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The Four Pillars
PILLARS OF THE DRAFT DECADAL STRATEGIC PLAN
The draft Decadal Strategic Plan (DSP) proposes four pillars for the next decade of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s (USGCRP) work. The Committee supports these pillars and the advances they represent. The Committee also provides observations and recommendations to strengthen each pillar.
The draft DSP elevates stakeholder engagement as a critical input into its research agenda, emphasizing co-production of methods and tools to inform priorities and decisions. As such, engagement needs to be incorporated early into the strategic plan. While recognizing that the order of the pillars does not indicate either priority or sequencing between them, one way to demonstrate this critical role of engagement would be to reorder the pillars within the DSP.
Advancing Science should be the first pillar because it defines a primary focus of USGCRP, which is to enhance understanding of interconnected human and natural systems and risks to society from global change, and to identify effective approaches to increase resilience to global environmental changes. This science provides the foundation for the other pillars. As noted earlier, this pillar should more clearly articulate the urgency of advancing the science and the importance of clear goals and outputs for research and integration of engagement as appropriate to the research aim.
Engaging the Nation should be the second pillar in order to underscore USGCRP’s recognition that expanding the impact of the federal research enterprise requires fostering meaningful engagement among scientists, affected communities, and decision makers. In a fundamental sense, the “Engaging the Nation” pillar functions as a bridge between “Advancing Science” and “Informing Decisions”, by encouraging the engagement of a greater diversity of individuals in planning and conducting global change science and by fostering meaningful dialogue among scientists, affected communities, and decision makers.
The task of Informing Decisions on urgent issues for the Nation should be the subject of the third pillar. This pillar focuses on providing accessible, usable, and inclusive information to inform actions to advance mitigation, adaptation, and resilience.
Collaborating Internationally should remain as the fourth pillar, which underscores that humans are facing a set of interacting and compounding global problems that demand collaborative global research and solutions.
Recommendation: Reorder the sequence of the pillars to strengthen the interconnections between advancing science and engagement as Advancing Science, Engaging the Nation, Informing Decisions, Collaborating Internationally.
“ADVANCING SCIENCE” PILLAR
The Committee offers the following specific comments for the “Advancing Science” pillar to enhance the message of the need for urgent action for addressing global change challenges.
The research topics identified focus on general areas of research activity and data collection (e.g., “USGCRP agencies will continue to document biodiversity loss, global trends, and potential future losses due in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems”21) but do not specify research outputs or identify new investments or research campaigns that will be undertaken during the DSP’s timeframe. The Committee encourages USGCRP to move beyond documenting to investing in critical research to increase resilience and sustainability of human and natural systems.
The Committee further notes that the verbs associated with the research topics tend to use scientific language around increasing knowledge generally (e.g., “Improve understanding of the potential for abrupt, widespread changes in physical, natural, and human systems” in the Tipping Points section22). While scientific progress is uncertain and it is not realistic to assign specific dates to research breakthroughs, the descriptions of research activities do not convey to the public that these research efforts are timely, nor do they signal to academic researchers specific areas of short-term (or long-term) research focus by the USGCRP and its member agencies.
The cross-cutting recommendation to strengthen interconnections and integration also applies within individual pillars. Multiple, interacting global changes are affecting human and natural systems, requiring research that considers and synthesizes understanding of these multiple changes. For example, climate and land-use change can directly affect the rate of biodiversity loss. Moreover, biodiversity loss may affect the rate of climate change directly by affecting albedo and energy balance and indirectly by reducing the ability of ecosystems to respond to changes in climate. Similarly, soil erosion and salinization may affect albedo, climate change, and biodiversity loss. Advancing equity, for example, is a cross-cutting goal where defining outputs would enhance operationalization. Documenting disparities across communities could be an output that would help inform appropriate decisions and engage a diversity of communities.
In the “Advancing Science” pillar, each section would be strengthened by stating the overall research goal of the section (e.g., outcomes) and then identifying specific research outputs the Nation requires to understand, mitigate, and adapt to global change risks and, to the extent feasible, new investments to realize these outputs. The outputs should span USGCRP’s focus on global change, including topics such as how research can help enhance the Nation’s resilience and sustainability.
For example, the Committee considers the tipping points section introduction23 to successfully identify the global change risk (irreversible changes that lead to significant societal impacts) and the research challenge that motivates its inclusion in the DSP (complex interactions between physical and social systems that may lead to tipping points, some of which may not be currently known or sufficiently characterized). For this section, an example of research outputs might be to focus on the five most consequential physical and human system potential tipping
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points and characterize them sufficiently to avoid catastrophic surprises or to ensure sufficient warning to enable timely adaptation and mitigation efforts.
More specificity on how “Advancing Science” will relate to information products for “Informing Decisions” would increase the clarity of both sections and the final DSP. Improving decision making under uncertainty requires new data and knowledge to produce the information required by decision-makers for mitigation, adaptation, and resiliency efforts—and that information will need to support decisions made with imperfect knowledge of future events. But the discussion of individual scientific topics in “Advancing Science” does not identify what new information would be produced during the early years of the 2022-2031 plan period that will facilitate the development of the “Informing Decisions” products. Identifying which aspects of research in the “Advancing Science” pillar are needed to meet the goals of “Informing Decisions” would provide information to the USGCRP agencies and the research community regarding urgent topics to support decision-making efforts. Elevating and sharpening language around the “Advancing Science” topics related to decision making under uncertainty would be a welcome addition to the final DSP.
To make space in the DSP for addressing additional topics outlined in this report, Box 1 identifies topics in the draft DSP which may be considered for removal or de-emphasis in the final DSP.
Indicators
Currently, indicators are only mentioned in passing in the draft DSP.24 However, in Our Changing Planet 2021 (USGCRP, 2021), an activity on indicators was given as an example of a USGCRP achievement. Of the 18 global change indicators in the USGCRP’s catalog,25 all but three (Annual Greenhouse Gas index, Heating and Cooling Degree Days, and Billion Dollar Disasters) are physical science indicators rather than coupled human and natural systems or societal indicators. A recent update on activities of the Indicators Interagency Working Group (IndIWG)26 highlighted their intent to identify and add new indicators to the USGCRP Indicator Platform, with an emphasis on social science and other non-physical science indicators.
To better address societal impacts and changes, USGCRP may consider balancing the 18 global change indicators by their relevance to societal impacts and responses by: (1) adding additional social indicators related to global change (e.g., health-related indicators or socioeconomic indicators related to key human systems, such as energy, food, water, health) and (2) relating the physical indicators to societal impacts (e.g., sea level rise to the status of coastal communities/systems in the U.S. facing increased flooding, subsidence, dislocation/relocation, etc.). An example from social science research is the demography of climate-driven migration. New indicators will likely emerge from time series observations in human and natural system research.
The selection of indicators identified for the Program should recognize and reflect their spanning and integration across the four pillars: Global change indicators result from science, are a mechanism for engagement and a tool for informing decisions, and should include enhancing and coordinating with international indicators.
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25 See https://www.globalchange.gov/browse/indicators/catalog.
Finally, USGCRP has a valuable role in improving the scientific underpinning of the indicators used from local to national levels to assess progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Recommendation: In the Advancing Science Pillar, (1) strengthen recognition of the urgency of global change issues, (2) define tangible outputs from this work, (3) make stronger connections to other pillars, and (4) increase the number and breadth of social and environmental indicators of global change, including for adaptation and resilience.
“ENGAGING THE NATION” PILLAR
New Audiences for the Decadal Strategic Plan
The 13 federal agencies that constitute the USGCRP continue to serve the Nation by producing intramural research and funding extramural studies to better understand how global environmental change challenges will impact the U.S., primarily focusing on climate change (NASEM, 2017). The 2022-2031 DSP reflects an important transformation of the research enterprise. The DSP embraces a systems-based perspective with a collaborative, inclusive
approach that places a strong emphasis on the social sciences and community involvement, particularly for vulnerable regions, while promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice at each step. Doing so will serve new audiences for the DSP, within and outside federal agencies, such as the private sector.
The draft DSP is not always clear about the different types of audiences for research investments and their roles and responsibilities for conducting, translating, and using research results. Traditional audiences for earlier strategic plans included:
- Federal agencies: The DSP outlines the collective intent of the 13 federal agencies, signaling priority research directions within the USGCRP and across the federal government. This facilitates research coordination and collaboration across the federal agencies.
- Congressional committees: The DSP also signals to congressional committees the intent of budget requests.
- The scientific enterprise investigating global environmental change: This enterprise looks to the DSP to understand the strategic direction, to identify critical knowledge gaps that, if filled, would provide useful and usable input to decision making. The draft DSP is stronger when discussing research priorities in the physical science of global change than in the critical incorporation of social sciences and changes in natural systems.
The draft DSP takes the important step of prioritizing co-production of knowledge but offers few insights into what this progression means for the boundary partners that translate primary research into local action. Extramural funded research programs, such as RISAs, CASCs, Climate Hubs, and others, have established successful co-production models, but there is less intramural federal research that promotes co-production through traditional funding calls.27 Acknowledging boundary partners as an important audience could accelerate the transition into co-production modes of research and implementation.
Engagement and Co-Production
The Committee commends the authors for responding to Dr. Lubchenco’s charge to “accelerate action on two fronts” one of which is “ensuring that knowledge is understandable, accessible, and useable to the key stakeholders…” (Lubchenco, 2021). Only through expanding deep engagement and co-production, applied when appropriate, can knowledge stewarded by USGCRP activities achieve these goals. The Committee supports the DSP’s emphasis on research that is place-based, people-first, and co-produced throughout the research-to-implementation pipeline; such research is particularly well suited to reduce inequities and reduce impacts on the most vulnerable.
However, the Committee also acknowledges the tension between people- and place-based research that is typically conducted as case studies at small scales, and the need to aggregate across case studies to understand lessons learned and best practices that can be scaled up in different locations. Ideally, such tensions should be identified and acknowledged in research planning and implementation. Too often the differences across a series of case studies are too large for syntheses and meta-analyses to be conducted. The Committee suggests the Program promote people- and placed-based research that provides not just knowledge for the scale of
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27 NSF’s Convergence Accelerator is an example of a multi-disciplinary approach to bringing science to societal challenges; See https://beta.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/convergence-accelerator.
local decision-making, but also intentionally provides usable insights that can be transferred to other locations and levels of decision-making.
The draft DSP is wise to call for “[enhancing] user engagement in the research design process,”28 carried out appropriately. The Committee recognizes that engagement and coproduction approaches need to match the requirements and implications of each research question. For example, participants engaged in setting priorities for fundamental research on deep ocean aspects of the carbon cycle will differ from those involved in setting research priorities for assessing the prospects for multiple uses of landscapes in particular places.
The Committee applauds the views of the draft DSP’s emphasis on environmental justice, and notes that a particularly effective way to engage marginalized communities is through their existing trusted voices. Global change impacts can amplify the harms and impacts of structural racism and sexism on health and wellness outcomes. Research on coupled human and natural systems can center on ways to achieve equitable and just outcomes and reduce harm to marginalized individuals and communities through education, communication, and coproduction of research and interventions to effectively shift organizational and governance practices.
When engaging tribal communities, whether federally recognized or not, the Program needs to honor the formal constraints of tribal sovereignty that shape U.S. federal engagement with tribes and understand the cultural and historical contexts, especially the history of injustice (including exploitative research practices) vis-a-vis tribes and tribal members.
Deepening the final DSP to strengthen research that centers on people and places impacted by global change can be achieved through the following approaches, as appropriate:
- Support studies that investigate thresholds for “knowing,” ways of knowing by different actors, and the ways in which certain types of evidence are used to justify action and inaction. Such studies can inform context-specific decision support tools that quantify and forecast climate and other global change impacts; such decision support tools are not necessarily technology-based. Society needs to understand threats as well as adaptation and mitigation opportunities that are place-based, timely, and culturally/contextually appropriate.
- Use best practices to develop tools to promote effective engagement, (e.g., Hewitson et al, 2017) not just to “increase the capacity of …users;”29 the tools themselves must achieve high standards of usability. The Committee recommends explicitly stating that tools intended for users to access USGCRP information will achieve the highest standards of usability.
- Establish inclusion and co-production as key precursors to analysis and options development addressing people and places affected by global change. Differing priorities and needs within and across communities need to be identified; this requires engagement with communities impacted by global change and/or by the work of the USGCRP. Particular attention should be paid to ensuring that options do not exacerbate existing or historical social inequities.
- Disaggregate studies and results to account for differential impacts. Not everyone will be impacted in the same way by global changes. Differential impacts of climate change may have multiple sources, including historical structures and legacies of power.
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Consequently, global change studies should disaggregate results to help identify differential impacts.
Models for active co-development for climate and global change issues are available through existing regional partnerships throughout the country. Partnerships and centers, such as the NOAA RISAs, USGS CASCs, and USDA Climate Hubs, provide examples for regional and local co-development and sources for co-development literature. (See also NASEM, 2005; NASEM, 2008; NASEM, 2009; and NASEM, 2021.) Through initiatives such as these, federal agencies have existing experience and understanding of co-development approaches. Where agencies have well-established relationships with key stakeholders, they can share best practices with other agencies.
Sustained Assessment
One of the products of the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA3) was a new process for engaging government agencies, academia, the private sector, and civil society “to support their needs for usable, rigorous, and timely information and better connect science and decision-making.” Referred to as the sustained assessment process, this collaborative process was crafted to foster “partnerships across a diverse and widely distributed set of nongovernmental and governmental entities.” A primary goal was “to produce timely, scientifically sound climate information products and processes” (all quotes: Buizer, 2016).
The USGCRP has previously used this approach to develop specialized reports to meet the needs of various stakeholders. In the draft DSP, there is reference30 to conducting targeted assessments focused on and driven by the needs of Indigenous and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) holders. It would be helpful for the DSP to briefly highlight other plans for the sustained assessment process.
Recommendation: Include in the Engagement Pillar recognition of (1) new audiences for the DSP and mechanisms for engagement with them; (2) people- and place-based research to further deeper recognition of global change, associated risks, and effective and timely interventions; and (3) topics that would benefit from a sustained assessment process.
“INFORMING DECISIONS” PILLAR
The Committee offers the following comments for the Informing Decisions pillar to communicate the urgency of action more effectively.
The Committee commends the USGCRP for identifying specific goals for the development of information products related to reaching net-zero emissions through carbon emission mitigation strategies, frequency of extreme events, geographically downscaled risk models (that incorporate effects on marginalized communities), and benefits and costs of adaptation and resilience actions.31 Providing this technical basis for well-informed policy development efforts would be of great value to the Nation and internationally, helping to support robust decision making at all governmental and geographic scales. The Committee also commends the USGCRP for committing in 2022 to coordinating an interagency effort to make
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USGCRP-relevant data available, findable, usable, and customizable.32 However, the goals of this activity are vague and do not include specific outputs that could be used to assess progress. Extending the draft DSP’s efforts related to climate information products to other important global change issues would strengthen the final DSP.
The Committee also recommends careful consideration of the language in the “Informing Decisions” pillar to ensure that it is consistent with the draft DSP’s commitment to engagement and co-development, and that it supports the bi-directional nature of such work.
Recommendation: Expand on successful USGCRP efforts related to climate information products by providing specific outputs to assess progress and extend efforts to other global change issues.
“COLLABORATING INTERNATIONALLY” PILLAR
The Committee applauds the USGCRP for making international collaboration one of the pillars in the framework of the DSP 2022-2031. Quantifying global change challenges and identifying effective interventions will require unprecedented efforts from the community of nations, big and small, developed and developing.
While the Committee notes that the examples of international coordination activities33 given in the draft DSP tend to focus on collaborations around research synthesis, the Committee also suggests incorporating examples of international research collaborations including multination-funded research and USGCRP-funded research conducted by and with international partners, especially those in low- and middle-income countries.
The Committee also encourages identification of emerging global change issues that will require international collaboration. For example, geoengineering (NASEM, 2021b) is being considered by some nations to mitigate climate change. It has complex human and natural system research components including issues of governance, where local interventions can have global impacts.
Recommendation: Expand the discussion of international collaboration in the DSP to highlight examples of collaborations and emerging global change issues where U.S. or other national interventions could have international consequences and where international expertise could benefit the U.S. research enterprise to enhance resilience and sustainability nationally and globally.
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