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  • Falling enrolments and funding cuts force Australian universities to take stock

    Falling enrolments and funding cuts force Australian universities to take stock

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    The John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University, one of the universities that researchers fear will be negatively affected if international student caps are enforced.Credit: Kokkai Ng/Getty

    The release of the 2025 Times Higher Education global rankings in October painted a bleak picture of the Australian university sector. Many of the country’s leading universities saw their scores plunge in metrics related to reputation, international collaboration and ability to attract international talent. In the Nature Index 2024 Research Leaders, released in June, it was a similar story: Australia dropped out of the top 10 countries for authorship in high-quality natural- and health-science journals for the first time since 2018.

    Since emerging from the pandemic, Australian universities have faced growing pressures. Declining enrolments, planned caps on international student numbers, rising costs and administration fees and an abandoned research-evaluation platform have created an atmosphere of uncertainty. The drop in rankings is a warning: the sector seems to be in trouble.

    “Since 2020, record numbers of universities have reported deficits,” says Andrew Norton, who studies higher-education policy at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. In 2022, two-thirds of Australia’s 38 publicly funded universities were in deficit, and preliminary data suggest similar figures for 2023. A decade ago, it was one. Student numbers are also a concern. In 2021, total enrolments in Australian universities fell for the first time since 1954, although this was mostly an effect of pandemic-related travel restrictions on international students. The following year, enrolments fell again, but this time, it was different: domestic student numbers were in freefall.

    Nature Index 2024 Australia

    Against this backdrop, the Australian government performed a wide-ranging review of the sector, culminating in the release of the Australian Universities Accord in February1. The report called for sweeping changes to meet the nation’s current and emerging social, economic and environmental challenges and provided a blueprint for change, with 47 major recommendations. Australian research, it stated, is highly regarded and globally connected, but the nation “doesn’t utilise the full potential of its university research as a source of innovation”.

    Realizing that potential will be difficult. Shifting policy conditions, a declining demand for higher education domestically and rising salaries are putting extra strain on a system that is already close to breaking point. The mood, according to Norton, is gloomy. “Some universities will do better than others, finding alternative revenue sources and managing the resources they have more effectively,” he says. “But overall, I see no grounds for optimism at the sector level.”

    Others see it differently. Merlin Crossley, deputy vice-chancellor of academic quality at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, the second-ranked Australian institution in the Nature Index, after the University of Queensland in Brisbane, says the recommendations in the Universities Accord provide great ideas to help turn things around. He points to the strength of the student body and junior academics, and says he believes the country has a deep commitment to knowledge. But, in the face of confusing new policies and changing investment priorities, will that be enough?

    Tip of the cap

    Front of mind for Australian universities is a federally mandated international student cap. Announced in May, the plan is designed to manage the growth of international students, whose numbers skyrocketed to a ten-year high in 2023, coinciding with rising rents and fewer available homes. It’s intended to distribute more international students to less prestigious institutions and those in rural areas, which aligns with recommendations from the Universities Accord to find ways to support them better.

    The cap would kick in at the beginning of 2025, pending parliamentary approval by 1 January. Although the bill was originally supported by the opposition Coalition government, a surprise announcement in early November revealed the Coalition party intends to vote against the bill. Universities and other educational institutes have spent months planning for the caps, assuming they would be implemented.

    The caps would limit new international student enrolments in higher education and vocational education courses across Australia to an estimated 270,000 for the year, down 53,000, compared with 2023. Caps for institutions are calculated based on existing international student numbers; universities with low percentages of international students would be allocated higher international student caps than universities with higher percentages, many of which would face cuts. Australia’s highest ranked, most research-intensive universities — including the Group of Eight institutions that are responsible for more than 70% of the country’s research output — would face cuts in international student numbers. Monash University in Melbourne, for example, which is ranked third in the Nature Index in Australia, would have its international enrolments capped at 10,000 in 2025. The university exceeded 10,000 new international enrolments in 2024, and it had forecast a further increase in 2025.

    Many researchers have criticized the plan, raising doubts that it would work as intended. In a commentary for The Conversation in August, Norton says the caps could lead to a situation in which some universities are forced to reject international students who they would have otherwise enrolled while others fail to fill their quotas. Norton says it’s likely that many prospective students will abandon plans to come to Australia if they can’t get into their chosen institutions and adds that the plan is unlikely to improve housing availability as intended. A report by the Student Accommodation Council, an industry group, found that international students in Australia make up just 4% of the total rental market. Alec Webb, chief executive of the Regional Universities Network, which represents seven universities primarily from regional Australia, told the Sydney Morning Herald in September that although the student caps seem to allow growth for some regional universities, they are still well below pre-pandemic levels.

    International students are crucial to the Australian higher-education sector. In 2022, their tuition fees amounted to Aus$8.6 billion (US$5.68 billion), which represents more than one-quarter of all university revenue. A fall in revenue from international students would be felt keenly by Australian researchers, with nearly 60% of Australia’s basic research expenditure coming via its universities as of 2020, compared with the United States, at 47%, and the United Kingdom, at 43%.

    “The idea of continually increasing international enrolments to cover the growing costs of research infrastructure was never sustainable, so I welcome some attention to this,” says Crossley. “That said, I wasn’t expecting cuts to international student numbers. If the cuts are as rapid as planned, that will have a detrimental effect on Australia’s research capacity, sovereign capability, prosperity and even, perhaps, our culture of curiosity — if we cannot find a way of bolstering the sector.”

    Mike Ryan, interim deputy vice-chancellor of research and senior vice-president at Monash, says the university understands the importance of managing immigration, but that international student caps are “the wrong approach”. He notes that the caps would impact university budgets in 2025, which would require “difficult decisions” on how to prioritize spending.

    Investing in the future

    The international student cap highlights broader challenges facing Australian universities, including an uneven spread of resources among institutions that are competing for dwindling funds. “In Australia, spending on research and development is already at its lowest ever share of gross domestic product (GDP),” says Ryan. In 2021–22, Australia spent Aus$38 billion, or 1.68% of GDP, on research, down from approximately 2.25% of GDP in 2008–09. This is well below the average of 2.7% of GDP for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations. The United States, by comparison, spent 3.5% of its GDP in 2021–22, and Japan spent 3%.

    Researchers in basic science are concerned that the government’s increasing focus on translational research — which has long been a weakness for Australia — will further undermine the future of their work. In 2023, the Australian government committed Aus$2.2 billion to bulk up translational research, creating programmes that foster connection between sectors. Questions remain over where the talent will come from to carry out this research, particularly in light of the international student caps. A survey of 660 early to mid-career academics in health and medicine across Australia, published by Monash University and the University of Melbourne earlier this year, found there were high rates of burnout, bullying and harassment among the group, and a growing unease about career stability. Fewer than 17% of respondents said they would recommend that a new graduate take an academic path.

    Kelly Kirkland, a psychologist at the University of Queensland, who helped prepare the survey, says there were deep frustrations in the early and mid-career researcher communities, which could have lasting effects. “As job prospects narrow, many are looking abroad or considering leaving academia altogether, which could result in a ‘brain drain’ that would really impact the quality of Australian research in the long run,” she says.

    The need for greater funding security for early and mid-career researchers was highlighted by the Universities Accord, which recommended increasing competitive government grants that run for five years or more. It also urged the government to make research training more attractive by increasing stipends and providing tax breaks to part-time trainees. In May, the Australian government announced a Aus$430 million grants initiative for early and mid-career researchers in health and medical fields.

    A changing research landscape

    Funding challenges and student caps aside, the Australian research system is in a state of flux. A replacement for the national research evaluation and assessment frameworks that were scrapped in late 2022 by the government has yet to materialize. The Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) framework, developed and administered by the Australian Research Council (ARC) for a decade, scored universities on their research performance and research impact against global benchmarks. The scheme was unpopular among many university staff and researchers because of the burden it placed on resources and administration, and the way it pitted researchers, institutions and research fields against each other. An ERA Transition Working Group is drawing up the new framework, but there is no timeline for when it will be announced.

    It’s a rare opportunity for a country to completely rewrite its research evaluation system (see Nature 617, 437; 2023) and it comes at a time when many countries are considering what kind of research they want to value and reward. Depending on how Australia writes and rolls out its new system, it has the potential to position itself as a global leader in the space — something that the Universities Accord highlights as a priority, noting the absence of a “coordinated, future-focused and evidence-based, decision-making capacity” in the sector over the past 20 years.

    Ryan says there is an increasing focus on responsible research practices among Australian institutions, which should be reflected in research assessment practices. Institutions are taking measures to improve diversity and inclusion, and are engaging more frequently with local and minority communities to ensure that they have a say in research that affects them. The Universities Accord urges the sector to bolster First Nations’ involvement in the system, for example, by ensuring that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are in leadership positions to influence policy-writing, funding and programmes.

    According to Emma Lee, a trawlwulwuy woman of tebrakunna country, in northeast Tasmania, and a sociologist at Federation University in Victoria, “There are some amazing federal government policies and strategies that are genuinely elevating Indigenous commercial and conservation acumen as central to Australia’s economic future.” Lee highlights the Sustainable Ocean Plan, a government initiative to manage and protect Australia’s marine environment, as an example of strong collaborative work. She notes how the Australian Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water has centred Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the project and says their consultation work highlights the importance of informing food security and conservation policies with Indigenous ecological knowledge. She also points to the importance of collaborating with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to achieve Australia’s legislated target of net zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, and says some good work is being done in the fisheries and farming sectors.

    There is a concern, Lee adds, that research by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is “so overwhelmingly underfunded” compared with the impact that Indigenous knowledge is expected to provide across all streams of Australia’s national science and research priorities. The turmoil that the research sector is experiencing right now could an opportunity for Australia to elevate Indigenous knowledge more fairly, she says. Upheaval can open “new ways of undertaking collaborative research and injecting innovation” across higher education, says Lee. “If not now, then when?’

    Crossley is also hopeful that the sector can build strength and says the suggested changes to research funding in the Universities Accord is a great place to start. Those suggestions — which include bulking up investment in basic research, attracting more students by removing barriers to research training and implementing fairer stipends — could help plot a path towards a more sustainable future for Australian research.

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  • Australia must boost R&D investment to reclaim global research standing

    Australia must boost R&D investment to reclaim global research standing

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    Sun shining through clouds onto sea. Cliffs at the right hand side, and several rocks visible in the waves near the shore

    The Apostles, Great Ocean Road, in Victoria, Australia.Credit: The Eternity Photography/Getty

    Australia’s exit from the Nature Index top ten — falling to 12th in the 2024 Research Leaders — will be unsurprising to those following the struggles of its research sector.

    During the mining boom of the early 2000s, Australia’s research and development (R&D) intensity, a term to describe R&D expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), was at its peak. But it has since been in steady decline, bucking the trend of other major Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies. Whereas the average R&D intensity of the OECD group grew from 2.3% of GDP in 2008 to 2.7% in 2021, Australia’s dropped from 2.25% in 2009 to 1.68% in 2022, its lowest level in 20 years.

    Nature Index 2024 Australia

    At the same time, Australian universities, which undertook 36% of the country’s total R&D and 87% of its basic research in 2020, are in dire straits. The government’s decision to cap international student enrolments, a policy set to kick in next year, will force many of its most prestigious and research-intensive universities to recruit fewer students than in previous years — a major blow to their revenues given the high tuition fees that foreign students pay. This might further hamper their ability to invest in research, while also thwarting access to future scientific talent. Critics warn that the cap is unlikely to ease the pressure on the country’s housing market or funnel more students to less renowned and regional universities, as intended. However, it will be interesting to see if a scarcity of places actually bolsters prestige at some institutions and drives up the value of Australian degrees within China — the country’s largest market for international students.

    Australia has a lot of work to do to strengthen its global standing in science, but it also needs domestic improvements in the way Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are engaged with in research. There are positive movements on this front, but it will take real initiative from institutions to change entrenched systems and attitudes towards collaboration and data-sharing. The knowledge and expertise of First Nations people are increasingly being used to inform studies in the environmental sciences and other areas. Measures to ensure that this is done respectfully and responsibly are crucial if Australia wants to elevate the quality and impact of its research.

    This article is part of Nature Index 2024 Australia, an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content. For more information about Nature Index, see the homepage.

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  • life scientists react to Trump’s election victory

    life scientists react to Trump’s election victory

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    US President-elect Donald Trump parts the curtains onstage to speak at an election night event.

    Donald Trump will take office on 20 January 2025.Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

    The re-election of Donald Trump as US president raises the prospect of big changes in US science, in terms of policy, funding and research. Nature asked six life scientists which priorities they’d like to see the administration focus on once Trump takes office in January next year.

    AMANDER CLARK: Support education and reproductive care

    Portrait of Amander Clark.

    Amander Clark implores Donald Trump to not dismantle the Department of Education.Credit: Don Liebig

    Policy promises that president-elect Donald Trump made on his campaign trail stand to affect my professional life greatly — both as a professor at a public university and a principal investigator of a stem-cell laboratory. Now that the election is over, I am eager to learn which of those promises will come to fruition.

    On the topic of education, I would urge Trump to not dismantle the Department of Education, as he has proposed. Instead, he should consider ways to enable students to attend university without going into debt — for instance, expanding funding for federal Pell grants, which are awarded to students in financial need. At the University of California, Los Angeles, where I work, we are committed to supporting first-generation college students and under-represented populations to provide them with the tools that are needed for success.

    How the world will weather Trump’s withdrawal from global agreements

    On science funding, I would implore the incoming president to raise funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to a level that is consistent with the cost of doing science. After the last increase to the NIH budget in 2023, funding levels were 1.8% less than they were 20 years ago, when adjusted for inflation (see go.nature.com/3uvk5rr). Asking scientists to do more with less stifles creativity and poses a threat to the United States’ position as a world leader in biomedical research and innovation.

    And, finally, on reproductive health and science, I urge Trump to support basic research. For too long, federal policies have restricted the ability of scientists to develop technologies that can improve fertility care, and to research ways to expand contraceptive choices, eliminate reproductive diseases and promote healthy reproductive ageing. As a result, individuals and their families remain burdened by unaffordable and inaccessible reproductive treatments, including in vitro fertilization (IVF).

    In October, Trump recognized the value and importance of IVF to millions of Americans. I hope he will prioritize policies that will expand access to reproductive care and IVF and guarantee that this care is available for all.

    ERIC TOPOL: Embrace medical AI

    Portrait of Eric Topol

    Eric Topol hopes that the incoming administration can provide funding for artificial-intelligence technology to help transform US health care.Credit: Scripps Research

    Health care in the United States is remarkably inefficient and is plagued by millions of serious diagnostic errors each year. It has a lack of clinicians, pervasive inequities and the worst outcomes of any rich country for life expectancy and maternal and infant mortality.

    Yet, we are on the brink of a seismic shift. Soon, it will be possible to use multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) to integrate all of a person’s data into one model — their electronic health record, laboratory tests, genome, social determinants of health, environmental exposures and more. The incoming Trump administration should provide financial backing for this technology, to accelerate AI’s transformation of US health care.

    Scientists must hold President Trump to account with courage and unity

    Unimodal AI, which analyses just one data type, has already been shown to significantly improve the accuracy with which physicians can interpret medical data, such as scans and pathology samples (E. J. Topol Nature Med. 25, 44–56; 2019). It can also substantially reduce the time that physicians need to spend on administrative work — such as dealing with insurance companies and note taking — so that they have more time to focus on patient engagement and care.

    Multimodal AI models, which integrate several data types, have the potential to do much more. For instance, it’s hoped that they will enable more-accurate diagnoses. These tools will use technologies such as digital twins — virtual models of a person — to optimize treatments and outcomes. They will be capable of personalized medical forecasting, helping to prevent age-related diseases. These models might also reduce the need for hospital stays by enabling people to be monitored remotely.

    The opportunities that lie ahead are extraordinary — improved efficiency, productivity, accuracy and outcomes and hugely reduced health-care costs. Still, more testing in real-world medical settings is needed. This clinical research is essential not only to validate AI models and fulfil regulatory requirements, but also to work out how multimodal AI can be used in ways that preserve an individual’s privacy and security, avoid bias and reduce health inequities. The government should make such work a priority.

    HANK GREELY: Protect patients

    Portrait of Henry T. Greely.

    Hank Greely is concerned that Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts could decimate biomedical research.Credit: Eleanor Greely

    I work on ethical, legal and social issues arising from the biosciences. The Trump administration’s top priority in this area should be to reassure people that the federal government will continue to support bioscience research, while maintaining the regulations needed to avoid exploitation of — and harm to — consumers and people receiving care. Uncertainty about what is to come, fed by statements such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s message that the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” can cause great damage even if threatened actions are not implemented. It can demoralize those who seek to improve public health, encourage people to retire or change careers and devastate public confidence in scientifically proven medical and public-health measures.

    ‘We need to be ready for a new world’: scientists globally react to Trump election

    I have three main concerns about the incoming administration’s effects on bioscience and medicine.

    First, some people in its coalition could attempt to ban or restrict some useful things that they consider to be immoral — including fetal tissue research, embryo research, discarding of IVF embryos, preimplantation genetic testing to select healthier embryos, interstate transportation of abortion pills and more.

    Second, the administration might decide to protect company profits over the interests of people receiving medical care and consumers, and as a consequence it could gut regulations that protect people by preventing the sale of harmful or ineffective drugs, medical devices, nutritional supplements and a broad range of other unproven practices. The administration has the power not only to change an array of laws and regulations, but also to cripple the agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that enforce them.

    Third, it could decimate biomedical research if Trump’s administration really makes huge cuts in the federal budget — even if those cuts fall short of the US$2 trillion that Elon Musk says could be slashed. This would mean a slowdown in the research of life-improving and life-saving innovations — at least in the United States — not immediately, but inevitably, and soon. US health statistics are already bad enough; the new president shouldn’t act to make them worse. I will be (pleasantly) shocked if the incoming administration avoids that result.

    SALIM S. ABDOOL KARIM & QUARRAISHA ABDOOL KARIM: Prepare for the next pandemic

    Portrait of Salim S. Abdool Karim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim.

    Quarraisha Abdool Karim and Salim S. Abdool Karim urge Trump to fund pandemic prevention.Credit: Elana Schilz

    The world has seen first hand how pandemics can affect livelihoods and derail even the best-laid economic plans. In our view, three current epidemics have pandemic potential: AIDS, mpox and antimicrobial-resistant organisms. Respiratory pathogens such as influenza, along with coronaviruses and resurgent, vaccine-preventable measles, are also cause for concern, as highlighted by the World Health Organization (WHO; see go.nature.com/4fvcj22).

    Combating these pandemic threats will require a worldwide effort, in which the United States should have a leading role. We urge the incoming Trump administration to invest in pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, in the United States and globally.

    What Trump’s election win could mean for AI, climate and health

    First, the administration should provide more funding to the WHO, especially its Health Emergencies Programme. This would help the WHO to undertake effective pathogen surveillance around the world, generate information about possible future pandemics and deploy teams that can respond to emerging pandemic threats across the world — a key line of defence.

    Second, it should support the US Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, which was established in 2023 to advise the president and ensure that the United States can respond to a pandemic threat effectively. In practice, this means giving the office the necessary funding, authority and autonomy to develop evidence-based plans.

    Third, the administration should ensure that the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are financially supported in their aim of ending AIDS as a public-health threat by 2030 — one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. George W. Bush’s administration demonstrated bold leadership in creating PEPFAR in 2003. The programme needs secure support up to 2030, at least, to build on its global gains and complete its mission.

    The incoming administration has articulated bold economic plans — but these could be at risk if a pandemic emerges. The best time to stop a pandemic is before it becomes one.

    RAMANAN LAXMINARAYAN: Be smarter with antibiotics

    Portrait of Ramanan Laxminarayan

    Ramanan Laxminarayan advocates for improving access to effective antibiotics.Credit: Ramanan Laxminarayan

    In Trump’s first presidency, much progress was made in biomedical sciences. NIH funding grew by nearly one-third in nominal terms, for instance — I don’t see funding decreasing significantly in the coming years.

    And consider Operation Warp Speed. This public–private partnership, initiated in May 2020, incentivized pharmaceutical companies to take risks to expedite the development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics to fight COVID-19.

    The issue of antimicrobial resistance is particularly close to my heart, owing to my work with the One Health Trust, which is a public-health organization that addresses the interconnected world of humans, animals and environmental health. In my view, the first Trump administration gave this issue no more or less attention than the preceding or succeeding Democratic administrations.

    This time around, improving access to effective antibiotics — both in the United States and globally — should be the single biggest priority for the incoming administration.

    Drug-resistant pathogens don’t respect country borders. So it is in the United States’ best interests to ensure that, around the world, antibiotics are used only when appropriate. A programme on the scale of PEPFAR could improve diagnostics, surveillance of antibiotic-resistant microbes and guidance around antibiotic use in low- and lower-middle-income countries in Africa and Asia. Funding for the development of AI and other digital tools could enhance the usability of point-of-care diagnostics, and ensure that the correct antibiotics are used in the correct situations and in the best ways.

    Financing access to antibiotics globally could help small US biotechnology companies that make these drugs to survive and thrive. This, in turn, will benefit people in the United States who desperately need new antibiotics, because the companies will have more money available for drug development.

    We sometimes — incorrectly — equate impact with spending. For less than US$1 billion dollars a year, the US government could transform access to existing and new antibiotics worldwide.

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  • How ‘Made in China 2025’ helped supercharge scientific development in China’s cities

    How ‘Made in China 2025’ helped supercharge scientific development in China’s cities

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    Chinese female wearing blue hat and white coat is working on a factory production line.

    A worker tests a charging pile at a workshop for a new energy company in Hefei, China.Credit: NurPhoto/Getty

    One of the fastest growing cities in China, Hefei is catching up to Beijing and Shanghai as a buzzing centre of innovation. In just a few years, the city has replaced vast swathes of farmland with sprawling technology parks and scientific facilities, and much of its high-tech industry has moved away from sourcing equipment and components from overseas to producing them in-house. In the past decade alone, Hefei has managed to double its economic output to around US$140 billion.

    Key to Hefei’s success is Made in China (MIC2025), a national policy launched in 2015 and due to end next year. The overarching goal of MIC2025 is to move China away from being the ‘world’s factory’ for cheap, low-value products and transform it into a manufacturer of high-tech, innovative goods and services in areas such as information technology, ocean engineering and aerospace equipment. As part of this initiative, China set itself the goal of becoming 70% self-sufficient across key industries. Official numbers on MIC2025’s progress are scarce, but there are hints that many of its targets have been met, particularly in renewable energy and biopharmaceuticals, says Julian Mueller, a researcher who focuses on supply-chain management at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. “I would say China has succeeded,” he says.

    Nature Index 2024 Science cities

    The engines driving China’s success are its cities, many of which have become specialists in strategic areas. Hefei, for example, has become the country’s electric-vehicle capital, Shanghai is a hotspot for biopharmaceuticals, and Urumqi is home to the world’s biggest solar farm. But despite China’s rapid progress towards achieving its MIC2025 goals, many hurdles remain.

    The policy’s focus on self-reliance and elevating China to a more competitive position in the global technology market has triggered a backlash from other countries, most notably the United States, which in 2018 launched a trade war against China in the form of increased tariffs, sanctions and more recently, an artificial intelligence (AI) chip ban. Such restrictions could make it difficult for China to meet its MIC2025 targets in areas of relative weakness, including semiconductors, high-precision machinery and new materials, says Marina Zhang, an innovation researcher who specializes in China at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Some researchers also worry that China’s focus on areas that align with the government’s priorities might stifle creativity among scientists.

    A sustainable future

    China’s universities have been fundamental to achieving its MIC2025 goals, because they supply the talent and expertise that its high-tech industries need, says Zhang. Government initiatives to attract foreign researchers and entice Chinese researchers to return home are helping to boost China’s performance in innovation areas, as are incentives for universities and research institutes to apply for patents and establish more industry collaborations. Today, China leads the world in patent application numbers, picking up four times more AI-related patents than the United States in 2022.

    China’s growth in new energy vehicle (NEV) production — a key goal of MIC2025 — shows how rapidly the country can dominate a market. By next year, China aims to have domestically produced NEVs (a category that includes any electrified vehicle, including hybrid, battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles) account for more than 80% of the domestic market. It’s also pushing for NEV manufacturers to develop and manufacture all of their components in-house. Few cities have responded to this challenge quite like Hefei. The city’s government has established innovation platforms and incubators, such as the Hefei Innovation Industrial Park and the Hefei NEV Innovation Center, which provide funding support to start-ups companies to help them break into the market. The government’s policies also encourage collaboration between enterprises and universities or research institutes. Such partnerships, particularly with the University of Science and Technology of China, one of the city’s leading universities, have played a pivotal role in transforming scientific achievements into technological innovations, says Zhang. “It’s a city-centred, regional-based innovation ecosystem,” she says.

    In the first half of 2024, Hefei produced more than 500,000 NEVs, a jump of around 67% on the previous year. Many vehicle companies have received generous backing from the Hefei government; in 2020, it poured almost $1 billion of investment funds into Chinese car manufacturer NIO, and in 2021, it took just 23 days to negotiate with BYD, another of the country’s major vehicle companies, over the establishment of an expansive factory in the city.

    China accounts for more than half of all new electric cars sold globally, but geopolitical tensions are threatening to undermine its success. This year, the US government imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicle imports, which was closely followed by a 37.6% tariff from the European Union, raising concerns that China now has an overcapacity in the space.

    Aligning with China’s broader goals of reducing its reliance on fossil fuels, MIC2025 is pushing for renewable energy equipment and energy-storage devices to account for more than 80% of the Chinese market. Rapid progress has been made in photovoltaic solar cell production, in particular. At the time of MIC2025’s launch, China relied on other countries for key materials and essential components of photovoltaic cells. Today, it’s responsible for 80% of the world’s solar cell exports and hosts the 10 leading suppliers of solar-cell manufacturing equipment globally. China is also now home to the world’s largest solar farm, by capacity: the Urumqi Solar Farm, in the northwestern city of Urumqi. With more than 5 million photovoltaic panels spread over an area roughly the size of New York City, the facility can generate enough power to keep a small country running for a year.

    A biopharma innovation machine

    Biopharmaceuticals and medical devices are another focus area for MIC2025. Goals include boosting the number of China-developed drugs that are registered in other countries and bringing as many as 30 new medications to market by 2025. Helen Chen, who heads life sciences and health care at LEK Consulting, a global strategy and management consulting firm in Shanghai, says MIC2025’s biopharmaceutical targets have been “substantially met”, with many Chinese-developed assets being picked up by international companies and life-science venture-capital firms. “The biopharma sector in China is clearly moving towards innovation,” says Chen.

    Line of orange robot arms in a factory, all holding rectangular glass panels.

    Robots work on the production line of a factory producing flat glass for solar panels in Urumqi, in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.Credit: Feature China/Getty

    Among the cities, Beijing, Zhejiang and Chengdu are big players in biomedical research, but Shanghai is a standout. A popular destination for both local and international scientists, Shanghai has more than 3,000 life-science companies that employ at least 270,000 people, according to LEK research. One-quarter of China’s life-sciences and medicine researchers work in Shanghai, which in 2022 invested $15 billion in R&D. The ingredients for Shanghai’s success are a mix of infrastructure and financial incentives from the local commerce bureau, says Chen, including free lease of land for companies, tax rebates for international talent and support for equipment purchase. Zhangjiang Science City, an area of Shanghai that covers almost 100 square kilometres, hosts more than 400 biomedicine companies, 100 R&D institutes and 40 contract research organizations and is the site of the regional headquarters of several of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Roche.

    In August, the Shanghai government announced that it will offer around $4 billion in subsidies for biomedicine companies that are conducting clinical trials. Soon after, it released a set of guidelines to accelerate Shanghai’s clinical research system and biopharmaceutical industry. The goals include establishing up to four clinical-research platforms by 2025 and forging collaborative links across medical institutions, universities and research institutes. The aim is speed up the translation of fundamental research, particularly in areas such as genomics, synthetic biology and gene editing.

    Renewable energy factories

    Although MIC2025 has brought certain industries to the forefront of technological innovation, China has bottlenecks in some important areas, such as semiconductors, says Zhang. The semiconductor industry is highly complex and involves an extensive web of collaborations between research institutions and industry, and among various industry sectors, she says. Even before the US-led chip ban came into effect, China lacked a robust local market for homegrown semiconductors, along with the research to support them. Chinese firms and research institutes have intensified their collaborative efforts in semiconductor development since the US export controls, which restricted access to imported technologies and products, but China still lags behind others owing to a talent gap and a lack of access to key materials and tools, says Zhang.

    Several Chinese universities have answered the call to build the country’s semiconductor capabilities and workforce. In 2021, a dozen universities — including heavyweights Tsinghua University and Peking University in Beijing — established schools dedicated to integrated circuits. But there is still a way to go before these efforts will bear enough fruit to bring China up to speed with other countries, says Erik Baark, a social scientist who studies China’s innovation policies at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

    “Developing talent in such a sector takes some time, maybe even a decade,” he says.

    China is also slower to adopt the use of high-end machine tools, which are key to innovative manufacturing. Although the country’s advanced machine tool industry has made strides over the past decade, the domestic sector still uses less sophisticated equipment, trailing behind other countries by around 15 years, according to a 2020 study produced by the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Another report published in September by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a non-profit policy think tank in Washington DC, noted that China still imports more than 90% of its machine tool components. Foreign companies also make up around 70% of China’s medium-end machine tool industry.

    Questions have been raised over MIC2025’s overall effect on innovation. A 2024 study that examined how MIC2025 has impacted Chinese companies that were targeted by the policy found that it has had little effect on their productivity and patents, despite these firms increasing their R&D efforts and receiving more innovation subsidies. China’s top-down approach may also hinder researchers’ ability to innovate because they are more intent on working on government priorities over their own basic research interests, says Baark. “We should respect the need for autonomy and advanced creativity in the work of academics,” he says. “If so, they are likely to be able to contribute even more to China’s future.”

    Finding a balance between scientific breakthroughs and innovation with a practical outcome will require restructuring incentives so they encourage both, adds Zhang. This would involve developing more clear-cut definitions for intellectual-property ownership in academic–industry partnerships

    The end of MIC2025 is fast-approaching, and China has its sights set on becoming a leading innovative nation by 2035, says Baark. The country’s 15th Five-Year Plan, which will be implemented in 2026, will probably boost China’s momentum towards high-tech goals beyond MIC2025, he adds, but points out that local governments might be less eager to spend big on new initiatives owing to economic challenges, such as stagnating income from the property sector.

    Zhang expects that China will continue playing to its strengths in NEVs, renewable energy and biopharmaceuticals, while also pouring more investment into semiconductors and high-precision machinery. “This may involve a greater emphasis on enhancing China’s position in global supply chains and promoting industrial upgrading and technological innovation,” she says.

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  • How the world will weather Trump’s withdrawal from global agreements

    How the world will weather Trump’s withdrawal from global agreements

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    Although less of a bolt from the blue than his first win in 2016, Donald Trump’s victory in this year’s US presidential election could be much more consequential. Trump 2.0 will begin with more political power than Trump 1.0: this time, Trump won the popular vote and his party has a majority in both houses of Congress. The US electorate chose Trump with its eyes wide open and in greater numbers.

    Trump’s presidency will have huge reverberations for international policy. We don’t yet know to what degree his administration will follow through on threats of pursuing an isolationist, transactional foreign policy. But strategies can be devised to counter the worst consequences.

    Trump’s shadow looms at climate summit: what COP29 could deliver

    After the Second World War, the United States was a chief backer of today’s rules-based international order. In commerce, that approach is reflected in the World Trade Organization. Other organizations promote international cooperation in sectors such as science, finance, investment, aviation, shipping and development assistance.

    International agreements are rarely enforced, but they work because governments and investors think it is more important to align their behaviours to the agreements’ rules than to skirt these norms. For decades, members of global trade regimes nearly always followed the rules — for instance, to avoid self-serving tariffs — because, with open markets, almost everyone gets bigger benefits than they would if nations just followed their narrow self-interests.

    Solar panels are inexpensive and ubiquitous today because innovations made anywhere have quickly been scaled up into new products that can be sold worldwide. But triumphs of globalization are contributing to its undoing, as supporters of open markets that are losing out are, like Trump, seeking to favour their local industries instead.

    Many countries’ support for global order is already wavering. And Trump’s presidency will put those political drivers on steroids. His proposal to impose stiff tariffs on all Chinese imports, for example, would drive up costs in the United States and reduce the ability of US firms to gain access to innovations, including those needed to cut industrial greenhouse-gas emissions.

    What Trump’s election win could mean for AI, climate and health

    The dangers of these nationalist approaches can escalate quickly as governments and firms lose confidence that their interactions are governed by rules, not raw power and transaction. For similar reasons, the economic shocks of the 1920s and 1930s caused a global economic depression and eventually a war. The current climate is not yet the same, because the global economy is more diverse and ideas move more quickly and are harder to control than in the past. But history is beginning to rhyme.

    Threats similar to those in commerce also imperil other areas, such as the Paris climate agreement, in which cooperation is essential. Trump 1.0 pulled out of the Paris agreement (although his successor, President Joe Biden, rejoined it). Trump 2.0 will probably do so again, perhaps on Trump’s first day in power.

    Whether this exit breaks or merely bends the Paris agreement will depend on how the rest of the world responds. Countries that remain aligned with the Paris agreement must band together to show what ‘we are still in’ means in practice. Rather than giving thumping speeches, they should lay out concrete actions with observable outcomes.

    This time, a united front will be harder to achieve. The international climate-policy agenda is focused on topics, such as climate finance, that are already at risk of diplomatic deadlocks. Few donors are willing to pay into big climate funds; few nations have concrete plans detailing how best to use that funding or engage with private investors so that the impact of donor funds can be amplified.

    It will be easy to blame diplomatic failures on the US exit when the bigger problem is the lack of workable guidance for how these funds can be used effectively and how to increase involvement from private investors. The countries that support the Paris agreement should focus not on pointing fingers, but on how to deliver climate finance.

    Global warming is on the cusp of crucial 1.5 °C threshold, suggest ice-core data

    Frankly, given the likely effects of Trump 2.0, a US exit from the Paris agreement could be beneficial — it would remove US diplomats from the meetings, preventing their political briefs and their nation’s refusal to cooperate with the rest of the world from sowing chaos.

    In the United States, political activists should greet the Trump presidency with ways to compromise across the ideological spectrum — for example, by emphasizing nuclear power, solar energy and carbon capture as technologies that might garner support across political divides. Forging coalitions can help to make US climate policies durable.

    Trump’s election also necessitates thinking about ways of international cooperation that emphasize actors beyond the federal government — in the individual states and the private sector — that can take outsized roles when Washington turns away from global agendas. Within days of the election, California governor Gavin Newsom called a special session of the state’s legislature to plan its countermoves. Other states will probably follow.

    What happens in climate policy will need to be replicated in other areas, including science. A pragmatic approach on climate change can provide a road map — and leave a potentially hostile administration on the sidelines until the political climate changes once again.

    Competing Interests

    The author declares no competing interests.

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  • Why we need a body to oversee how science is used by governments

    Why we need a body to oversee how science is used by governments

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    Science and Politics Ian Boyd Polity (2024)

    Say what you really think, Sir Ian. Politics attracts people who are comfortable with “lying” and “manufacturing social truth” and who “do not distinguish between fantasy and reality”, Ian Boyd notes in his book Science and Politics. Moreover, many scientists are falling “for the wisdom of crowds”, “following the money” or, worse, indulging in the “evil” of normative research by designing studies to confirm their preferences. Borrowing former US president Barack Obama’s scathing comment about lawyers, the author labels many of those researchers as “highly credentialed, high-IQ morons”.

    AI tools as science policy advisers? The potential and the pitfalls

    In short, I loved this book. In Science and Politics, Boyd — an ecologist and former adviser to the UK government — weaves together anecdote and reason to unpick the “troubled marriage” between research and government. He offers insights into life inside the “policy factory” as a participant and, frequently, a frustrated observer. His narrative never shies away from robust language, yet it somehow retains an upbeat tenor throughout.

    The relationship between science and politics is, Boyd laments, “too much theory and too little practice”. Boyd is very much a practitioner of science advice, having spent seven years (2012–19) as chief scientific adviser at the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). He also had a key role in developing science-advisory structures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    I overlapped with Boyd’s tenure at Defra while I was leading the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, the UK Parliament’s in-house source of research analysis. For years, I asked science and policy researchers how we could provide better advice, but the answers were rarely useful. This book, with its shamelessly practical bent, would have helped a lot.

    There’s much in here, too, that tallies with my current role as a practice-focused academic who helps executives and legislatures to improve their use of evidence in decision making. Government clients usually ask me how they should design systems and processes. Although that is important, my starting point focuses on how to improve institutional cultures and the quality of staff.

    How to spend one trillion dollars: the US decarbonization conundrum

    Boyd agrees, and shares example after example of how, in the UK government, the truth is too often considered toxic and politicians and civil servants are unqualified or unable to hear it. For example, one senior civil servant told him how it was their job “to keep science advisers in their ‘boxes’”. Boyd recalls the “horror” on one UK cabinet minister’s face when he tried to explain something in theoretical terms.

    While acknowledging flaws in the system, Boyd notes the benefits of the UK model of having chief scientific advisers in each ministry — individuals who are responsible for bringing research evidence to bear on policy. It won’t work when there is a bad adviser in the post, but a good one can be very effective at honing policy options, identifying unintended consequences and stopping bad ideas.

    The rise of AI in policy

    Looking to the future, Boyd flags how artificial intelligence (AI) promises to alter the functioning of government institutions. For example, ‘digital twins’ are increasingly used to test policy options. These are computer models that mimic complex systems associated with, for instance, agriculture, ecology or public health.

    AI tools will also put evidence scoping and synthesis into the hands of mainstream policymakers, an advance that will surely be a headache for science advisers (see C. Tyler et al. Nature 622, 27–30; 2023). It is easy to imagine how political figures might use AI tools to produce ‘policy-based evidence’ rather than ‘evidence-based policy’.

    Until now, advisers have been responsible for delivering or contextualizing scientific evidence and understanding its nuances. This isn’t always easy, or popular. For example, Boyd reflects on how he was politically exposed for having to explain weaknesses in opposing evidence syntheses on the role of badgers in the spread of bovine tuberculosis. In a room filled with the most senior politicians, civil servants and the president of the farming union, Boyd overruled approvals for two badger culls, which led to “an embarrassing climb-down by the politicians”.

    Close-up of a male badger with open cage in a wood, with a tree trunk on the right side.

    Badgers can be vaccinated against bovine tuberculosis as an alternative to culling them.Credit: NPL/Alamy

    Because AI tools make more-advanced modes of decision-making more attainable — such as real-time policy testing that produces feedback leading to better outcomes — advisers will need to increase their monitoring efforts to maintain the standards of people who use science but who are not trained in it.

    How can scientific rigour be maintained? Boyd recommends establishing a science office, modelled on the UK Office for National Statistics or the UK Office for Budget Responsibility, that holds policymakers and science advisers to account in their use of research. This is not a new idea, but it is the most high-profile argument I have seen for it so far.

    Such a statutory authority would enforce a system of internationally accepted standards, such as “follow the guidance of science” and “formally state your reasoning if you choose to depart from that guidance”. The latter part exists in several documents, including the UK ministerial code. Debate over upholding these standards will be lively, but resolvable.

    Decision makers need constantly updated evidence synthesis

    Yet Boyd feels that the current guidance lacks teeth. He professes to feeling “coercion to conform to the current political will” and feared a “dark space” where he could “control policies by tilting the ‘evidence’”. He argues that it would have been preferable, as a scientist working in policy, to be responsible to an external authority.

    Serious thought would be required to ensure that a scientific authority does not seem to be a form of technocracy aimed at overturning democracy. Boyd suggests a renewed commitment to “open science” and “scientific freedoms” and calls for making the scientists of this body visible. In my view, such a body would also do well to adopt modes of social-scientific research that involve public participation.

    After finishing Science and Politics, and despite its horror stories about the peddling of “hocus-pocus” by “charlatans”, I still felt upbeat. Boyd reflects that bringing science to bear on policymaking is important because there is societal value in “merging reality with aspiration”. This is an apt description of this book and a fabulous summary of Boyd’s career.

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  • Major biomedical funder NIH poised for massive reform under Trump 2.0

    Major biomedical funder NIH poised for massive reform under Trump 2.0

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    An aerial view of the National Institutes of Health campus buildings in 2022.

    The US National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland, is composed of 27 institutes and centres.Credit: Duane Lempke (CC0)

    The world’s largest public funder of biomedical research seems poised for a major overhaul in the next few years.

    US funders to tighten oversight of controversial ‘gain-of-function’ research

    Proposals from both chambers of the US Congress, as well as comments made by the incoming administration of US president-elect Donald Trump show that there is significant appetite to reform the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its US$47-billion research portfolio. What’s less clear is how this transformation will unfold; proposals have included everything from shrinking the number of institutes by half to replacing a subset of the agency’s staff members.

    Reflecting this increased scrutiny by the government, on 12 November, the NIH launched a series of meetings at which an advisory group of agency insiders and external scientists will consider the various proposals and offer its own recommendations for reforms.

    It will be a mad dash to the finish line among these parties in terms of whose vision will win out, says Jennifer Zeitzer, who leads the public-affairs office at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Rockville, Maryland. “There’s absolutely movement on Capitol Hill to discuss how to optimize and reform the NIH,” she says. “We now also have the agency participating in that conversation.”

    Shrinking and cutting

    The NIH advisory meeting comes in the wake of Republicans winning control of both chambers of Congress and the White House for 2025. This year, two separate legislative proposals to reform the agency were put forward by Republican congressional members — one led by representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington State and one by senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. These proposals have in part been fuelled by discontent over the agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the perception that its oversight of research on potentially risky pathogens has been lax.

    McMorris Rodgers’s plan would collapse the number of institutes and centres at the NIH from 27 to 15, allow its parent agency to cancel any grant determined to be a threat to national security, impose a 5-year term limit on institute directors that can be renewed only once and enact stricter oversight of research involving risky pathogens. For his part, Cassidy, who is set to become the chair of the US Senate’s committee charged with overseeing health issues in 2025, said that he would introduce more transparency into processes that the agency uses to review research grant proposals.

    If these plans — which are laid out in white papers — come to pass, they would represent the first major reform of the NIH in nearly 20 years. The last time an overhaul happened, in 2006, the US Congress passed the legislation with bipartisan support, establishing a review board and requiring the agency to send updates to lawmakers every two years. The same support from both sides of the political aisle is unlikely to happen with the proposals currently under consideration, however.

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at an event before the U.S. elections in 2024.

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, was picked by US president-elect Donald Trump to lead the US Department of Health and Humans Services. He will need to be confirmed by the US Senate to assume that office.Credit: Bryan Dozier/Variety via Getty

    The NIH has been a frequent target of Trump and his Republican and other allies. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who Trump has chosen to run the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — the NIH’s parent agency — said in 2023 that he would seek an eight-year pause for infectious-diseases research at the NIH so that the biomedical funder can instead focus on chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity. He also said on 9 November that he would seek to replace 600 employees at the NIH. (Neither Trump nor his appointees can currently fire career staff members at the agency, whose jobs are protected by law, but that might change if Trump makes good on a promise to reclassify the federal workforce.)

    Harold Varmus, a cancer researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and a former head of the NIH, tells Nature that he is “alarmed” by Kennedy’s comments. “We may need congressional Republicans and even Democrats who are traditional supporters of NIH to speak up for the agency and its importance for public health.”

    Dash to the finish line

    At this week’s meeting of the NIH’s advisory committee, called the Scientific Management Review Board (SMRB), panel members met for the first time since 2015 to review the agency’s structure and research portfolio and to provide recommendations to the NIH director and the HHS. Congress requested that the agency kick-start this process.

    New NIH chief opens up about risky pathogens, postdoc salaries and the year ahead

    NIH officials hope that the group will meet five more times during the next calendar year so that they could draft a report of their findings and recommendations by November 2025. This ambitious timeline suggests that “there’s a recognition that the SMRB is going to have to move quickly to catch up with Congress, or risk Congress making decisions that they don’t like”, Zeitzer says.

    In fact, several committee members noted their trepidation during the 12 November meeting that Congress would act before the group delivers its report. Kate Klimczak, the NIH’s director of the office of legislative policy and analysis, tried to reassure the committee: “the authors of the different [congressional] proposals clearly wanted this board to be re-established and wanted this board to do their work,” she said. “We have to take them at their word that they’re looking forward to getting [a report] from you.”

    NIH director Monica Bertagnolli, who will probably resign before Trump takes office, noted her disapproval with the proposals to collapse the number of institutes. She said that the current system offers people with diseases and patient-advocacy groups the ability to coordinate with a dedicated institute for their cause, for instance the National Institute of Mental Health or the National Institute on Aging. “If we were to collapse, we would definitely lose something in terms of our engagement with the public,” she said.

    It’s unclear what direction the SMRB will go with its recommendations, but there were hints at the meeting. Several panellists were taken aback by the legislative proposals. For example, the McMorris Rodgers white paper says that “decades of nonstrategic and uncoordinated growth created a system ripe for stagnant leadership, research duplication, gaps, misconduct and undue influence” at the NIH. James Hildreth, president of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, called this language “almost offensive”. He added: “I know we’re not supposed to allow politics to creep into what we do, but how could it not?”

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  • Trump’s shadow looms at climate summit: what COP29 could deliver

    Trump’s shadow looms at climate summit: what COP29 could deliver

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    Attendees watch a speech onstage at the opening of the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan.

    The COP29 climate summit, where negotiators from more than 200 nations will meet, opened on 11 November.Credit: Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty

    Extreme storms fuelled by climate change have wreaked havoc across the world in 2024, including in Brazil and the Philippines. The average annual temperature for the globe could reach 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels for the first time this year. But another worrying development for many attending this week’s United Nations climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, will probably be the re-election of Donald Trump as US president.

    What Trump’s election win could mean for AI, climate and health

    The last time Trump was in the White House, beginning in 2017, he pulled the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, a pact that governments made to prevent Earth from warming more than 1.5–2 °C by curbing their emissions. The US president-elect is expected to do the same after entering office next year. This is already casting a shadow over the 29th UN climate conference of the parties (COP29) as representatives from nearly 200 countries gather to discuss financial aid for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) vulnerable to global warming. The summit runs from 11-22 November.

    Negotiating a strong agreement without the United States — the world’s largest economy and its second-largest greenhouse-gas emitter — will be “very difficult”, says Niklas Höhne, a climate policy expert and co-founder of the NewClimate Institute in Cologne, Germany.

    Here, Nature takes a look at what is on the agenda at COP29.

    Another US exit

    When the Paris agreement was inked, world leaders included a provision that any party seeking to leave the pact would have to wait until three years after it entered into force. This meant that Trump could not pull the United States out of the agreement officially until 4 November 2020. When US President Joe Biden succeeded Trump a little over two months later, he signed the paperwork to rejoin the agreement.

    How to recover when a climate disaster destroys your city

    This time around, the exit process will take only one year, but observers say the damage is in many ways already done. Trump’s election signifies that the United States is unlikely to keep its pledge, made under Biden, to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 50% below 2005 levels by 2030. This could give other countries political cover to scale back their efforts under the agreement, says Joanna Lewis, who heads the science, technology and international affairs programme at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

    A US exit could also spell more trouble for climate finance, the main theme of the summit in Baku. The United States has already failed to meet its commitment under Biden to boost international aid for developing nations to US$11.4 billion annually, to help them adapt to climate change and forgo industrialization that involves heavy pollution. The US Congress appropriated just $1 billion this year. And few see any prospects of the new administration under Trump, who has questioned the existence of climate change, stepping up.

    The price of change

    Industrialized countries, which are responsible for the bulk of historical greenhouse-gas emissions, have committed to helping ‘developing countries’ with climate funding under the terms of the UN climate framework. They put a dollar figure on that commitment in 2009: $100 billion annually.

    COP28 climate summit signals the end of fossil fuels — but is it enough?

    By some measures they hit that goal, albeit two years late, but researchers say much more is now needed. Negotiations at the summit starting this week will determine a ‘new collective quantified climate finance goal,’ to help developing nations, which are the least responsible for climate change and oftentimes the most vulnerable. Which countries will pay, how much and where the funds will go are up for discussion in Baku.

    Estimates vary for how much money developing nations need to adapt, but the negotiations are likely to begin around $1 trillion annually, says Melanie Robinson, the global climate director at the World Resources Institute, a non-profit research organization based in Washington DC. Others say the need is much larger: one economic panel has estimated the need around $2.4 trillion annually by 2030.

    Whatever the new finance goal is, methods for tracking how much funding wealthy countries are contributing towards LMICs will be discussed at the summit. Transparency is already a challenge because there is no broad agreement about what constitutes ‘climate finance’, says Romain Weikmans, a researcher who studies the issue at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. “Every country has its own accounting methodology.”

    Believe it or not, this lush landscape is Antarctica

    For instance, Weikmans says, an LMIC might use funds from a wealthy nation to build a new school equipped with solar panels, but it’s unclear whether that wealthy country would report the whole cost of the school, or just the solar panels, as part of a climate investment. “My hope is that the new goal will be formulated in a way that makes it possible for observers to assess the extent to which it has been met or not,” Weikmans says.

    Countries will also discuss whether financial aid covering the costs of disasters driven by climate change will be counted in the new finance goal. Wealthy countries pledged roughly $700 million last year to a new ‘loss and damage’ fund created to support nations suffering such disasters, but this “pales in comparison to the $580 billion in climate-related damages that developing countries could face by 2030”, Robinson says. This figure was estimated by researchers at the Basque Center for Climate Change in Leioa, Spain, and represents the maximum cost of damages that developing nations might encounter this decade.

    The globe has already warmed 1.3 °C, and some are projecting that Earth will officially hit 1.5 °C this year. One message scientists are delivering to policymakers at COP29 is that the climate is changing, and the risks are increasing, faster than even a few years ago.

    “This year we have seen severe weather events, droughts, extreme heat, flooding, hurricanes of a magnitude we’ve never seen before, and those impacts will not go away — even in the very best scenario,” Höhne says. As the world barrels towards an unlivable future, he adds, leaders at COP29 need to switch to “emergency mode”.

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  • What Trump’s election victory could mean for AI, climate and more

    What Trump’s election victory could mean for AI, climate and more

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    From repealing climate policies to overturning guidance on the safe development of artificial intelligence (AI), Republican Donald Trump made plenty of promises during his presidential campaign that could affect scientists and science policy. But fulfilling all of his pledges won’t be easy.

    The US is the world’s science superpower — but for how long?

    Trump, now the US president-elect for a second time, will have some advantages as he re-enters the White House in January. The first time he took office in 2017, his victory was a surprise, and many government watchers who spoke to Nature say that he didn’t have a solid plan. By contrast, the Trump administration that enters office next year will be better prepared, and Trump himself is likely to face fewer checks on his power now that he has consolidated control over the Republican establishment, says Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University in Washington DC who studies the modern conservative movement.

    But that still does not mean he will be able to do as he pleases, Dallek adds. “There’s a kind of revolutionary sweep to a lot of Trump’s promises that may collide with the messy reality of implementation.”

    Here Nature talks to policy and other specialists about what might be in store on a range of science issues during a second Trump administration.

    Artificial intelligence

    Trump, who is industry-friendly, has promised to repeal US President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI, a guideline released last year for developing the technology safely and responsibly. Trump’s pledge echoes the Republican party’s platform, which says that the executive order “hinders AI Innovation”.

    It will be possible for Trump to implement his plan as soon as he enters the White House given that executive orders can be revoked by a president at any time. But what will Trump put in its place?

    ‘We need to be ready for a new world’: scientists globally react to Trump election win

    “The emphasis will shift away from the regulatory environment” and towards technology companies making their own voluntary decisions on safety, says Suresh Venkatasubramanian, director of the Center for Technological Responsibility, Reimagination, and Redesign at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “I am personally sceptical that that will be enough” to address AI-associated risks to public safety, data-privacy concerns or the use of biased algorithms that disadvantage certain groups of people, Venkatasubramanian says.

    Biden’s executive order emphasized making sure that AI models, which are trained on human-derived data, don’t output discriminatory results. That’s probably also not going to be a heavy priority for the new administration, Venkatasubramanian says. The Republican platform says that it will “support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing”.

    According to Roman Yampolskiy, a computer scientist and AI safety researcher at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, “it is a great idea to remove censorship and support free speech” in general. But, he says, “removing regulations around training of advanced AI systems is the worst possible thing we can do for the safety of the American people and the world”. Given the risks associated with developing superintelligent AI systems, which could potentially operate in unpredictable ways and cause harm to humans, Yampolskiy and other AI researchers have been arguing for a pause in AI development, which could only be achieved with stronger regulations.

    Climate change

    Many federal climate efforts are likely to stall or move in reverse under Trump, who has long denied the dangers of climate change while prioritizing the economic benefits of boosting domestic fossil-fuel production. Even so, policy specialists say that Trump is unlikely to stop the United States’s gradual shift towards clean energy.

    The US election is monumental for science, say Nature readers — here’s why

    For instance, it will not be easy to undo Biden’s signature climate achievement: the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which created a raft of federal investments now estimated at more than US$1 trillion in climate and clean energy that are scheduled to run until around 2032. Repealing that legislation would require an act of the US Congress. But even if Republicans end up in control of both congressional chambers, businesses and leaders in conservative US states that are already benefitting from IRA investments might not be eager to cut off the flow of federal money, says Joanna Lewis, who heads the science technology and international affairs programme at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

    Trump could have a bigger — and more negative — impact on climate progress if he moves to weaken climate regulations put in place for things such as power plants and automobiles. Similarly, his promise to place new tariffs on goods from countries such as China and Mexico could actually increase the cost of clean-energy technologies, says David Victor, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego.

    The president-elect has also promised to once again pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris agreement, which commits member countries to limiting global warming to 1.5–2 °C above preindustrial levels. Trump’s administration had to wait until 2020 before formally leaving the agreement last time, and Biden moved to rejoin the agreement quickly after taking office several months later. But under the rules of the agreement, the leaving process would take only one year this time around.

    Many climate observers say the absence of the United States — the world’s second-largest greenhouse-gas emitter — from the pact could reduce pressure on China and other nations to scale up their efforts to curb emissions just as time is running short. “This is a pivotal decade for climate action, and four more years of Trump could be disastrous in terms of mobilizing climate action,” Lewis says.

    Health

    In the weeks leading up to the US election, Trump teamed up with political figure Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on a platform promising to “make America healthy again” by tackling the root causes of chronic diseases, removing toxic substances from the environment and combatting corporate corruption. Trump has said that he will let Kennedy, who has questioned vaccine effectiveness, “go wild on” health, unnerving public-health and health-policy researchers.

    It remains to be seen whether Trump will appoint Kennedy to a position such as director of US Health and Human Services (HHS) — or whether the US Senate would approve it — but it’s clear that Kennedy will have Trump’s ear on health issues.

    Old man with yellow hair, blue suite and red tie on the left and white hair guy in a blue suite speaking from a podium during a rally. Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (R) speaks as Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump listens during a campaign rally at Desert Diamond Arena on August 23, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona.

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ran for president in 2024 as an independent before withdrawing his bid and endorsing Trump.Credit: Rebecca Noble/Getty

    Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association in Washington DC, worries about Kennedy’s role in the new administration because he has long cast doubt on the vaccine-approval process, threatening to undermine confidence in jabs and cause a resurgence in illnesses such as measles. “People will get sick and die because of the confusion around vaccines, if [Kennedy and Trump] implement some of the things they verbalize,” he says.

    Some of Kennedy’s goals, such as cracking down on ties to industry at regulatory agencies such as the US Food and Drug Administration, are noble, says Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, a non-profit think tank in Washington DC. But those goals don’t jibe with what occurred during the first Trump administration, when Trump installed people with close industry ties to important health posts, such as former HHS director Alex Azar, so it’s hard to know what will happen, she says.

    With Trump’s isolationalist approach and past comments he has made criticizing the World Health Organization, support for global health will also likely be “greatly scaled back” during Trump’s second term, says Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist and long-time observer of the US biomedical funding landscape at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The United States is “the key player” in funding of global-health initiatives, says Emanuel. This includes, for instance, a programme that aims to end the global AIDS epidemic. So it’s “hard to be optimistic” about the future, he adds.

    Foreign science partnerships

    During Trump’s first term, his administration barred people from a half-dozen countries that it said were “compromised by terrorism” from entering the United States and implemented an anti-espionage programme called the China Initiative that led to the arrests of scientists of Chinese heritage. The Biden administration overturned the travel ban and ended the China Initiative, but under Biden, federal officials have continued efforts to guard against foreign interference in US research.

    US election debate: what Harris and Trump said about science

    Specialists says it’s unclear whether the second Trump administration will revive the China Initiative, although the Republican-led US House of Representatives advanced legislation in September that would do so. But a reinstatement of the travel ban is likely, says Adam Cohen, a lawyer at Siskind Susser in Memphis, Tennessee, who focuses on academic immigration and who says the president has broad authority to institute such policies.

    Like the first Trump administration, the new one will probably clamp down on granting visas to foreign researchers and students from some countries, says Jennifer Steele, an education policy researcher at American University in Washington DC. Policies that make it harder for international and US researchers to meet would also make it harder for new scientific collaborations to arise, says Caroline Wagner, a specialist in science, technology and international affairs at The Ohio State University in Columbus. That’s because such partnerships are fuelled by face-to-face contact. “Collaborations don’t begin with people just e-mailing each other across the miles,” she says.

    But there might be one bright spot on the collaboration front, at least for US-China partnerships. Denis Simon, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a foreign policy think tank in Washington DC, thinks that a crucial pact governing US-China scientific cooperation that has been expired for the past year is likely to be signed by the Biden administration before Trump’s second inauguration in January. A renewal of the agreement, although it is will probably be more limited in scope owing to increased US-China tensions, would show that “both governments give their blessing” to collaborations, Simon says.

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  • scientists globally react to Trump election win

    scientists globally react to Trump election win

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    Donald Trump and J. D. Vance standing on a stage in front of American flags

    Soon-to-be US president Donald Trump (left) and his vice-president, J.D. Vance, at an election night watch party.Credit: Evan Vucci/AP Photo/Alamy

    Scientists around the world expressed disappointment and alarm as Republican Donald Trump won the final votes needed to secure the US presidency in the early hours of 6 November. Owing to Trump’s anti-science rhetoric and actions during his last term in office, many are now bracing for four years of attacks on scientists inside and outside the government.

    The US election is monumental for science, say Nature readers — here’s why

    “In my long life of 82 years … there has hardly been a day when I felt more sad,” says Fraser Stoddart, a Nobel laureate who left the United States last year and is now chair of chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. “I’ve witnessed something that I feel is extremely bad, not just for the United States, but for all of us in the world.”

    “I am shocked, but not surprised”, given how polarized US politics are right now, says Michael Lubell, a physicist at the City College of New York in New York City, who tracks federal science-policy issues. The implications of the win for both government policy and science are profound, especially because of Trump’s deep scepticism of scientists and other specialists who manage public health and environmental policy within the federal government, Lubell says.

    Votes are still being counted in many places, but Trump has already won enough US states to sail to a resounding victory over his opponent, vice-president and Democrat Kamala Harris. Trump addressed his supporters as the victor early today, declaring his coalition “the greatest political movement of all time”.

    Republicans also look primed to win the upper chamber of the US Congress — the Senate — flipping at least three Democratic seats, although there are four more competitive races that have yet to be called for either party. It could be days or weeks before the final results are in for the lower chamber, the US House of Representatives, but it seems likely that Republicans will retain control. This would give Trump and his party full control of government in Washington DC.

    “We need to be ready for a new world,” says Grazyna Jasienska, a longevity researcher at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. “I am trying to be optimistic, but it is hard to find any positive aspects for global science and public health if Republicans take over.”

    Worries pour in

    Trump has in the past called climate change a hoax and pulled the country out of the Paris climate agreement; he has said he would give Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a political figure who has denied the effectiveness of vaccines, a “big role” in his administration, and he has promised to make it easier to fire specialists such as scientists from the US government who oppose his political agenda.

    The US is the world’s science superpower — but for how long?

    Worries pouring in this morning align with those expressed by the majority of readers who responded last month to a survey conducted by Nature. Eighty-six per-cent of the more than 2,000 people who answered the poll said that they favoured Harris, owing to concerns including climate change, public health and the state of US democracy. Some even said they would consider changing where they live or study if Trump won.

    Responses geared towards that sentiment have come swiftly. Tulio de Oliveira, a prominent virologist at the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, posted on X (the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter): “With the changes around the world, you may want to relocate to one of the best Universities in [South Africa] in one of the world’s most beautiful region!”, he said and linked to job ads for postgraduate and postdoctoral fellowships.

    Not all researchers are against a Trump presidency, however. Of those who responded to Nature’s reader survey, 6% expressed a preference for Trump — usually citing concerns about security issues and the economy. One reader who agreed to be contacted but did not want their name to be used, worried about Trump’s hostility towards science and evidence. Nonetheless, the respondent, a longtime nurse from Wilmington, North Carolina, said they would vote for Trump because, “at the end of the day, I want to be safe, and I want to be able to take care of my family.”

    Lessons learnt

    Others, though, are focused on what a second Trump presidency will mean for science. “Perhaps one of my biggest worries … is that Trump will be another nail in the coffin for trust in science”, given his anti-science rhetoric, says Lisa Schipper, a geographer specializing in climate change vulnerability at the University of Bonn in Germany. According to a survey of thousands of US adults by the Pew Research Center in Washington DC, the percentage of people who say that science has had a positive effect on society has been declining steadily since 2019.

    US election debate: what Harris and Trump said about science

    “I’m speechless, but I think it’s a learning moment,” says Sheila Jasanoff, a social scientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Trump’s victory illustrates a fundamental disconnect between academic researchers and many Republican voters. Finding common ground will require social engagement and likely humility on the part of scientists, who have yet to fully grapple with this social and political divide. For many Republicans, “the problem is us” — the academic ‘elites’, Jasanoff says.

    Some have already begun to think about January 2025, when Trump is slated to take office. “I hope we can convince the Trump administration to adopt a bold evidence-based science agenda and to hire people who are skilled and competent to implement it,” says Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association in Washington DC. But the last time he was in office, Benjamin adds, “he had some absolutely amazing scientists who worked for him, and then he undermined them — he didn’t follow their advice” — in particular by publicly rebuking them and not pushing a strong response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “Starting now, we are going to need brave people, people willing to push back, protect the vulnerable, and do what’s right over what’s easy,” says one senior official with the US Environmental Protection Agency, who declined to be named because they were afraid of retribution under a new Trump administration. “We do have to remember what’s right. And what’s right is protecting public health and the environment.”

    This is a breaking news story and will be updated throughout the day.

    With additional reporting from Davide Castelvecchi, Elizabeth Gibney and Max Kozlov.

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