, setting sights on larger goals that can be accomplished through collective action.
Practicing movement generosity rests upon clear and open communication among partners. Effective collaboration toward shared goals requires a foundation of detailed understanding of each others’ capacities, goals, and constraints. Partners must invest significant time in developing and deepening their understanding of each other to enable shared strategic planning about how best to leverage the capacities across partners. Furthermore, regular and transparent communication is essential to building trust among partners, which in turn creates conditions that enable greater transparency. Relationships must be nurtured in an ongoing manner, recognizing the activities within each partner organization are constantly evolving in response to new needs and opportunities.
Practicing movement generosity is a commitment to radical collaboration. With knowledge of what other organizations bring, each partner must actively consider where their own initiatives can best contribute to shared goals and, conversely, where others are better able to carry forward a particular activity. In other words, each organization needs to be vigilant to watch for the tendency to try to do it all, and instead look for ways that they can uplift or partner with others that may be better situated. Each partner bears a responsibility to marshal their own activities so as not to encroach on areas where other organizations are already poised to lead. At the same time, partners should contribute actively to shared infrastructure, providing data, labor, funding, or convening power as they are able, even when those contributions don’t return obvious credit to their own organization.The trust engendered between groups by being more transparent about their goals and capacities needs to be honored by not using shared insights or good ideas for one’s own benefit at the expense of others.
Our experiences over the last year have reaffirmed a strong conviction that we need a robust ecosystem of institutions to build a robust ecosystem of Earth observations and data, forecasts and decision-support tools, research and innovation, and education and workforce development pathways. Building a robust ecosystem of institutions requires sustained collective action:
What has most inspired and sustained us over the last year has been the way that people and institutions across the Earth sciences have been coming together. We are having challenging conversations, building trust, and enabling innovation. We are practicing movement generosity as we build new collaborations and coalitions. These experiences have convinced us that, together, we can build something more durable, more coordinated, more resilient, and more bold than what existed before.
The future of Earth sciences will not be secured by any one agency or institution, but by whether we choose to act together with the urgency, imagination, and generosity that this moment demands.
While we take full responsibility for the ideas expressed here, we are grateful for the contributions of many generous colleagues in shaping our thinking and providing helpful feedback on drafts of this manuscript. In particular, we extend our gratitude to: James Arnott, Paul Higgins, Deb Morrison, Amanda Purcell, Kimberly Roberson, Alan Sealls, Aparna Shrivastava, Rick Spinrad, Cecile Toubeau, and Julie Vano.
We are also grateful to the many colleagues across our communities who have embodied movement generosity over the past year—often without realizing it—through their willingness to share expertise, make connections, offer advice, and support one another. The conversations that emerged across these communities, from the Climate Reserve network to the many working groups confronting potential losses of Earth system data, created the conditions for new ideas to take root and for this work to evolve.