Global Change and Our Common Future Papers from a Forum (1989) / Chapter Skim
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5. Mission to Planet Earth Revisited
5. Mission to Planet Earth Revisited
Pages 34-49
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From page 34... ...
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.
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From page 35... ...
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.
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From page 36... ...
GROWING INTEREST Scientists have repeatedly verified the manifestations of global change.3 Plans to cope with these disastrous changes are being formulated worldwide.4 Thus, research like that proposed in "Mission to Planet Earth" has been elevated to new importance by a greater perception 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 worldwide conservation and research.
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From page 37... ...
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 environment 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.
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From page 38... ...
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.
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From page 39... ...
Changes in a human activity like land use can cause global change by disturbing carbon storage, nutrient cycles, the hydrologic cycle, atmospheric 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.
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From page 40... ...
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.
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From page 41... ...
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 variables 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)
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From page 42... ...
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.
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From page 43... ...
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.
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From page 44... ...
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 environment. 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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From page 45... ...
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 contributions 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.
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From page 46... ...
An institutional framework of this kind would represent an expansion of the activities supported by the International Foundation for Science and the International Development Research Centre. CONTINUING QUESTIONS The new public interest in global change raises some important questions.
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From page 47... ...
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.
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From page 48... ...
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~.
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From page 49... ...
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~.
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