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5
MISSION TO PLANET EARTH REVISITED*
Thomas F. Malone and Robert Corell
Environmental scientists are blazing new, bold, and imaginative
trails to discover the interactions that bind the elements of land,
water, air, biota, and energy into planet Earth. Understanding these
interactions is imperative if future generations are to inherit a
habitable planet, because human activity has expanded and developed to
the point where anthropogenic environmental changes are jeopardizing
continued human existence. Science stands at the threshold of an
unprecedented opportunity to study and learn the far-reaching impli-
cations of both anthropogenic and natural environmental changes.
A comprehensive study of the global environment is within reach.
Such a study would give humanity the knowledge base necessary to
intervene on its own behalf--to reverse the trends of global environ-
mental degradation and to bequeath to future generations a benign Earth.
The complex and vital nature of this endeavor demands careful delibera-
tion. A rationale for such a study, titled "Mission to Planet Earth,"
was set forth in Environment two years ago.1 It rested on five central
considerations:
o A revolution under way in the sciences is leading to the treatment
of the physical, biological, chemical, and geographical parts of the
global system as an integrated and responsive whole.
o Scientific understanding of each part and the interactions among
the parts is approaching a stage at which describing the controlling
physical, chemical, and biological processes in quantitative form (i.e.,
with mathematical models) will be possible.
O Scientists are developing with unprecedented speed the necessary
technological tools (in situ and space-based measurements, computers,
and communications) for a holistic analysis of Earth's system. These
tools could enhance the ability of science to predict changes in the
environment.
*This paper, which was available at the forum, is reprinted, with
permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation, from
Environment 31~3~:6-11 31-35 (April 1989~. Published by Heldref
Publications, 4000 Albemarle St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016.
Copyright (c) 1989.
34
OCR for page 35
as
0 With exponential growth in population, agriculture, and industry,
human activity is becoming a powerful factor, or forcing function, for
global change.
0 The capacity of the global life-support system to sustain a
technologically advanced and exponentially expanding civilization is
likely to collapse within the foreseeable future.
The rationale for a ''Mission to Planet Earth" has been significantly
transformed during the past two years. Opportunities to respond to this
scientific and technological revolution are still open and have, in fact,
expanded on their own merits. The compelling need now, however, is to
increase the knowledge base underlying major policy decisions on societal
and national behaviors that affect global well-being. A new era,
characterized by a grand convergence of natural sciences, social
sciences, engineering, public policy, and international relations, is
emerging.
Many national and international research organizations have incor-
porated the "Mission to Planet Earth" rationale into their language and
programs. At a meeting in Berne, Switzerland, in September 1986, the
General Assembly of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU)
decided to establish the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme: A
Study of Global Change (IGBP). Since that meeting, organization and
planning have proceeded with remarkable speed. IGBP represents a
herculean effort by scientists worldwide to give humanity the knowledge
base to fashion policies that will reverse the global environmental
decline.
GLOBAL CHANGE IN THE LIMELIGHT
What has pulled scientists out of their separate laboratories to call
for and organize this effort? Several recent developments have pushed
global change and environmental policy issues on center stage. One such
development is the frequent scientific prediction of a rise in global
temperature of several degrees centigrade as a result of increased
emissions to the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, which trap long-wave
radiation emanating from Earth's surface. The possibility that human
activity, especially fossil fuel use, could exacerbate the atmosphere's
greenhouse effect was recognized as long as a century ago. Not until a
1985 meeting of Earth scientists in Villach, Austria, however, did the
scientific community become sufficiently impressed with all the evidence
for the probable magnitude of the greenhouse effect to call for political
action. (For a discussion of the conclusions drawn at the conference in
Villach, see Jill Jager's "Climate Change: Floating New Evidence in the
CO2 Debate" in the September 1986 issue of Environment.) In the summer
of 1988, James Hansen, a scientist with the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA), intensified the policy debate while
testifying before the U.S. Congress by implying that the first sign of
greenhouse warming had already been detected in the climate records.2
Another development that has pushed global change into the limelight
is the sharp seasonal decrease of the stratospheric ozone layer over the
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36
Antarctic and signs of incipient decline over the Arctic. The ozone
layer screens out the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. The warning
by scientists in 1974 that chlorofluorocarbons (CFOs) drifting up into
the stratosphere constitute a threat to the ozone layer turned out to be
remarkably prescient. By 1987, the evidence for ozone depletion was so
persuasive that international agreement was quickly reached on the
Montreal Protocol to limit the production of CFCs. Already this year, a
number of countries have announced plans to accelerate the protocol's
implementation by banning certain CFCs entirely by the year 2000.
A third development is the annual loss of more than 10 million
hectares of forest cover in the tropics. In industrialized countries,
millions of hectares of forest are destroyed each year by fire, and many
more millions of hectares are jeopardized as a result of acid deposition-.
Worldwide, the rate of forest loss is about 1 acre (or 0.4 hectares) per
second. At the same time, more than 5 million hectares of new desert are
formed each year as a consequence of land mismanagement in semi-arid
regions. Finally, the rate of extinction of plant and animal species has
reached alarming and probably irreversible levels. This loss is robbing
future generations of valuable resources for food, industry, and medi-
cine. All of these developments have helped to heighten the public's
awareness of global change.
GROWING INTEREST
Scientists have repeatedly verified the manifestations of global
change.3 Plans to cope with these disastrous changes are being formu-
lated worldwide.4 Thus, research like that proposed in "Mission to
Planet Earth" has been elevated to new importance by a greater percep-
tion on the part of the public and policymakers that human activity is
rapidly approaching a level at which human-induced change of the global
environment will be on a scale equivalent to change produced by natural
forces. Some indications that there will be definite winners and losers
in the global change game have sparked additional enthusiasm for world-
wide conservation and research. More fuel for this fire has been the
perception that the human carrying capacity of Earth may soon be
stressed to a point where catastrophic consequences should be expected in
regions currently characterized by high population density and growth.
The very threat of such consequences has raised issues of social
equity and international security, and a stirring of political will for
environmental causes is evident:
o In the United States, two dozen bills concerning the environment
were cosponsored by more than 400 senators and representatives during the
100th Congress (1987 and 1988~.
O In his 1988 campaign for the U.S. presidency, George Bush promised
to convene an international conference on global warming during his first
year in office. ~
0 Last fall, in a speech to The Royal Society, Great Britain's Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher labeled protection of the balance of nature as
one of the "great challenges of the late twentieth century."5
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37
0 At their December 1987 summit meeting in Washington, D.C., General
Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan agreed to a
collaboration on issues of climate and environmental change.
o In his December 1988 address to the United Nations General
Assembly, Gorbachev remarked that "international economic security is
inconceivable unless related not only to disarmament but also to the
elimination of the threat to the world's environment.~6
o In his 1988 World Environment Day message, Mostafa Tolba,
Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
warned that "it may take another 15 years before scientists can give
reliable predictions of what warming will mean in each region. But by
then it may be too late to act."7 He called on political and industrial
leaders to cooperate with one another and with climate scientists to
finance more international research and coordination that will produce
more information more quickly.
Last year, greater attention to climate change issues by the news
media was both a cause and effect of the new public awareness. The
National Geographic Society devoted the December 1988 issue of its
magazine to the theme "Can Man Save This Fragile Earth?"8 Time magazine
broke tradition and set aside identification of the man or woman of the
year to dedicate its New Year's issue to "Planet of the Year: Endangered
Earth."9 Beyond just diagnosing the ills of the planet, Time proposed a
19-point action agenda for all nations and 8 steps that the United States
should take to address Earth's environmental crisis. In fact, three
major U.S. news magazines--Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World
Report--devoted cover articles to global change during 1988.l° More
recently, the very critical nature of global change was well summarized
by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' recommendations to the Bush
administration.ll (Excerpts of these recommendations may be found on
page 30 of the January/February issue of Environment.)
Growing public interest in global change issues has already prompted
some political action. For example, in April 1987, the World Commission
on Environment and Development analyzed and explicated these issues in
Our Common Future, the report commissioned by the United Nations General
Assembly.l2 The commission argued persuasively that the issues of human
and economic development, environmental quality, and natural resource
husbandry are highly interdependent; sound development requires a sound
environment and a strong natural resource base, and an unhealthy envi-
ronment and resource depletion ensure poor development. The commission
urged expansion of the role of the scientific community in planning,
decisionmaking, and implementing measures for coping with climate change.
(For a review of Our Common Future, see the June 1987 issue of Environ-
ment.)
In September 1987, several member countries of UNEP met in Montreal
and signed an agreement to stem CFC production. Although the Montreal
Protocol is very modest (and many say insufficient), the fact that a
precedent was established in arriving at a multilateral agreement
somewhat offsets the disappointment of the compromises that became
necessary to enhance the protocol's appeal to prospective signatories.
Encouraged by this step, UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization
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38
established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to address the
vastly more difficult problem of greenhouse warming by assessing the
science, impacts, and policy implications of that topic. (For more on
this panel, see the January/February 1989 issue of Environment.)
In the summer of 1988, 300 experts in science, law, environment, and
economics met at the World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere:
Implications for Global Security in Toronto, Canada. The Conference
Statement concluded that the gravity of the risk of global warming called
for a 20 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from 1988 levels
by 2005.13 It urged support for such efforts as the World Climate
Programme, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, and Human
Response to Global Change. (For more on the conference, see a special
report on the Conference Statement in the January/February 1989 issue of
Environment and the statement's 22-point 'tCall for Action" on page 31 of
the September 1988 issue of Environment.)
A SCIENTIFIC INITIATIVE
In September 1986, an ad hoc planning committee recommended to the
General Assembly of ICSU that an International Geosphere-Biosphere
Programme be organized to guide and assess scientific research on global
change. ICSU agreed to the program and, in early 1987, appointed a
Special Committee to plan an IGBP that would "study the progressive
changes in the environment of the human species on this Earth, past and
future; to identify their causes, natural or man-made; and to make
informed predictions of the long-term future and thus of the dangers to
our well being and even to our survival; and to investigate ways of
minimizing those dangers that may be open to human intervention.~814 To
realize these goals, IGBP will sponsor research in several critical areas
and will actively support other research programs, both national and
international.
During the first half of 1988, the Special Committee developed a
preliminary research plan.15 In October, the IGBP Scientific Advisory
Council, composed of members of ICSU, national IGBP committees, and other
organizations from 40 nations, met in Stockholm to review the research
plans. The Special Committee proposed a broad array of activities to the
nearly 200 scientists assembled. In the end, five broad topics under
which research could be grouped and coordinated were defined: terres-
trial biosphere-atmosphere chemistry interactions; marine biosphere-
atmosphere interactions; biospheric aspects of the hydrological cycle;
effects of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems; and global analy-
sis, modeling, and interpretation.16
Certain research areas deserving concentrated attention were iden-
tified, including data and information systems, geosphere-biosphere
observatories, and techniques for extracting environmental data of the
past.17 IGBP task forces are focusing on each of these areas to develop
a research agenda for the l990s. For each focus, they are investigating
an array of interrelated research projects either proposed or already
under way (e.g., World Climate Research Program, World Ocean Circulation
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39
Experiment, Man and the Biosphere Program, International Global Atmo-
spheric Programme, and the International Satellite Cloud Climatology
Project).
Some of the most exciting research topics opening up include Earth
history, the forcing functions of global change, Earth-system fluxes,
and predicting resource availability. By documenting historical Earth
processes and studying their results and by assessing present and
anticipated anthropogenic impacts, future global changes might be
predicted more accurately. Theories and models of future global change
can be tested by comparing them to actual historical changes. Thus,
Earth history will be exploited to identify the forces behind climate
change and to investigate the coupling between biogeochemical processes
and the physical climate (e.g., the connection between greenhouse-gas
emissions and global warming). This work will require an extensive
observation system to document past Earth processes and future envi-
ronmental change.
Forcing functions of global change, including solar and orbital
changes, solid-Earth processes, and, in particular, human activities that
influence the Earth system on a planetary scale, must be analyzed and
understood. Variations in solar activity influence climate change over
scales of decades, centuries, and millennia. The solar energy flux can
affect not only the physical environment but also such biological pro-
cesses as photosynthesis and respiration. Solid-Earth processes such as
volcanic eruptions and marine vents affect the global climate and may
cause extinctions.
Changes in a human activity like land use can cause global change by
disturbing carbon storage, nutrient cycles, the hydrologic cycle, atmo-
spheric composition, and the reflection of solar energy from the Earth's
surface. As global population grows and humans convert more and more
natural resources into goods and services, anthropogenic perturbations of
the environment can only increase. (Figure 5.1 shows projected popula-
tion growth through the year 2120.) The rate of change itself may be a
forcing function because the rate of change can affect the kind of
change; short-term but extreme perturbations of Earth's system can cause
more dramatic changes than do long-term, gradual perturbations.
Scientists must pay more attention to the interactions of physical,
chemical, and biological components of the system and to the flux of
energy, water, and chemicals throughout all of Earth's domains, instead
of concentrating on pieces of the system as if they were static and
isolated. Understanding these interactions is critical in part because
global change is nonlinear: It occurs as a threshold response to a
continual force, just as the back of the proverbial camel breaks suddenly
with the addition of one more straw. Moreover, the change effected upon
the atmosphere by the ocean will in turn affect the ocean (as well as
other domains). Special attention must be paid to the cycling of
chemicals (carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, and trace gases) through
the physical, biological, industrial, and agricultural systems. A net-
work of geosphere-biosphere observatories in selected ecosystems is
envisioned to serve as regional research and training centers. As
understanding of Earth processes is enhanced, attention will be turned
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40
12-
11
10 1
-
8-
O ~n
_ ~
~.O 6-
~ —
~ Q
O _
5—
3
2
More developed regions
1950 2000 2050 2100
YEAR
FIGURE 5.1 Projected population growth for developed and less developed
regions through the year 2120.
Notes: More developed regions include Europe, North America, Australia,
Japan, New Zealand, and the USSR. Less developed regions include Africa,
Asia, Latin America, and Oceania.
SOURCES: Department of International Economic and Social Affairs, World
Population Prospects as Assessed in 1980 Population Studies No. 78 (New
York: United Nations, 1981~; and Department of International Economic and
Social Affairs, Long-Range Population Projections of the World and Major
Regions, 2025-2150 Five Variants as Assessed in 1980. 1981 (New York:
United Nations, 1981~.
to developing quantitative models capable of projecting global change
into the future.
Global change will cause important, large-scale modifications in the
availability and distribution of renewable and nonrenewable resources.
Although the force behind the change may be global in scale (like global
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41
warming), predictions of resource availability are needed on a regional
scale. (In the January/February issue of Environment, Thomas E. Graedel
presents a methodology for assessing and predicting regional impacts of
global change.)
OTHER INITIATIVES
An important contribution to global-change research planning was the
massive report Earth System Science released in January g988 by the Earth
System Sciences Committee of the NASA Advisory Council. The commit-
tee's mandate was to define a comprehensive, integrated program to obtain
a scientific understanding of the entire Earth system and of the func-
tions and interactions of its component parts. Such understanding could
enable scientists to predict both natural and anthropogenic global
changes over time scales of decades to centuries. The committee made
detailed recommendations on five substantive topics:
o space-based and in situ long-term measurement of the global vari-
ables that define the vital signs of the Earth system and control its
changes;
o fundamental description of Earth and its history;
o process studies and research focused on key Earth-system problems;
o development of Earth-system models to integrate data sets, guide
research programs, and simulate future trends; and
o development of an information system to facilitate data reduction,
data analysis, and quantitative modeling.l9
The committee identified two distinct phases of work: near-term
(1987-1995), to include the currently planned space missions and the
conduct of essential process studies, and long-term (1995 and beyond), to
deploy a new generation of space technology integrated with ground-based
measurements to constitute a comprehensive Earth Observing System (EOS).
During April 1988, senior officials from 17 national space agencies
gathered in Durham, New Hampshire, for the ISY Mission to Planet Earth
Conference ? 20 which was convened in connection with the International
Space Year (ISY) planned for 1992. The conference established a Space
Agency Forum for ISY and chose to make "mission to planet Earth" a major
theme of ISY. Recently, the increasing number, diversity, and sophis-
tication of space-agency Earth observation missions have underscored the
importance of standardizing their output and making it readily acces-
sible. Therefore, particular support was given to a proposal to mount a
Global Information Systems Test (GIST) to develop globally accessible
formats for data collected by national systems on two key problems:
early detection of the greenhouse effect and deforestation.
The IGBP initiative at the international level is being supported by
imaginative proposals emanating from many of the 70 scientific organ-
izations adhering to ICSU.21 For example, last year the Committee on
Global Change of the U.S. National Research Council22 recommended that
U.S. contributions to IGBP include the development of an integrated EOS
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4Z
with space- and ground-based observatories and proposed initial research
priorities that included studies of:
o water, energy, and vegetation interactions, to develop models of
the coupling between climate and terrestrial ecosystems;
o fluxes of trace gases and nutrients between terrestrial
ecosystems, the atmosphere, and the oceans;
o biogeochemical dynamics in the ocean, to understand and predict
the effects of global change on ocean biogeochemical cycles and their
feedback effects on global change;
o Earth history, to construct models of past climate change that
could stand as a basis for validating models of future global change; and
o human interactions with global change, with special attention to
land-use changes that affect both physical and biological parameters and
to the residues from industrial/agricultural processes that perturb the
global environment.23
EARTH OBSERVING SYSTEM
In the past, revolutionary advances in science have followed the
development of an instrument that enables scientists to observe in detail
some aspect of the natural world. For example, the invention of the
microscope and its sophisticated progeny opened the fields of cellular
and molecular biology and gave humans new understanding of life pro-
cesses. No single piece of hardware triggered the current revolutionary
shift in Earth sciences.24 However, remote sensing from spacecraft
together with the communications and computation capability now available
have stimulated a holistic view of this planet and its atmosphere,
oceans, land, fauna, and flora.
Much of the research described above requires the development and
implementation of an extensive and elaborate Earth Observing System. EOS
should identify and document past, present, and future global changes
with both ground- and space-based sensors. The potential of space-based
sensors is not yet appreciated widely enough, but the emerging capability
has profound implications for the revolution under way in Earth sciences.
The data provided by EOS must be made accessible to researchers
through a global information system incorporating the latest advances in
communication and computers. In the same vein, internationalization of
space-based observations of Earth's vital signs is urgent. The very
modest first steps taken last April by 17 national space agencies to make
''mission to planet Earth" a major theme of ISY 1992 should be expanded
and institutionalized as a free-standing program, independent of the
competing demands for resources, to advance the broad objectives of space
science and technology.
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT RESPONDS
In close coordination with the National Research Council and ICSU, a
U.S. strategy for global change research was developed by federal
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43
agencies and transmitted to Congress by the Director of the Office of
Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the Presi-
dent.25 The strategy document accompanied President Reagan's budget
message for fiscal year 1990, which begins October 1, 1989. The budget
message proposed funding global change research with $190.5 million--an
increase of 41 percent. 6 The U.S. Global Change Research Program aims
to provide a sound scientific basis for national and international policy
decisions on global change issues. The program's scientific objectives
are to monitor, understand, and, ultimately, predict global change. The
strategy document identified seven integrated and interdisciplinary
elements of the program:27
o Biogeochemical dynamics. The study of the sources, sinks, fluxes,
and interactions among the mobile biogeochemical constituents within the
Earth system and their influences (including global warming) on the life-
sustaining envelope of the Earth.
o Ecological systems and dynamics. The study of how aquatic and
terrestrial ecosystems both affect and respond to global change.
0 Climate and hydrologic systems. The study of the physical pro-
cesses that govern the climate and hydrological systems central to
global change, including the atmosphere, hydrosphere (oceans, surface
and ground water, etc.), cryosphere (frozen regions), land surface, and
biosphere.
o Human interactions. The study of the interface between natural
processes and human activities. (The global environment is a crucial
determinant of the human capacity for sustained development.)
o Earth-system history. The study of past natural environment
change as it is revealed in rocks, terrestrial and marine sediments,
glaciers and ground ice, tree rings, geomorphic features (including the
record of changes in sea level), or other manifestations of past
environmental conditions. As past analogues of possible future global
changes, the records contribute to the understanding of the present Earth
system, to the discrimination between natural and anthropogenic change,
and hence to the prediction of future global change.
o Solid-Earth processes. The study of solid-Earth processes that
affect the life-supporting characteristics of the global environment and
especially those processes that take place at the interfaces between the
solid Earth and the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere.
o Solar influences. The study of variability in solar brightness
and its impact on atmospheric density, chemistry, dynamics, ionizations,
and climate.
This strategy document sent to the U.S. Congress represents a
crosscutting review and integration by the Office of Management and
Budget of a number of initiatives by individual agencies with different
purposes and characteristics in support of a national objective. This
effort followed a procedure proposed by a committee of the presidents of
the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and
Institute of Medicine and several of their respective councilors. 8
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KEY ISSUES
The attractive opportunities during the next decade for a true
partnership between the scientific community and government to study
global change are matched only by the challenges that must be met and
overcome. For example, a balance must be achieved between the
traditionally cautious scientist who tries to satisfy a seemingly
insatiable appetite for information before supporting action and the
sometimes overzealous environmental activists who maintain that deferred
action only leads to more difficult decisions in the future. This
dilemma can be resolved only by the wisdom and good judgment of political
leaders. For instance, many actions that have not been proven necessary
on purely scientific grounds are nonetheless advisable on economic or -
other grounds; increasing energy efficiency is a perfect example.
Prudence alone suggests that such actions are desirable.
Redesigning Institutions
Another challenge is to reconstruct the present international
institutional framework for addressing both research and policy; this
framework was formed before the interdependence of nations became so
apparent and when it was believed that global issues (food, weather,
energy, and socioeconomic development, etc.) could be compartmentalized
and addressed in relative isolation. National institutions for space
research must be "internationalized"--that is, space agencies must
develop closer interaction despite past competitiveness and political
differences. The institutional framework must become capable of ad-
dressing issues that cut across disciplines and intermingle science and
policy; at the same time, the framework must gain the support of nations
with conflicting ideologies and in various stages of socioeconomic de-
velopment. In light of characteristic institutional inertia, the fight
for reform and renewal will be difficult.
Related to the issue of international institutional arrangements, but
an urgent matter in its own right, is the required coordination among the
wide array of research efforts directed toward each particular aspect of
global change. Harmonious orchestration of these efforts is imperative;
however, intrusive management of research must be avoided and the
essential function of the individual investigator must be protected.
Social Sciences and Engineering
Another key issue is the involvement in global change research of
disciplines not strictly in the domain of natural science but still
relevant to understanding interactions between humans and their envi-
ronment. For example, because some of the roots of global change are
found in the metabolism of the industrial/agricultural system, it is
important for the engineers and managers of those systems to participate
actively in charting the future course.29 Because global change arises
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45
from social systems as much as from physical, chemical, and biological
systems, the full participation of social scientists is also urgent.
Although in the past many natural scientists resisted the inclusion
of other disciplines in their research programs, during these last two
years, the ubiquitous role of social and behavioral sciences and
engineering in the study of global change has been widely recognized.30
In its full flowering, IGBP will become a sustained, international, and
coordinated research program to illuminate the interaction of the
physical, chemical, biological, and social systems that regulate Earth's
unique environment for life.
As IGBP evolves and matures, it should become an admirable
collaboration among the scientific community, nongovernmental and
intergovernmental organizations, and sovereign nations. The program
increasingly will attract the interest of engineers and social and
behavioral scientists. Their involvement should suggest new dimensions
for research, such as assessing the societal impact of global change in
all its myriad manifestations; analyzing possible public policies that
should be considered to obviate certain kinds of global change, mitigate
others, and adapt to still others; and developing policy options flexible
enough to incorporate uncertainty, with respect to both the human con-
tributions to global change and the unequal division of the positive and
negative consequences of global change over local, regional, national,
and international territories. An entirely new mode of interdisciplinary
cooperation among natural scientists, social scientists, and engineers
will be required. A new social contract must be drawn up among science,
engineering, and society.
Developing Countries
One major challenge is to ensure the full involvement of developing
nations in IGBP. A particular opportunity for them is afforded by the
proposal to establish strategically located geosphere-biosphere observa-
tories dedicated to training and research. It would be tragic if the use
of high technology in space-sensors, communications, and computers pre-
cluded the participation of scientists from developing countries. The
global policy issues that must be resolved in the years to come will
require the support of every nation. The most effective way to ensure
this support is to make specific provision for their participation in the
development of the knowledge base that will undergird those decisions.
In this way, each nation will realize the necessity of and work toward a
convergence of international interests and aspirations. The magnitude of
the task of unifying policies in developing and developed countries was
revealed at the recent meetings in New Delhi and London. These meetings
underscored the need to cooperate to establish the baseline that will
make the difficult decisions tractable. Indeed, more and more, scien-
tists are realizing that the single, indivisible Earth system belongs to
one indivisible world in which it is insufficient to study one society in
isolation from all others.
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46
Financing
Financing IGBP and other such international research programs is
another great challenge. If major decisions on public policy in response
to prospective global change are to be solidly based on the best
available information rather than on popular and political perception,
creative solutions to finance the needed research will have to be
fashioned.
Material needs fall into two categories: national financing of
national programs and national financing of integrated international
activities. Each category can be further divided into financing of the
immediate planning phase and financing of the longer research phase.
Currently, it appears that the international preparatory effort
requires anywhere from U.S.$1 to 2 million annually. If the U.S.
funding for the planning phase is used as a guide, the ratio of domestic
to international funding is greater than 100 to 1. The cost of the
material resources for the research phase will probably be an order of
magnitude larger for both the national and international programs.
Still, even the cost of the research phase will seem small when compared
to the costs of whichever measures are finally chosen to adapt to or
influence global change. Clearly, new ground will have to be broken in
integrating and coordinating national and international planning,
research, and operations.
Financing work in developing countries is a special issue. Nations
unable to finance national research could easily be left behind even
though their participation in policy decisions is vital. New financing
systems patterned after the International Foundation for Science in
Stockholm and the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa,
for example, will have to be arranged. Now is a good time to explore
the feasibility of an International Science Foundation to fulfill at the
international level the same need that was perceived at the national
level by President Roosevelt and Vannevar Bush in the late 1940s and gave
rise to the U.S. National Science Foundation. An institutional framework
of this kind would represent an expansion of the activities supported by
the International Foundation for Science and the International Develop-
ment Research Centre.
CONTINUING QUESTIONS
The new public interest in global change raises some important
questions. Can a global strategy to survive the upcoming changes be
fashioned in a world of more than 150 sovereign nations at various levels
of dynamism and socioeconomic development? Could the United Nations be
given the power to police the global atmosphere as was proposed at the
Netherlands summit meeting of 24 nations in early March? Will
industrialized nations agree to "compensatory financing to Third World
countries unable to bear the cost of the conservation and antipollution
measures" needed?31 Is the knowledge base adequate for an international
program of action? Is "mission to planet Earth" simply a catch phrase,
or does it constitute a viable focal point for transforming the
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scientific and technological triumphs of this century into a service,
rather than a threat, to society? How can priorities be established when
demands for resources are unlimited?
There are no easy answers to these and other questions that have
surfaced in the past two years. Although many questions inevitably will
remain unanswered for some time, certain vital steps must be taken at
once. Environmental changes with profound consequences are impelling
nations to seek politically and economically acceptable solutions. To
be viable and effective, the solutions need to have broad authorship,
because nations that participate in the derivation of a solution will be
more likely to support and implement it. The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change is a promising forum for the needed effort because it has
been structured to develop objective assessments of environmental impacts
and to design response strategies based on an international consensus of
scientific knowledge. The nations of the world should give this panel
full support and hold its leadership to the highest standards of
performance. One vital strategy, "parallel action," will ensure that
scientific assessments and response strategies can proceed
simultaneously.
Through IGBP, an agenda for informed debate, discussion, and action
is emerging that warrants sustained attention during the approximately
4,300 days that remain before we cross the threshold into the third
millennium. The implications of the IGBP research effort for science and
society are profound. The next major milestone will be a June 1989
meeting in Brussels that will bring together the Special Committee and
national IGBP committees to develop a synthesis of the various plans that
were presented by the Special Committee and several national committees
in Stockholm last October.
The global changes clearly visible on the horizon are rooted in the
scientific and technological advances that have unlocked many of the
secrets of matter, energy, life processes, and information and made this
knowledge accessible for human purposes. The options for society are
three:
o permitting civilization to be snuffed out by savaging the global
environment with the weaponry scientific knowledge has made available;
o allowing the global environment and civilization to be gradually
suffocated by exponential population growth and by uncontrolled and
inequitable transformation of natural resources into the goods and
services that sustain and give meaning to life; and
o planning and constructing a more prosperous, just, and secure
world.
The coming decade will be one of the more critical periods in the
several million years of human evolution. If humans are to survive
safely the changes that clearly lie ahead, each day must be marked by
discrete progress toward a better world. Knowledge, the coin of
scientific enterprise, is the sine qua non of such progress. However,
the first step perhaps is to "reaffirm a robust faith in the destiny of
man.~32 It is the unique privilege and challenge of this generation to
open this window of opportunity into that better world.
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NOTES
1. Thomas F. Malone, "Mission to Planet Earth," Environment, October
1986, 6. Recently this title received broader public attention
through the study by astronaut Sally Ride, Leadership: America's
Future in Space (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, 1987~. The phrase Remission to planet Earth" has
become a catch phrase describing the efforts to understand and
respond to global and climatic change.
2. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Greenhouse Effect and Global Climate Change, inns anon 1~t
pt. 2, 39.
3. Particularly relevant articles may be found in Mosaic 19 nos. 3/4
(1988~; Earth System Sciences Committee, NASA Advisory Council,
Earth System Science; A Closer View (Washington, D.C.: National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1988~; and the U.S. National
Research Council, Space Science in the Twenty-First Century:
Imperatives for the Decades 1995 to 2015: Mission to Planet Earth
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1988~.
4. For U.S. planning see U.S. National Research Council, Committee on
Global Change, Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial
Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere-
Biosphere Program (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1988~.
An account of international planning is found in J. J. McCarthy,
chairman, The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme: A Study
of Global Change (IGBP) A Plan for Action, Report No. 4 (Stockholm:
IGBP Secretariat, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, August 1988~.
Christine McGourty, "Margaret Thatcher's U-turn on Support of Basic
Research," Nature 338~6 October 1988~:484.
Translated by the Soviet Mission to the United Nations, New York
Times, 8 December 1988, A16.
7. Mostafa Tolba, 'global Warming: Window of Opportunity, fir speech
delivered in Bangkok, 5 June 1988.
8. "Can Man Save This Fragile Earth?" National Geographic, December
1988.
9. "Planet of the Year: Endangered Earth," Time, 2 January 1989.
10. Ibid.; "The Greenhouse Effect," Newsweek, 11 July 1988; and William
F. Allman, "Rediscovering Planet Earth," U.S. News and World Report,
31 October 1988, 56.
11. National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and
the Institute of Medicine, The Four White Papers for the Transition
Team (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1989~.
12. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987~.
13. H. L. Ferguson, conference director, Conference Statement, World
Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global
Security, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 27-30 June 1988, published by
Environment Canada.
14 . S ir John Kendrew, president of the International Geosphere-
Biosphere Programme, cited in McCarthy, note 4 above, page 3.
15. McCarthy, note 4 above.
~ ~ ~ it_ 1 ~ ~ ~ Ja J-O ~ ~ ~ J ~ ~ ~
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21.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Earth System Sciences Committee, NASA Advisory Council, Earth System
Science: A Program for Global Change (Washington, D.C.: National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1988~.
19. Ibid.
20. H. Myerson, ea., Report of the ISY Mission to Planet Earth
Conference: A Planning Meeting for the International Space Year
(Washington, D.C.: US-ISY Association, 1988~.
V. M. Kotlyakov, J. R. Mather, G. V. Sdasyuk, and G. F. White,
"Global Change: Geographical Approaches (A Review)," Proceedings,
National Academy of Sciences 85 (August 1988~:5986-91.
22. U.S. National Research Council, note 4 above.
23. Ibid.
24. Earth System Sciences Committee, NASA Advisory Council, note 18
above.
25. Committee on Earth Sciences, Federal Coordinating Council for
Science, Engineering, and Technology, Our Changing Planet: A U.S.
Strategy for Global Change Research (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1989~.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and
the Institute of Medicine, Federal Science and Technology Budget
Priorities: New Perspectives and Procedures (Washington, D.C.:
National Academy Press, 1988~.
29. John Helm, ea., Energy: Production, Consumption, and Consequences
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, forthcoming).
30. H. K. Jacobson and C. Shanks, Report of the Workshop on an
International Social Science Research Program on Global Change at
the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, Michigan, 1987; and U.S. National Research Council, Committee
on Global Change, note 4 above.
31. Edward Cody, ''Global Environmental Power Sought," Washington Post,
12 March 1989, A27.
32. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Building the Earth (Wilkes-Barre,
Penn.: Dimensions Books, 1965~.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
global environment
