Influence - policymaking with the best scientific advice
Major challenges, from climate change to energy and from health to international security, raise complex scientific issues. In no other area of the campaign is the independence and autonomy of the Royal Society as critical as in science policy. It is now more urgent than ever that policymakers and the public are effectively informed by timely, definitive, and unbiased advice. The Society has a strong reputation for making an impact across a broad spectrum of issues. We have worked in partnership with international bodies, sister academies of science and leading learned societies. The international dimension of our policy advice has had an influential role on climate change and development through the G8 group of industrialised nations’ Gleneagles Summit and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The campaign will create an endowment to support our Science Policy Centre, with five dedicated units each focusing on critical national and global challenges. The Centre will include an extensive programme of public and stakeholder engagement and press and media outreach to ensure maximum impact. We will expand the international reach of our policy work, breadth of policy studies and the global impact of our policy advice.
Click here for more information on the five units of the Science Policy Centre
Since 2000 the Society has initiated highly influential statements on climate change signed jointly with other national academies. The 2005 statement ‘Global response to climate change’ was signed by the national academies of the G8, China and Brazil and was released ahead of the Gleneagles Summit, which placed climate change as a key topic on the global agenda. The creation of the Centre will allow us to build on this work to include further crucial topics in this area including amongst others: analysing and developing research into cleaner energy technologies (including bio-fuels and clean coal); carbon capture and storage.
 |