France President Make the Planet Great Again

Spotlight on the Make Our Planet Great Once again plan, launched in June 2022 past French President Emmanuel Macron. Its first conference volition be held on 1st October in Paris.

"We're getting out." This seemingly petty sentence, uttered on 1st June, 2022 by the U.s.a. President Donald Trump, sent a daze wave effectually the globe. These words actually meant that the United States was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Understanding, a historic text signed in the French upper-case letter at the end of 2022 by 194 other countries, with a view to keeping the increase in global average temperature "well below 2°C" above pre-industrial levels. Hence the immediate decision taken past French President Emmanuel Macron to invite "any scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, or committed citizens" who felt allow down or were adversely affected by the U-plough of the occupant of the White House, to come (or render) to France to piece of work "on concrete solutions for the climate".

"The climate emergency poses unique challenges for scientific discipline," says CNRS Chairman and CEO Antoine Petit, on the eve of the offset conference of the Make Our Planet Great Over again (MOPGA)1 programme, to be be held on 1st October at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, in the presence of the French and German Inquiry Ministers. "Adaptation and/or mitigation solutions must be based on the best available scientific data. To generate this knowledge and apply information technology, President Macron chosen for the implementation of an international call for proposals giving researchers who have resided exterior of France for at least ii years the opportunity to conduct out innovative work in French laboratories on the issue of global modify, including climatic change," Antoine Petit explains.

French President Emmanuel Macron holds a sign with the slogan 'Make our planet great again' as he attends the 'Tech for Planet' event at the 'Station F' offset-upward campus ahead of the One Planet Acme in Paris on Dec xi, 2017.

A €60 one thousand thousand budget

The MOPGA plan, whose budget amounts to €sixty million, is focused on understanding the physical, chemical, biological and other mechanisms that govern the Globe organization, as well every bit sustainable evolution and energy transition. Half of this sum is provided past the General Secretariat for Investment (SGPI) and managed by the French National Research Bureau (ANR), while the other one-half is supplied by the host institutions.

"Non every euro contributed by the latter is necessarily in the form of greenbacks," Antoine Petit points out. "The contribution tin perfectly well exist made 'in kind', that is, past making an appropriate assessment of the human being and technological surround (possibility of using cutting-edge instruments, access to platforms, etc.) in which the successful candidate works. And information technology is important to underline that, in addition to the involvement of the ANR and the laboratories, regional partners as well play a significant office, which reflects the motivation of all the stakeholders concerned past the project."

The procedure adopted for the option of candidates, whether junior (i.e. those who obtained their PhD less than 12 years agone) or senior (over 12 years agone), was carried out in two stages, in both 2022 and 2018.

In the first phase, led past the CNRS on behalf of all the French research organisations, applicants were assessed on the quality of their CVs. In the second, supervised by the ANR, an international jury evaluated the projects pre-selected by the CNRS and adult past the researchers working together with the teams of the labs they hoped to bring together. The jury was chaired past Corinne Le Quéré, Professor of Climate change Scientific discipline at the University of Eastward Anglia (United kingdom), and caput of the French High Council for Climate Modify (HCC) since November 2018. Made up of nine or ten members, depending on the year, the interdisciplinary jury included French and Finnish climatologists, a chemist and a biologist from the US, a Swiss economist and a Japanese sustainability specialist.

Sharing out the funding

"The projects nosotros examined in the outset year (2017) were more focused on World system sciences, with relatively few submissions dealing with the humanities and social sciences or issues related to sustainable development and free energy transition. Still, this trend was reversed in 2018," Corinne Le Quéré notes. "Overall, the submissions were of a very high standard. The claiming was how to share out the funding between very good senior projects and highly promising junior ones. Additionally, some proposals that were interesting just required further comeback, were reworked following our recommendations, resubmitted to the jury and eventually validated, which is very gratifying."

Figures testify to the fact that France'south call for tenders has attracted the involvement of the scientific community well beyond its borders. When the programme was launched on the MOPGA website, managed past the public agency Campus France, more 11,000 clicks and contact requests from students and researchers from effectually 100 countries, companies, NGOs, etc. were recorded. Over 400 researchers expressed involvement in long-term stays. A total of 340 applications were submitted, of which 43 were selected past the jury. "By supporting 21 of the 43 projects selected, the CNRS is by far the inquiry organisation with the greatest interest in the MOPGA programme," says Antoine Petit, who also points out that 40 of the 43 projects are being conducted in CNRS joint research units, in other words together with other institutions.

The attractiveness of the CNRS

The role played by the flagship of French inquiry is hardly surprising, given that "the quality of its piece of work on global change, including climate change, is internationally recognised," adds Stéphanie Thiébault, director of the CNRS Institute of Ecology and Environment. In fact, the CNRS ranks third in the "World and environmental sciences" category in the 2022 Index of the journal Nature, just backside the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Helmholtz Clan of German Enquiry Centres. "Our laboratories are highly attractive, which is why a large number of successful candidates wanted to join them," Thiébault comments.

Demonstration, strike and march for the planet. Paris, Place du Pantheon, March 15, 2019.

A win-win rationale

So accept laureates found it difficult to suit to French habits and customs, and especially to the intricacies of the country's assistants? "To our knowledge, all participating institutions have done everything they can to help the successful applicants fix ofttimes complex administrative documents," Antoine Petit says. "In our instance, two advisers took them through authoritative procedures: ane at the CNRS office in Washington (U.s.), and the other at the Mission for Transversal and Interdisciplinary Initiatives in Paris."

Well-nigh importantly, the MOPGA project is based on a win-win rationale. The outstanding scientists selected for the quality of their CVs and the originality of their proposals enjoy a stimulating surroundings in the internationally renowned institutions that host them, while these organisations in plough derive scientific added value from their presence.

"For example, the US chemist Christopher Cantrell, who in March 2022 joined the Inter-University Laboratory of Atmospheric Systems (LISA)2 for 5 years with the aim of studying the big-scale climate and health impact of pollution, brings with him not only his ideas, experience, methodology, so on, but also his connections with other international laboratories and his funding networks. This makes it a long-term contribution," explains Nicolas Arnaud, director of the CNRS National Plant for Globe Sciences and Astronomy (INSU). The arrival of a researcher such every bit Venkatramani Balaji (a Canadian scientist of Indian origin who was previously at Princeton University), whose work is bringing about a revolution in climate modelling methods, "opens up new windows for our inquiry and enhances our visibility. Salary is far from being the principal motivation for MOPGA applicants. What convinced them was the programme's relevance and the excellence of the labs. Moreover, some have manifestly seized this opportunity to render to work in French republic", adds Elsa Cortijo, director of the LSCE,3 which, in addition to Balaji, is hosting three successful candidates from the US and one from Nihon.

French-High german cooperation

In accuse of the scientific coordination of the project at the national level, the CNRS is also involved in it at the European scale with its colleagues from the German Academic Substitution Service (DAAD), Germany having joined the initiative at the French-German summit in July 2022 and set up a like programme (same selection procedures, same subjects).

"The budget allocated to this program, dubbed Make Our Planet Smashing Over again-German language Research Initiative (MOPGA-GRI), amounts to €15 meg for the flow 2017-2022," explains DAAD'southward Anke Stahl. "Nosotros are funding a full of 13 research projects, seven of which are led by researchers who until at present have lived and worked in the United states of america, such every bit biologist Christina Richards and physicist Yutsung Tsai. The main organisations involved are the Universities of Augsburg and Leipzig, the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Leibniz Institute for Inquiry on Evolution and Biodiversity, Berlin, and the Helmholtz Centre Geesthacht. The articulation running of the initiative should requite ascension to fruitful exchanges between the teams concerned on both sides of the Rhine and, more generally, strengthen French-German scientific cooperation." To this end, a mid-term conference will exist held in Strasbourg (France), and a closing briefing in Berlin (Deutschland) in 2022.

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Who are the successful candidates?
Of the 43 applicants selected past the jury, 12 are women and 31 are men. 23 are inferior candidates (having obtained their PhD less than 12 years ago), while 20 are senior candidates (PhD holders for at least 12 years). 12 are from the United states of america, 12 from France (mostly working in the Us), 6 from Canada, three from Frg, 3 from Spain, and i each from Greece, Italia, Peru, the UK, Switzerland, Moldova and Japan.

Which subjects?
> Earth system sciences: xix projects
> Climate change and sustainability: 17 projects
> Energy transition: 7 projects

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Source: https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/make-our-planet-great-again-they-chose-france

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