Research to Protect, Restore, and Manage the Environment (1993) / Chapter Skim
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4 Desirable Characteristics of Federally Supported Environmental Research Programs
4 Desirable Characteristics of Federally Supported Environmental Research Programs
Pages 67-86
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From page 67... ...
The terms protection, restoration, and management set out directions in which environmental research and action should proceed; these terms should not be taken to imply absolute goals, because in a changing world absolute goals might be elusive, infeasible, or impractical, given other human objectives. Protecting the environment is not necessarily the same as preserving it; the natural world changes on its own, and the human place in the landscape varies over space and time.
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From page 68... ...
Protection, restoration, and management of resources are goals that will be important to the United States for some time. The challenge of creating a relationship between people and the natural world that can be economically and ecologically sustainable demands re-examining the fundamental structures of industrializatio~a deep, complex set of issues that can be addressed successfully only on a time scale of decades.
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From page 69... ...
Concern about global chang~including the loss of biological diversity, carbon dioxide accumulation, and stratospheric ozone depletio~fits within the rubric of protection and restoration and can be a unifying theme for the nation's environmental research program. RESEARCH FOR INNOVATION IN MANAGEMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES The committee believes that although environmental protection and restoration are essential foci for environmental research, they are not sufficient to address the long-term environmental needs of the nation and the world.
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From page 70... ...
· Enhancement of, or at least no diminution, in the capability of future generations to continue to improve their quality of life. · Provision of continued availability of nonrenewable resources for future generations.
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From page 71... ...
Emerging disciplines, such as industrial ecology and ecological economics, that contain key elements of this approach. Among these elements are the creation of an industrial cycle that mimics biospheric processes via a materially closed system, in which waste materials produced by one segment become inputs for another; internalizing the parameters of our economic models that are now considered externalities, so that production costs will include true environmental costs; and maximizing energy efficiency.
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From page 72... ...
CROSSING MISSIONS Government agencies carry out specifically mandated missions that direct their environmental research to mission-oriented goals. It is important that environmental research programs be designed and coordinated in ways that will permit crossing mission boundaries and make the products of the research useful for increasing knowledge about environmental problems in general.
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From page 73... ...
The nation must explore alternative funding mechanisms for environmental research, including novel ways of funding existing organizations and initiating new centers and other structures to address environmental issues in a multidisciplinary manner. CONSISTENCY OF FUNDING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH Many topics in environmental protection, restoration, and innovation require research over long periods.
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From page 74... ...
The importance of extramural research is illustrated by the presence of myriad environmental databases in industry and academe. Not only must extramural research programs be strengthened; the information generated by them must be integrated into the federal consciousness via federal support for information networks throughout environmental science, as is now the case with research data collected by such federally controlled devices as satellites.
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From page 75... ...
COMBINATION OF GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE-SECTOR ACTIVITIES The total needs of a national environmental research program are too large for the federal agencies alone, so the issues must be addressed by a combination of government and nongovernment organizations. Nongovernment organizations should be involved as partners and advise in setting priorities and in providing constructive criticism for government programs, as well as being active performers of research themselves as appropriate.
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From page 76... ...
Coordination of efforts among agencies already occurs routinely in the government, and it is important to understand how the existing modes need to be changed. Environmental research faces large challenges: much environmental research is inherently of a large scale, and that forces its practitioners to attend to the complexities of building and maintaining substantial organizations to collect and analyze large quantities of data; environmental research crosses functional boundaries, as when economic data are used to estimate and project the volume of hazardous waste generated in an area, and this
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From page 77... ...
The committee believes, nonetheless, that a large-scale national program in environmental research requires high-level leadership to ensure that coordination will be established and will persist long enough to begin to return benefits in the form of more-effective and lesse~ensive environmental policy. PLANNING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH A basic element of our recommendations is the need for a national environmental research plan developed and administered by the NEC.
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From page 78... ...
Given the rapid changes in the environment and our understanding of it, we recommend that the clan be undated every 2 years and revised comprehensively every 5 years. LINKAGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND POLICY Good environmental policy formation requires, first, accurate, sound, and timely scientific information and analysis; second, pathways for the scientific assessments to reach decision-makers; and third, flexible policies and alert implementing agencies able to respond to new information so that decisions made under uncertainty can be revised in light of experience.
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From page 79... ...
Because environmental problems combine scientific uncertainties, substantial economic consequences, and disputes regarding human values, the connection between environmental science and environmental policy is too important to be left to the current ad hoc arrangements. There should be a national center or institution that can contribute to and be evaluated by both the public and private sectors.
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From page 80... ...
It has proposed a National Geographic Data System that would promulgate uniform data-transfer standards. Other cooperative efforts to manage databases are the nine-agency group led by NOAA; the Interagency Working Group on Data Management for Global Change; the Global Change Information Center, which is designed primarily to transfer data to developing countries; the NSF Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER)
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From page 81... ...
Specific programs must be developed to integrate current status and trends measurements made by a wide variety of government and nongovernment organizations at all levels and to make them broadly available. These include the combination of the NSF LTER program and the USDA experimentstation data networks, integration of regional and local networks, and other possibilities.
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From page 82... ...
It manages a wide-ranging program of basic environmental research and has a variety of funding mechanisms ranging from support of individual scientists to support of groups and centers, such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the LTER program. It supports training, instrumentation, and specialized facilities.
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From page 83... ...
Training opportunities for scientists must be provided by programs supported not only by NSF, but by all the agencies involved in environmental research. Innovative programs are required to address the need for persons able to deal with the environmental issues that require multidisciplinary approaches.
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From page 84... ...
. Among the hallmarks of national leadership three are of particular importance: readiness to champion policy reforms-when the scientific consensus has shifted in favor of new understandings; taking a leading role on behalf of the United States in international organizations and on global environmental issues; and most important, early, effective, and persistent use of scientific information in policy arenas characterized by uncertainty and political risk.
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From page 85... ...
Environmental research in the universities will be organized to train scientists, engineers, and social scientists for industry and commerce, nongovernment organizations, and the research enterprise itself. A successful program of national research will keep American research universities and professional schools among the world's leaders in environmental science and scholarship.
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From page 86... ...
· Environmental research will contribute to economic prosperity in four ways. First, in accounting terms, technological advances in pollution control, environmental management, and spinoffs from environmental research will increase business opportunities for American industry in domestic and international markets.
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