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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Suggested Citation:"The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." National Research Council. 1988. Toward an Understanding of Global Change: Initial Priorities for U.S. Contributions to the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1393.
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Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change COORDINATOR: W1~1AM C. CLARK CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Goals for research on the human dimensions of global change, 137 Goal and organization of this paper, 137 PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS OF THE HUMAN SYSTEM INVOLVED IN GLOBAL CHANGE Interactions, 139 Choice, 143 Culture, 148 UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS Human sources of global change, 152 Human consequences of global change, 159 Human management of global change, 168 SELECTED RESEARCH CHALLENGES Global land use change, 175 Industrial metabolism, 178 Usable knowledge of global change, 180 Institutions for management, 183 Documentation, 186 135 138 152 175 This paper was compiled by committee member William C. Clark based on several recent meetings on the topic and comments from a large number of experts in the social science community. See Annex B for detailed description of the process by which this paper was prepared. 134

135 INTRODUCTION The need to view human activity as an integral component of the geosphere-biosphere system has been emphasized since the ear- liest writings on global change. The Russian mineralogist Vladimir Tvanovitch Vernadsky, recapitulating in 1945 themes he had first ar- ticulated in lectures and books 20 years earlier, described his concept of the biosphere, the only terrestrial envelope where life can exist. Basically, man cannot be separated from it. He is geologically connected with its material and energetic structure. (Vernadsky, 1945) Echoing the Italian geologist Stoppani, Vernadsky argued that the most environmentally significant aspect of the human connection was not technology per se, but rather the sense of global knowledge and communication engendered by that technology.) He portrayed this "noosphere" or "realm of thought" as a new geological phenomenon on our planet. In it for the first time man becomes a larg~scale geologic force. Chemically, the face of our planet, the biosphere, is being sharply changed by man, consciously, and even more so, unconsciously. (Vernadsky, 1945) Vernadsky and his predecessors had neither the data nor the instrumentation to convert their insights into useful analytical tools for (lescribing and understanding global interactions between envi- ronment and processes of human development.2 Over the last 50 years, however, and especially in the quarter century since the Tn- ternational Geophysical Year, the necessary measurements, models, and concepts have rapidly accumulated. We now know that human activities have fundamentally transformed the face of the earth, as well as the diversity en c! distribution of its biota. These activities 1Stoppani, writing in 1873, argued that man constituted a new geological force, and designated ours as the "anthropozoic era." He believed that "the creation of man . . . was the introduction of a new element into nature, of a force wholly unknown to earlier periods. It is a new telluric force which in power and universality may be com- pared to the greater forces of earth." ~ Corso di Geologia, Vol. ii, cap. xxxi, sect. 1327 Milan). 2 For example, despite their seminal character and originality, both the work of George Perkins Marsh (1964) and, nearly a century later, the first major interdisci- plinary review of Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Thomas, 1956) are ultimately anecdotal works that infer a global assessment on the basis of experience in a relatively small number of intensely studied areas.

136 have induced chemical fluxes at the continental and even global scale that are comparable to or greater than those occurring in nature. They have long since changed local climates and may now be aiter- ing the heat and water fluxes of the entire planet (Bolin and Cook, 1983; HolUgate et al., 1982; Nriagu and Pacyna, 1988; Turner et al., in press). The reciprocal impacts of environmental change on human soci- eties have also become significantly clearer over the last half-century. Simplistic theories of environmental determinism have been replaced by an increasingly sophisticated appreciation of the ways in which the physical environment shapes the challenges and opportunities that face communities, regions, and states (Chisholm, 1982; White, l98Sa). The possible implications of global environmental change for sustainable human development are beginning to be appreciated (Clark and Munn, 1986; Jacobs and Monroe, 1987; Milbrath, in press; Redclift, 1987; WCED, 1987~. Still needed, however, is a re- search paradigm that takes Vernadsky's insights seriously and that harnesses the fug range of scholarship necessary to address the an- teractions among human, ecological, and physical systems involved in global change. Understanding the interactions between human and environmen- tal systems demands involvement of many fields, including resource and development economics, political science, sociology, geography, human behavior, anthropology, history, law, and engineering. Ap- plied assessments of environmental impacts, risk, and hazard also provide insights. And numerous works have examined the human causes or consequences of particular instances of large-scare envi- ronmental change.3 In addition, a growing interest in the human dimensions of global change has elicited over the last several years a number of symposia, workshop reports, and edited volumes (see Annex B). 3Specific examples of this work are cited in the text of this paper. But no compre- hensive and critical review of this material has yet been conducted with a view towards its relevance for global change studies. An excellent initial survey is provided by White (1988b). Among the broadest critical assessments of major studies on particular envi- ronmental problems is Glantz et al. (1982~.

137 Goals for Research on the Human Dimensions of Global Change The need for an interactive view of global change has been rec- ognized in the IGBP since its inception. The initial exploratory symposium on global change at the 1984 ICSU General Assembly in Ottawa included~several papers under the general heading of "the geosphere-biosphere and human activity" (Clark and Holling, 1984; Kates, 1984; Revelle, 1984~. As articulated by Robert Kates at {CSU's 1984 Ottawa symposium on global change: The research opportunity over the next decade is to examine B. - . . ~ ~ ~ · ~ . ~ ~ · 1 ~ 1 _ _ _ 1 ~ ~ ~ 1~ ~ ~ _ the boundaries of the sustainable development ot the earth. na- sic scientific research will provide much improved knowledge of human-induced change in the biosphere, the capacity of natural systems to absorb such change, and the ability of human soci- eties to adjust or adapt their behavior. The focus will be on the convergence of problems, methods, and theory. From such fundamental knowledge a scientific and truly human ecology can emerge and it should be part of an international geosphere- biosphere program. (Kales, 1984:493) Two years later, the program was defined to include the objective of understanding the manner in which the earth system is influenced by human actions. ICSU's Special Committee for the IGBP broadened this goad to include the reciprocal consequences of global change for resource availability as an underlying theme deserving special emphasis in the program (ICSU, 1987:3-4~. The question is, therefore, not whether, but only how the interactions between environmental and human sys- tems should be studied in the context of the International Geosphere- Biosphere Program. Goal and Organization of This Paper The goal of this paper is to articulate the principal issues and questions that should be addressed to assure effective integration of research on the human dimensions of global change within the U.S. contribution to the IGBP. This is an intentionally restrictive goal that explicitly excludes many important aspects of the interactions between environment and society. In particular, this chapter does not purport to lay out basic research agendas for the individual social or behavioral sciences or engineering disciplines with interests in environmental change.

138 Such agendas can only be defined "internally" by the specific fields involved; a number of efforts are now under way to do just that. Nor does this chapter attempt to address the immediate policy issues of what to do about global change. Again, other initiatives are actively investigating such questions.4 The essence of such an "external" definition of priorities is that it cannot be made by any one discipline. Indeed, it highlights questions that lie at disciplinary interfaces, and that must be resolved for the understanding of global change per se. In that spirit, this chapter attempts to focus attention on aspects of the human dimensions of global change in which the interactions with environmental systems are of central importance. In support of this objective, the chapter proceeds from a gen- eral discussion of relevant themes to some specific suggestions for research on the human dimensions of global change. In particular, the following section presents a broad overview of the principal ele- ments involved in humans' interactions with the global environment. Some of the major unresolved questions regarding the character, causes, and consequences of those interactions are then summarized in the section on "unresolved questions," drawing upon the previ- ously noted body of recent discussions on the human dimensions of global change. Many of these questions wiD be dealt with through the normal course of research now planned or under way in a num- ber of countries and disciplines. In addition, however, the problems discussed in that section pose a number of especially complex and interdisciplinary research challenges that might best be addressed as part of the formal U.S. contribution to the IGBP. Five such research challenges are highlighted in the final section of this paper as a stim- ulus to further and fuller discussion in the course of IGBP planning efforts. PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS OF THE HUMAN SYSTEM INVOLVED IN GLOBAL CHANGE This section outlines the elements of the human system that 4In addition to the studies listed earlier as contributing to this report, a number of other explicitly discipline-oriented and solution-oriented groups have begun to earning the human dimensions of global change. To encourage exchanges among such groups, a partial listing with addresses is provided in Annex A.

139 require special attention in studies of global change. Three basic di- mensions of the human role in global change are discussed: the inter- actions between human and environmental systems; the choices that individuals, governments, and other organizations make in efforts to alter or manage those interactions; and the underlying elements of social structure or culture that shape both interactions and choices. Within this framework, focus could be sought in a number of ways. Experience with interdisciplinary studies in general and envi- ronmental impact assessment in particular argues strongly for the approach adopted below. This starts with interactions, attempts to identify the most important ways in which human and environment e] systems influence one another, and then tries to determine which so- cia] structures and processes are most important in explaining those interactions. Interactions The most basic elements of the interactions between human and environmental systems are suggested in Figure 1. The figure reflects the central fact that both the human and the environmental systems of the earth change in response to their own internal dynamics, to external perturbations over which neither exerts appreciable control, and to their interactions with one another. Two forms of interaction are of central importance for the purposes of this chapter. The first concerns the sources of environmental change that result from de- mographic, economic, institutional, technological, agricultural, and behavioral changes in the human system. The second concerns the consequences for human well-being that result from climatic, chem- ical, and biotic changes in the environment system. The temporal and spatial scales at which important interactions between human ant! environmental systems occur require special attention in efforts to define a focused research agenda on global change. Sources In principle, human processes drive global change by altering the flows of energy and materials among components of the geosphere- biosphere system (Orians, in press). In practice, the most important sources of alterations involve the following: ~ the release of "pollutants" as varied in their effects as DDT, carbon dioxi(le, and nuclear radiation;

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141 ~ the sequestering or redistribution of other materials and en- ergy ranging from phosphorus to soil organic matter to running water; the direct transformation of physical structures (e.g., terrac- ing), surface properties (e.g., albedo), and habitats (e.g., wetIancl clrainage); the direct removal of species from the biotic system through harvest, the direct addition of species to the system through trans- port from other areas ("invasion"), or Tow- and high-tech versions of genetic engineering ("domestications; and ~ interactions among the above. The human activities that have contributed most importantly to these sources of global change include agricultural and industrial production, and energy consumption (Bolin and Cook, 1983; Clark and Munn, 1986; Turner et al., in press). Within these broad cate- gories, there is a need to identify which specific activities are most significantly implicated in existing global environmental changes, en c! which additional activities might become implicated in the future. Consequences Research on the human consequences of environmental change has established that the degree of threat experienced by a society is a function of four interactive variables: risk, exposure, vulnerability, en cl response (Kasperson and Kasperson, 1988; Kates et al., 1985; Kotlyakov et al., 1988; Whyte and Burton, 1980~. In terms of the framework presented here, risk is defined in terms of the actual or estimated changes in selected environmental variables. One of the clearest lessons of environmental impact studies is that assessments are ineffective if they seek to develop comprehen- sive lists of ah environmental risks affected by human activity. More useful have been studies that focus on a modest number of "valued environmental components" (BeanTands and Duinker, 1983~. These are simply attributes of the environment that people choose to value. Which components are valued in any particular situation wiD depend on many of the considerations of scale, choice, and culture discussed below. Scientists, policymakers, and other interests must negotiate the valued environmental components that merit priority attention in assessing the risks posed by global change. Notions of social vulnerability are central to un~lerstan~ling the

142 human consequences of global change (Timmerman, 1981~. Indi- viduals and societies can cope with a wide range of environmental changes, but at different costs and within different limits. Studies of human response to natural hazards, climate change, and nuclear war show that both costs and limits change with time and are mixed functions of the environment itself plus the underlying demographic, organizational, and developmental characteristics of the human sys- tem as discussed later in this chapter (Burton et al., 1978; HarweD and Hutchinson, 1985; Parry et al., 1988~. Some tentative general- izations have begun to emerge. But a general understanding of social vulnerability to environmental variations remains a distant if urgent goal. Differences in the exposure of various social groups and geograph- ical regions to glob ally distributed environmental changes severely complicate both expert and lay assessments of environmental threats. Recent work on "total exposure assessment" to air pollutants has shown how misreading broad average exposure estimates can be (e.g., Ott, 1985; Smith, in press; SpenglLer and Soczek, 1984~. Concepts relating to heterogeneities in exposure and empirical estimates of such exposures will be central elements in an understanding of the human dimensions of global change (e.g., Vaupel and Yashin, 1986~. The human choices that constitute societies response to global change are reviewed later in this paper. Scale As noted earlier, studies of global change need to devote par- ticular attention to interactions that become significant on temporal scales ranging from decades to centuries and spatial scales ranging from large regions to the globe as a whole. These are much coarser scales than those at which most research on human systems has fo- cused. On the other hand, many aspects of long-term global change have their primary sources and consequences at relatively fine scales (Holling, 1936; White, l98Sa). Moreover, notions of sustainability are strongly dependent on the linkages among regions simultaneously exposed to global environmental change. Coupling observation and explanation across multiple scales therefore becomes a central re- quirement for understanding global change (Risser, 1986; Rosswall et al., 1988). A long tradition of attention to space and time dimensions in

143 geography, economics, and history has produced a relatively so- phisticated view of the difficulties involved.5 This experience shows that much confusion and unproductive debate results when scholars working at different temporal or spatial scales contrast unlike situ- ations without recognizing the problems find limits of transference (Chisholm, 1982~. In order to minimize such problems in efforts to understand the human dimensions of global change, a first require- ment is the explicit identification of what scales are involved in each effort to document or explain specific interactions between environ- menta] and social systems. Beyond this, it is important to know which human processes are likely to interact most strongly with the environment at the coarse (decadal and regional) scales that are cen- tral to global change. Initial studies suggest that special attention should be given to global, long-term studies of topics such as the life cycle dynamics of major industrial processes, fuel substitution in energy systems, urbanization, labor absorption in the agricultural sector, and the conditions limiting the extent of major crop zones (Clark, 1987~. Finally, understanding is needed on the ways in which certain fine-scale phenomena of human systems (e.g., technical in- novations) cascade "up-scale" to yield consequences significant for global change. Choice A fundamental asymmetry in the interactions between human and environmental systems does not appear in Figure 1, but is nonetheless essential to an understanding of global change. For while the response of environmental systems to human activities is entirely reactive, the response of human systems to changes in the environ- ment has both reactive and proactive elements. Human behavior can respond not only to actual environmental changes that have already occurred, but also to people's perceptions and assessments of possible future changes that they hope to encourage or avoid. This reflexive or anticipatory potential of human systems raises the prospect of 5 economists have devoted extensive attention to what Thomas Schelling (1978) has called the connections between 'micro motives and macro behavior." Geographers have made significant progress in understanding connections between individual human actions and regional environmental consequences at the level of the landscape (Kotlyakov et al., 1988~. And historians are increasingly pursuing comparative, transnational ap- proaches to the study of longterm global interactions between people and their envi- ronments (Richards, 1986~.

144 conscious environmental management. It also focuses attention on the central role that studies of human choice and behavior must play in efforts to understand global change. The central position of choice behavior in the interactions be- tween human and environmental systems is suggested in Figure 2, which draws heavily on research concerning the human ecology of natural and technological hazards. One important aspect of that research is its treatment of choice behavior as a potential modifier of both the human sources and the human consequences of environmen- ta] change. Another is its recognition that virtually all human choices relating to environmental change entail a significant degree of risk taking and uncertainty, and thus almost inevitably result in a signifi- cant degree of surprise (White, l98Sb). Coupled with broader studies in the behavioral sciences, decision analysis, and policymaking, th research on hazards suggests that three factors play significant roles in shaping human choices relating to environmental change: values, options, and perceptions. Values Values, in the present context, can be viewed as an indication of what people think they want from the interactions between human and environmental systems. Research has shown strong associations between positive valuations of the environment and concrete behav- iors that sustain environmental systems (Dariey and Gilbert, 1985~. Conversely, a strong argument has been made that most human choices that degrade the global environment are governed by values that weight short-run benefits to people over long-run damages to the environment and the foundation for sustainable resource (level- opment that it provides (Bandura, 1986~. The important roles of human values in the interactions between people and the environment are rapidly changing, as reflected in the tremendous expansion and strengthening of the environmental movement over the last quarter-century (White, l98Sa). At the local level, this shift can be seen in the explosive growth of environmental groups for self-help and neighborhood action around the world. At the national level, political parties have begun to give environmental issues central places on their agendas. Expenditures for environmen- tal protection have grown to constitute 1 or 2 percent of the GNP in most industrialized countries (Hol~gate et al., 1982~. At the interna- tional level, the evolving position of environmental values is reflected

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146 in successive reports of special U.N. World Commissions. Whereas commissions formed earlier in this decade had dealt with security or development issues in isolation, the BrundtIand Comm~ssion's 1987 Our Common Future report emphasized the connections among envi- ronment, development, and security and stressed the need to pursue ah three objectives in concert (WCED, 1987~. Which values are most relevant to global change? Classic eco- nomic notions of efficiency are clearly no longer the dominant values guiding many of today's decisions that are seen to have an envi- ronmental component. Increasingly important are values reflecting alternative conceptualizations of development, a sense of steward- ship for the planet, and obligations to future generations or other neglected populations (White, 198Sa). How such values are factored into environmental choices, how they enter government processes, ant! how their character and reach vary over time or among cultures, are central to an understanding of global change. Options If values reflect what people want, options reflect what they can get. Clearly, not everything people value can be obtained; what can be obtained may often be reached via alternative paths. Moreover, the value and option dimensions of choice are related. Research on policymaking has shown that people generally decide what they want only in light of what they think they can get (March and Olsen, 1976; Wil(lavsky, 1979~. Reciprocally, what they can get at any given time often reflects options developed in response to previously unobtain- able desires.6 Not surprisingly, one of the greatest contributions that formal analysis actually makes to practical policymaking is through enlarging the range of options available for choice (ScheDing, 1983~. The options involved in human choices concerning global change can be grouped in three interrelated categories: technological, orga- nizational, and economic. Technological options concern the alter- native ways in which basic processes of resource use, manufacturing, service provision, and waste control can be carried out. Examples 6A relevant but neglected body of work on the mechanisms of this process has accumulated under the rubric of "induced innovation" studies. For overviews, see Bin- swanger and Ruttan (1978), Ruttan (1984), and Runge (1986~.

147 range from selective harvest versus clear-cutting for forest manage- ment, to fossil versus nuclear sources of electrical energy. Organi- zational or institutional options range from basic modes of social structure, through alternative regulatory arrangements, to various legal structures. Examples include market vs. control economies, pollution permits versus effluent taxes, and international versus re- gional treaties and conventions. Finally, a focus on economic options emphasizes the fundamental requirement that societies be able to af- ford choices undertaken in pursuit of their values. While maximizing efficiency may not always be an appropriate criterion for choice, even the most ardent conservationists are coming to realize that environ- mentally sustainable development must be economically sustainable as well (Madclen, 1987; WCED, 1987~. Better understanding of global change requires a broad view of the range of options available for choice, and knowledge of the likely efficacy of alternative options for managing the long-term, large-scale interactions between human and environmental systems. Perceptions Finally, choices are based on people's perceptions and assess- ments of how the world system works, how and why it is changing, how its changes are connected to things they value, and how choices among options for action can alter those connections. In contexts as complex as global change, perceptions and assess- ments will inevitably differ from reality for reasons of fundamental ignorance or uncertainty i.e., the actual causes and effects of change are not understood by anyone. Such fundamental inaccuracies in- crease as one moves along the chain of causation from outcomes cast in terms of altered material and energy flows in the physical environment, to ecosystem-level impacts of such alterations, to con- sequences for individuals and entire social systems (Schneider, 1983~. These difficulties are only partially overcome by the wide array of formal assessment methods that have been developed over the last two decades.7 7Examples include technology assessment (Shrader-Fiechette, 1985), environmen- tal impact assessment (e.g., Bisset, 1987; Munn, 1979), risk assessment (e.g., Covello et al., 1985; Whyte and Burton, 1980), and efforts to provide more comprehensive social impact assessments (e.g., Kates et al., 1985; Leistritz and Ekstrom, 1986; McAllister, 1982~.

148 Inadequate education and poor communication of expert assess- ments limit the accuracy of perceptions on which choices are based. But experience suggests a wide range of other potentially limiting factors that are characteristic of the choosers themselves rather than the experts. These may include the proximity of an individual to environmental damage; exposure to mass media, education, variety of life experience, age, cultural and organizational context, and a number of other issues (Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982; Tang and Jacobson, 1988~. Explaining and predicting interactions between hu- man and environmental systems require understanding of different peoples' perceptions of global change and their roles in it, the factors that cause variation or distortion in those perceptions, and the steps that can be taken to make formal assessments more accurate and useful. Culture Human interactions with the global environment, as well as hu- man choices regarding environmental management, are ultimately grounded in a wealth of unclerlying social factors and historical con- texts that might be called "culture." Patterns of global environmen- tal change can be described without reference to cultural factors. But because of the integral role of human systems in the dynamics of global change, some understanding of why societies function as they do wiD be required for explaining and predicting interactions between people and their environments. A Tong-standing debate exists on the relative importance of var- ious cultural factors as causes of environmental change and as de- terminants of the consequences that such changes have for people (e.g., Garcia, 1981~. That debate is sure to intensify with increased attention to the problems of global change. In fact, however, the practical (lifficulty is not to imagine ways in which cultural variation might influence global change. Rather, it is to bound the consider- ation of contributing cultural factors in a way that leads to efficient explanations, and thus keeps research on the human component of global change from becoming synonymous with research on social systems in general.8 It thus seems prudent to focus initial global change studies on the dimensions of culture that existing scholarship pan analogous case was successfully argued early in the evolution of the natural sci- ence components of the IGBP. As a result, the natural science component of IGBP does not involve most environmental science, but rather focuses on the small but important

149 indicates are almost certainly central to the long-term, large-scare interactions of human and environmental systems. These include the structure, distribution, and growth of human populations, the modes of social, political, and economic organization adopted by those populations, and the resulting state of agricultural, industrial, and general economic development. (The cultural dimensions of en- vironmental values and attitudes are also sure to be important, as noted earlier.) Populations Population characteristics are clearly among the most funda- mental human dimensions of global change, with direct implications for resource use, waste production, and social vulnerability (Repetto, 1987~. Despite continuing declines in fertility rates throughout much of the world, the human population of the earth is almost certain to more than double within the next century. Migration-induced changes in the distribution of population are even more dramatic than population growth per se. Fifty years ago, less than one quarter of the worId's population lived in urban areas; fifty years from now, more than half wiD (United Nations, 1985a,b). Moreover, trends toward very large cities will almost certainly entail nonlinear impli- cations for human interactions with the environment (Baochang et al., in press). Despite years of discussion on the interactions of popu- lation, resources, and environment, however, there is still only limited understanding of how the elements of long-term, large-scare human population dynamics (e.g., fertility, migration, age distribution, and life expectancy) affect either sources of environmental change or the implications of those changes for people.~° Organization A second set of underlying human dimensions of global change can be grouped under the heading of social institutions or organi- zations.~ In the broadly defined sense employed here, "organization" subset of science necessary to explain certain long-term, global, interactive environmen- tal changes. 9This section draws heavily on the report of the U.S.-China Workshop on the Hu- man Dimensions of Global Change (Tang and Hacobson, 1988~. 10See, for example, the materials of the Population, Resources and Environment Program (PREP) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

150 includes such forms of human interaction as the family, markets, corporations, command and regulatory aspects of government, vol- untary associations, religious structures, laws, education, the media, and variety of international arrangements. The mix and strength of such mechanisms clearly vary around the world, and it would be surprising indeed if this variation did not have implications for the interactions between people and their environments. We know little about the environmental implications of the different organizational means of seeking human well-being. We do not know much more about what determines the efficacy of alternative organizational ap- proaches to incorporating environmental considerations in the social calculus (Tang and Jacobson, 1988~. Clearly, the nation state is one of the most important organizational structures involves] in de- termining the interaction of human and environmental systems. But underlying structures determining local property rights and access to resources also have a substantial impact on what people actually do to their environments, and should not be overlooked (Hagerstrand, 1988~. Perhaps the most significant organizational trend for studies of global change is the worldwide growth in the reach and power of human institutions that has been gathering momentum over the last several hundred years, and seems likely to accelerate into the fu- ture. Most organizational forms, over most of their history, have been preoccupied with more or less immediate goals of physical, eco- nomic, and spiritual security. It is only relatively recently that a few organizational structures have emerged with self-professed goals of environmental protection and environmentally sustainable develop- ment (Richards, 1986~. Especially needed is a deeper understanding of those emerging organizations with global reach and those capable of forcing particularly rapid change in human interactions with the environment. Development As important as population growth, structure, and distribution may be, they represent only the ultimate foundations on which rest the human activities that are the proximate sources and receivers of global change. Trends in resource use per capita must be considered along with trends in population density per se if we are to under- stand variations in total pressures on the environment exerted by different societies around the world (Clark, 1986; Goldemberg et al.,

151 1987~. Similarly, the character of a region's resource use, productive activities, and trade relations is an important determinant of its vul- nerability to environmental change (Burton et al., 1978; Chisholm, 1982; Parry et al., 1988~. In general, efforts to understand the under- Tying cultural dimensions of global environmental change must also look to Tong-term, large-scale changes in how people produce and consume goods and services. Industrial and agricultural processes have for centuries been the human activities with the greatest conse- quences for environmental change. In the latter part of the present century, energy-related activities have also become important devel- opmental dimensions of global change (CIark, 1986; Turner et al., in press). For example, prior to 1950 the majority of carbon diox- ide released to the atmosphere though human activities came from biomass burning. Since that time the majority has come from fossil fuel combustion (Bolin, 1986~. Consumptive end use processes are also increasingly evident as major agents of global change (Ayres and Rod, 1986~. Two basic issues arise in efforts to understand the past and future role of major development trends in global change. The first concerns the concept of "sustainability," defined by the BrundtIand Commis- sion as the capacity to provide for the needs of the present with- out diminishing the options of future generations (WCED, 1987. Despite the importance and popularity of the sustainability theme, there is still little understanding of just what constitutes a sustain- able, as opposed to an unsustainable, development path. Needed are not only more careful case histories of how environmental change has influenced development, but also a framework of concepts and causal hypotheses for use in synthesizing and generalizing the cases. A second aunt related developmental dimension of global change concerns alternative paths or models of development per se. What feasible and desirable paths would reflect a more balanced view of physical, economic, and environmental well-being or security than has traditionally been the case? What international processes would best catalyze and legitimize the search for such alternatives? What suite of development indicators would eliminate the worst imbalances and biases of current measures, and provide more meaningful en c! 11For a review of alternative definitions and their problems, see B. J. Brown et al. (1987~. 12 Some of the issues, initiatives, and difficulties are set forth in Clark and Munn (1986), Jacobs and Monroe (1987), and Liverman et al. (1988~.

152 useful documentation of progress toward the sustainable development of the earthly UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS The previous section identified the human elements involved in Tong-term, large-scare interactions with the environment. This sec- tion outlines some of the most important questions regarding those interacting elements that need to be resolved in order to better explain, predict, and manage global change. In preparing this dis- cussion, an effort has been made to summarize and critically evaluate the main conclusions of the numerous recent workshops, symposia, and writings on the human dimensions of global change that were noted at the beginning of this paper. The results are presented below under three related headings: human sources, human consequences, and human management of global change. Human Sources of Global Change An early target of research on global change should be docu- mentation and understanding of the most important ways in which human processes drive or force changes in the environmental system. Experience with study of the greenhouse problem and stratospheric ozone depletion shows that accurate histories of emissions resulting from human processes are necessary to differentiate among com- peting theories or models of global change. The same experience shows that using superficial trend-extrapolation scenarios of future emissions resulting from human processes can seriously misdirect the attention of the research community. Finally, more informed social choices regarding environmental management require better un(ler- standing of not only how, but also why, the human forcing of global change varies with time, space, and culture. Such un(lerstanding will require better answers to the three related groups of questions discussed below. i3The problem of developing more useful indicators of sustainable development is beginning to be addressed in a number of efforts. For a sample of current work, see Liverrnan et al. (1988), IIED/WRI (1987), and Daly (1988~. The long and not altogether happy history of work on social indicators is relevant to this effort. For a broad perspective on the social indicators work, see SSRC (1983) and Ferriss (1988~.

153 Identifying Human Activities That Drive Global Change Which anthropogenic alterations to material and energy flows within the geosphere-biosphere system play significant roles in forcing global change? Which human processes are significant sources of such alterations? How do answers to these questions vary across space, time, and culture? The first requirement is for a more systematic identification of which human-induced changes in energy and chemical flows, water use, habitat extent, or other variables constitute the most significant "inputs" to climatic, biogeochemical, or biotic dynamics. For a few aspects of global change like the greenhouse effect or stratospheric ozone depletion, this preliminary identification of "input" linkages between the human and other components of global change is rela- tively well in hand: research can confidently focus on a specific list of radiatively active trace gases and halocarbons. For most other aspects of global change, however, much basic research on human forcing of interactions with the environment needs to be done. Figure 3 gives a simple conceptual framework for the process of explicitly and systematically identifying the important linkages among components of the geosphere-biosphere system. The entries in the "human component" cell of the figure are drawn from NASA's Earth System Science Committee report Earth System Science: A Closer View, one of the most recent and most systematic efforts to set priorities for linkage information.~4 Those entries are nonetheless preliminary and incomplete, reflecting only partial reviews of the knowledge about human activities that researchers working on the natural components of global change believe they need in order to test their models and make predictions. Moreover, to be maximally useful, such priority lists of potential anthropogenic forcing functions must also specify the scale, resolution, and accuracy required of the input data if they are to be useful in advancing overall understanding of global change. Needed as well is information on the threshold rates or quantities above which specified anthropogenic inputs, although not now of great concern, would become potentially important agents of global change. Despite these demanding requirements, however, the kind of per- spective suggested in Figure 3 needs to be developed systematically 14Earth System Science Committee (1988~: Figure 2.4.2. Note that an earlier and more detailed effort, though restricted to a single component of the geosphere-biosphere system, is available in the NRC (1984) report Global Tropospheric Chemistry.

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155 as a useful first step in setting priority targets for studies on the energy flows, chemicals, habitats, water flows, physical properties, and biological entities that constitute the most important links be- tween human activities and rest of the geosphere-biosphere system. Initial efforts will doubtless guess wrongly on some of the important connections. But only by making such guesses explicit, and testing whether models incorporating them in fact have predictive value, can cumulative progress in the understanding of global change per se be expected. Once a priority list of linkage variables has been clefined, there remains the question of which specific human activities are capable of changing the fluxes of those variables. Even in relatively simple cases, this analysis is not trivial (e.g., Wuebbles and Edmonds, 1988~. Establishing the required knowledge base will require close colIabora- tion between scientists studying the relevant nonhuman components of global change and specialists in the workings of relevant technolo- gies and land use practices (especially chemical, water, mechanical, and agricultural engineers). Figure 4, drawn from one such col- laborative effort, suggests the wi(le range of human processes that force changes in just a few of the chemical species of importance to global change. Again, the further development of such frameworks of interactions is a crucial early step in research to understand the interactions between human and environmental components of global change. Tnput-Output Relationships in Human Activities How much alteration of the relevant material or energy flows is created per unit of human source activity? How do these "intensive" relationships between human processes and material and energy flows vary across space, time, and culture? Answering these questions will require basic quantitative pro- cess studies on the transformation of human activity "inputs" such as coke production or rice paddy cultivation into "outputs" such as methane flux to the atmosphere. Engineering expertise will again be essential to the task. Typical of the most complete work on inclivid- ual inputs and outputs is the work on quantities of carbon (lioxide pro(luced per unit energy derived from various fossil fuels (MarIand an(1 Rot ty, 1983~. Even in the carbon dioxide case, however, com- parable input/output (~/O) coefficients for various types of land use conversion activities are still underdeveloped.

156 EMISS101 SOURCE ENVIRONMENTAL COMPONENT NOx SOx HO, Sea Salt CH4 CO N20 PRODUCTION/DISTRIBUTION OF MINERAL FUELS Coal X Oil X Natural Gas X COMBUSTION OF MINERAL FUELS Coal X X X X X Oil X X X X Gasoline X Other X Natural Gas X X X X INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES Coke Production X Pig Iron Production X Smelting of Copper X Lead X Zinc X AGRICULTURAL .. _ _ _ . _ . .. . Biomass Combustion X X X X Nitrogen Fertilizers X X Rice Paddy Cultivation X Ruminant Animal Grazing X MISCELLANEOUS Industrial uses, refrig- erants, consumer products Landfills Oceans Wetlands X X X FIGURE 4 Human processes that force changes in selected dherrucal constituents of the atmospheric environment. These illustrative data are drawn from a study by Da~mstadter et al. (1987, Vol. 2: Beg. The relative simplicity of the I/0 structure for the case of carbon dioxide emissions is potentially misleading as a guide to research requirements in this complex area. In the more general situation suggested in Figure 4, a given pollutant flow will be altered through several human activities. Complex sequences of reaction, deposition, and remobilization may be involved within the human system en route to a final measured "output" into the environment. At each stage, process understanding is usually imperfect, as is monitoring data for estimating fluxes and pools. An important methodological advance in dealing with such complexities in I/0 assessments has therefore been "materials/energy balance accounting" (Ayres, 1978~. This approach takes advent age of conservation principles to balance amounts of energy and materials drawn into the human system with

157 amounts exported or stored at any given time. It focuses attention on the fact that ah energy and materials used in human development have to go somewhere, even when monitoring data fail to find them. It has helped in the "discovery" of unsuspected pollutant sources in seemingly innocuous or irrelevant human activities (Ayres and Rod, 1986~. More systematic use of balance accounting would almost certainly be useful in future efforts to answer questions concerning the I/0 relations between human and other components of the geosphere- biosphere system. An especially difficult but necessary aspect of I/0 studies will be their historical dimension. Long-term changes in the completeness of combustion or depth of plowing may be more important for certain environmental emissions than changes in the total amount of combus- tion or extent of arable land. Ignoring historical changes in the I/0 relations can lead to serious errors in understanding the human role in global change. For example, the uncritical use of contemporary emission coefficients for assessment of historical carbon monoxide emissions in the United States has almost certainly resulted in cu- mulative estimates that are significantly too low (Darmstadter et al., 1987: App. A:26~. Table 1 shows the kinds of results that careful collaborative research can produce. Much more research is needed, however, to produce comprehensive assessments of the I/0 coeffi- cients required to characterize the fuD set of interactions suggested above. The Changing Magnitude of Human Forcing What are the total amounts or strengths of the relevant human source activities? How do these "extensive" measures of the human dimension of global change vary across space, time, and culture? Ultimately, the need is for something approaching a theory of world development, cast in terms appropriate to produce relevant human forcing functions needed for the understanding of global environmen- tal change. The underlying research questions were summarized in a recent Social Science Research Council (SSRC) meeting on changes in the global environment: What are the persistent, broad-scale social structures and pro- cesses that underlie these changes? In particular, what are the relative roles of the amount and concentration of human popula- tion, the character and use of technology, the changing relation between places of production and consumption, and the "reach" and power of state and other institutional structures? How does

158 TABLE 1 Reconstruction of Historical Methane Emission coefficients, Renecting Changes in Human Economy and Technology Methane Emissions Coefficients (metric tons CH4/metric ton of fuel) 1800 1860 1890 1920 1950 1980 Anthracite Appalachian bituminous (underground) U.S. Average bituminous Coking (based on coal used for coking) Gas (based on unaccounted potential production of associated gas) Gas distribution (based on gas marketed) 0.005 0.006 0.007 0.007 0.007 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.27 0.054 0.03 -- .30 .25 .22 .03 -0.02 .20 ~~ 0.01 0.01 NOTE: This example is drawn from the study by Da~mstadter et aL (1987, Vol. 2: A83) on the impact of world development on the atmosphere. The listed coefficients me expressed as tons of CH4/ton of fuel. Dashes renect missing data. the relative importance of these roles for environmental change vary across cultures, and through history? (Social Science Re- search Council, 1988) Among the earliest efforts to address such questions at the global scale were the various world systems modeling efforts of the 1970s (e.g., CEQ, 1980; Meadows et al., 1972~. The shortcomings of these efforts are well known and can be traced to weaknesses in data, methodology, and conceptual foundations (Brewer, 1986; Green- berger et al., 1983; Meadows and Robinson, 1985; Office of Technol- ogy Assessment, 1982~. A number of more modest efforts, focused on particular sectors of the human system, have since been carried out. Several of these, specifically in the fields of population, agricul- ture, forestry, and energy modeling, are relevant to studies of global change.~5 As pointed out in a recent review by the International i5Representative of the best work is United Nations `1985b~ on population, U.N.

159 Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, however, the assumptions underlying the best of these sectoral studies are often contradictory in ways that can only partially be resolved through subsequent re- analysis (Toth et al., 1988~. No credible integrated and dynamic moclel yet exists of long-term global changes in human activities that force environmental change. Prospects for such a model, while still clistant, are nonetheless improving and need to be pursued as part of a research program on global change. As regards data, many of the most important contemporary human releases of materials and energy relevant to global change are monitored through national and international environmental networks. A careful review is needed, however, of the adequacy of this contemporary monitoring for the specific purposes of global change research. On the methodologi- cal side, another recent SSRC study has illustrated how much the social and natural sciences can learn from each other as they strug- gle with their paraHel problems of modeling and predicting global change (I`and and Schneider, 1987~. Finally, initial attempts to pro- vi(le conceptual foundations for Tong-term global studies of human development can be seen in historians' debates on "the modern world system" and investigations of "Iong-wave" phenomena in economic life (Brauclel, 1984; Vasko, 1987; Wallerstein, 1974~. Although most of this work has ignored environmental and resource dimensions of the world system, some impressive recent efforts of geographers and historians are beginning to formulate a theory of global human ecol- ogy as such (Chisholm, 1982; Richards, 1986; Turner et al., in press). This work needs to be pursued in close collaboration with other global change studies if we are to better understand the changing magnitude of human forcing activities. Human Consequences of Global Change The complex processes involved in human responses to glob e] change were outlined above in the section on principal elements. As summarized by the 1987 Ann Arbor Workshop on an "International Social Science Research Program on Global Change": Human beings can respond to global change in a variety of ways, ranging from accepting change and adapting to it, to attempting Food and Agriculture Organization (1981 ) for agriculture, Kallio et al. (1987) for forestry, and Edmonds and Reilly (1985) Id Nordhaus and Hohe (1983) for energy. An overview of other global sectoral forecasts relevant to global change is given in Toth et al. (1988~.

160 to limit change by modifying their behavior. The human response depends first on cognitive processes, on perceiving change and its consequences, and then on the possibilities that human beings see for affecting change and the values that they hold. (Jacobson and Shanks, 1987:21) Formal assessments of global change and its consequences aim to help make human perceptions more useful and effective guides to action. Research to improve assessments is therefore central to an improved understanding of the interactions between human and en- vironmental systems. Summarized below are the principal questions regarding assessment that should be addressed in the early stages of a research program on the human dimensions of global change. Questions relating to management or the "possibilities for affect- ing change" referred to above are dealt with in a later section on management. Determining the Environmental Dimensions of Human Vulnerability As noted earlier, notions of social vulnerability are central to advancing the understanding of human responses to global change. A basic research task is thus to identify what kinds of change, and what rates of change, are those to which people in different cultural settings are most vulnerable. More precisely, what information con- cerning the character, timing, and location of possible changes in the earth's biogeochemical, climatic, hydrologic, and biotic processes is needed as inputs to studies attempting to understand and expand the boundaries of sustainable developments The conceptual framework required for addressing this question is thus the same as that introduced earlier in Figure 3. In this case, however, knowledge of the human system's sensitivities rather than the environmental system's sensitivities must provide the point of departure. Without explicit guidance from scholars of human de- velopment regarding the kind, scale, and resolution of information needed to assess important aspects of social vulnerability to environ- mental change, natural scientists cannot be expected to focus on the few aspects of change that are most important to people (Chen and Parry, 1988~. i6A strong case for such management-driven definitions of data needs is made for the case of studies on climate warming in Jaeger (1988~.

161 How might scholars of human response best advance their task of articulating priority needs for specific kinds of information about global environmental change? Useful approaches are suggested by existing work in the study of natural hazards, climate change, and the environmental ejects of nuclear war (Burton et al., 1978; HarweD and Hutchinson, 1985; Kates et al., 1985~. A particularly instruc- tive approach has been applied by Dr. Martin Parry to address the response of sensitive agricultural systems to climatic variation and change (Parry et al., 1988~. This begins by focusing on agricultural regions that are on the margin of economic viability with respect to temperature or moisture conditions. Rather than asking how these systems would respond to climate change in general, it then analyzes the social, economic, and agronomic characteristics of each region to assess the limits of climate change beyond which significant cTisrup- tion or displacement of agricultural activity would be expected to occur. The challenge is then thrown back to the climatologists to estimate whether, and when, changes of such magnitude might be expected due to natural variability or anthropogenic forcing. . Efforts are now needed to move beyond climatic considerations In asking what kinds of environmental change are most important for people. An excellent foundation for this task is provided by the recently published proceedings of the DahIem Conference on Wo rid Resources and Development (McLaren and Skinner, 1987~. This mammoth work brings together some of the best social and nat- ural science thinking on specific interactions among environmental change, resource availability, and sustainable development. It could be profitably tapped in an early effort to identify the specific aspects of global environmental change to which various societies, sectors, and populations are most vulnerable. Assessing Syndromes of Environmental Transformation Multidimensional "syndromes" of environmental transformation are a central feature of global change (Regret and Baskerville, 1986). For example, the sustainability of forest resource use in some re- gions is simultaneously threatened by changes in land allocation, cli- mate, and atmospheric chemistry. The resulting syndrome of forest resource degradation is the environmental change that must ulti- mately be explained and the policy problem that must ultimately be addressed. Other syndromes of environmental change, such as those associated with development of the rich and diverse farming

162 landscapes of Normandy, can be viewed as positive transformations. In general, however, assessments must move beyond problem-by- problem formulations to provide a synoptic or integrated account of the overall environmental changes and consequences that result from specific patterns or strategies of human development. To date, however, most of the relatively few assessments that have addressed large-scare environmental changes have dealt with the relationships between single environmental components, e.g., acid (reposition, and single development sectors, e.g., forestry. Even the most ambitious works, for example, the National Research CounciT's and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's programs on environmental impacts of energy production, or the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment's program on climate impact assessment, have dealt only with the impacts of change in a single valued environmental component across a range of human activities, or the impacts of a single human activity across a range of valued environmental components (Brooks and HoBander, 1979; Kates et al., 1985; Torrens, 1984~. The assessment of multiple threats or, more generally, change syndromes per se has been largely ignored. One notable exception to this situation is provided by the exper- iments in syndrome assessment conducted in recent years by Thomas Graedel of AT&T-Bell Laboratories and Paul Crutzen of the Max- Planck Institute (Crutzen and Graedel, 1986; Darmstadter et al., 1987~. A sample of their work, dealing with valued components of the atmospheric environment, is reproduced in Figure 5. The relative simplicity of the figure should not be aDowed to disguise either the tremendous amount of research necessary to provide the findings it portrays, nor the incomplete nature of the results ob- ta~necI. Shortcomings of current results, as pointed out by the au- thors, include questions of scope, the failure to include assessment of impacts on people as well as environment per se, and difficul- ties of making explicit the subjective judgments that such synoptic work inevitably entails. But it would be hard to overestimate the importance of continuing experiments to produce, in readily commu- nicable forms, synoptic and dynamic assessments of our inevitably incomplete knowledge about the syndromes of global environmental change.

163 Linking Spatial Scales in Assessments of Global Change A central question that needs to be answered for better assess- ments is how to link global change to local conditions at intermediate or regional scales. Much of what is interesting or worrisome in global change seems to consist of people in one set of places taking ac- tions that have their major consequences for other people in other places.~7 Much of sustainability relates to importing needs or export- ing wastes from one place to another. Finally, the values, options, and perceptions central to human choices regarding global change differ widely from place to place on earth. The uniqueness of and interactions among places are thus central to the human meaning of global change and to the prospects for managing sustainable develop- ment. Yet they are poorly captured (if addressed at aid by current assessment practices. Only the barest outlines of an approach to improve this situation have been sketched (Chisholm, 1980; Clark, 1987~. At least two related research tasks nonetheless merit early attention. Mapping Vuinerabilities. Work in the assessment of climate impacts has demonstrated the utility of focusing on places and peoples that are especially vulnerable or sensitive to specific kinds of climatic change and variation (Parry, 1985~. The search for regions and social groups that are especially vulnerable to global change should now be extended to include consideration of other environmental components. For example, we could and should know more than we do about which human societies would be most seriously at risk under scenarios of continued depletion of stratospheric ozone. Even more important, and even more difficult, is the task of iden- tifying places and peoples that are likely to be particularly vulnerable to the "syndromes" of multiple environmental changes discussed ear- lien Boundaries of the geographic regions or social groupings most threatened by each in(livi(lual component of environmental change will in general not be entirely congruent. It will therefore be nec- essary to search for situations where especially worrisome changes in several valued environmental components overlap at particular locations. The concepts and tools of geographic information systems i7As John Firor (National Center for Atmospheric Research) put it in commenting on an earlier version of this draft: "How do we deal with the possibility that burrung fuel in Japan may flood Bangladesh, or cutting trees in Brazil may impact forest migrations in Kentucky?" (Letter to William Clark, April 15, 1988~.

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166 seem especially well suites! to the required mapping task. A useful guide to what will be required of research on this topic is provider! by contemporary efforts to map areas with a high risk of forest mortal- ity uncler multiple stresses of acid deposition, tropospheric oxidants, drought, and other factors (UNECE, 1986~. More broadly, efforts should be undertaken to examine previous episodes of rapid regional environmental change to identify the determinants of vulnerability. Giolbal Linkages in the Assessment of Social Vuineral~itity. While a regional focus for assessments will be essential to understanding the human meaning of global change, it is equally essential that the global linkages among regions not be ignored. It was recognized some time ago, for example, that the social significance of a prolonged drought in the North American grain belt would depend strongly on what was happening to the weather in other major grain growing regions of the world. Nonetheless, most contemporary assessments of global climate change still manage only to tally consequences for a selection of regions considered independently, as though they were on different planets. Related shortcomings characterize the country-by-country approach to recent assessments of forest damage in Europe (NiTsson and Duinker, 1987~. Conceptual and methodological improvements in approaches to assessing the human implications of linkages among regional conse- quences of global change are badly needed. They will require close collaboration between natural scientists concerned with global pat- terns of environmental change (e.g., the "teleconnections" of cTima- tology) and social scientists concerned with the economic, political, and other human processes around the world. Prelirn~nary studies seeking to address the linkage issue suggest that global models of re- source and commodity trade are likely to be a necessary component of such assessments (e.g., Binkley, 1988; Williams et al., 1988~. Sub- stantial use of explicit scenarios of environment e] change and human development will also be required (Brewer, 1986~. Incorporating Values in Assessments of Global Change The values that figure so prominently in the determination of Stewart and Glantz (1985) have pointed out this difficulty in the ostensibly global climate impact assessment by the National Defense University. The problem persists even in the most recent work, however e.g., the Villach/Bellagio review of policies for dealing with climatic change (Jaeger, 1988) .

167 human choice are not adequately reflected in most environment e] assessments. The special problems raised by global environmen- tal change among them multigeneration time horizons, multination spatial scales, and the prospect of irreversibility increase both the difficulties and the importance of doing better. Research in environ- mental economics has made some progress in addressing the value issues that arise in the treatment of externalities and the valuation of nonmarket goods. The field has nonetheless found it extremely diflicuit to provide a balanced treatment of values other than effi- ciency in its assessment calculus (Kneese and SchuIze, 1985~. Other disciplines, including those concerned with legal and ethical issues, have begun to address some of the key issues of equity and multi- generational tradeoffs in a global change context (e.g., Brown-Weiss, 1984, 1988~. Progress has nonetheless been slow. A concerted, mul- tidisciplinary attack on these questions should be given high priority in research on the human dimensions of global change. At least two other issues, however, merit equally serious attention. Valued Environmental Components. As noted earlier, experience in environmental impact assessment emphasizes the importance of fo- cusing assessments on a relatively few "valued environmental compo- nents" like summer soil moisture or tropical species diversity (Bean- lands and Duinker, 1983~. The list of components is always subject to revision, but efforts to include everything simply devalue everything. Scientists have an important input to make to the selectior~ of valued environmental components for research programs on global change, but so do the policymakers who will be asked to use the results and the public who wiB be asked to pay the bins. Procedures need to be designed that will help different groups affected by global change to identify and articulate the components they value most. Special attention is needed on how to give fair consideration to the values of traditionally underrepresented groups the poor, the uneducated, the unborn. Also needecl are fore and negotiating processes that can promote agreement among groups on the core valued environmen- tal components to be addressed in mutually supported programs of global change research. A variety of workshop methods have evolved over the last decade to facilitate such negotiations for small-scare en- vironmental problems. But these approaches must still be evaluated and a(lapted to the context of Tong-term, global interactions between human and environmental systems (Sonutag, 1986~.

168 Attitudes Toward Risk and Uncertainty. People's inevitably incom- plete understanding of global change means that all assessments are bound to be riddled with uncertainties. This raises a number of important value-related questions that should be addressed in re- search programs on the human dimensions of global change. For example, stuclies of human attitudes toward risk have shown that different individuals or organizations confronting the same objec- tive uncertainties will place significantly different values on actions to remove the uncertainty or avoid its possible consequences. Put oversimply, some people wiB be more risk averse than others; these differences will have significant implications for the choices societies make when confronted with environmental threats (Fischhoff et al., 1981; Kleindorfer and Kunreuther, 1986~. Moreover, we know that the form in which risks are communicated to people can make a tremendous difference in their resulting behavior. Most research, however, has focused on perceptions of environmental risks very dif- ferent from those posed by global change. We know very little, for example, about how people evaluate highly uncertain predictions of high-consequence, large-scale, relatively irreversible events.~9 Better understanding is needed of how such values can be measured, how they vary with space and time, and how they can be incorporated in assessments of global change. The implications of ways in which such assessments are communicated through technical and mass me- dia also need study. Even more fundamentally, it wiD be important to follow up the leads of anthropological research that suggest how cultural factors shape the ways in which people and organizations value uncertain environmental risks (Douglas, 1966, 1986; Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982~. Human Management of Global Change A major challenge of coming decades is to learn how Tong-term, broad-scale interactions between human activities and the earth's en- vironment can be managed to increase the prospects for sustainable improvements in people's weD-being. Management is not the same as prediction or even understanding. The distinction is an important one, for management can be improved despite the enormous uncer- tainties and downright ignorance that will continue to make detailed i9For some initial findings in a rigorous comparative perspective, see Kates et al. (1985~.

169 predictions illusory. A central question is whether we are in fact im- proving our management of environmental change, and, if so, which forms of social action are most effective in what situations (White, l98Sa). Improvements in the management of global change can be defined in terms of their ability to increase social choice and decrease vulnerability in the face of uncertain futures of both environmental change and human objectives.20 Which management options should be adopted in the face of global change is a matter for resolution through the policy process. But increasing the range of management options, and characterizing their likely performance, should be a central focus for invention, imagination, and research applied to the human component of global change. The basic research challenge was set forth by the Ann Arbor workshop on an International Social Science Research Program on Global Change as follows: Human societies have at least some capacity to act on percept tions, to diminish the rate or even alter the course of their environmentally destructive activities. Too little is known, how- ever, about the actual strength and limits of these adaptive capacities. Perception is one thing, changing entrenched pat- terns of need-gratifying behavior is quite another. It seems both possible and essential, therefore, to encourage intensive study of the response mechanisms that may mitigate, or fail to mit- igate, environmentally threatening human activities. (Jacobson and Shanks, 1987:26ff) In the broad sense used here, efforts to manage global change involve changes in technologies, institutions, or behavior of individu- ais. No serious effort has yet assessed the relative efficacy of efforts to employ these three mechanisms for managing environmental change. Such an examination is especially important for a global change pro- gram because of the rapid increases in scale of the environmental transformations that must be managed. It is not clear that there is much precedent for dealing with the Tong-term, broad-scale issues that are increasingly at the forefront of concern.21 20The preceding paragraph is a paraphrase from the planning documents of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis's biosphere program as published in Clark (1986). 21 Partial exceptions worth examining for what they have to say about contemporary concerns for global change are the limited test ban treaty for nuclear weapons, the law of the sea, and the international ozone protocol. For perspective, see McLaren and Skinner (1987) and Kay and Jacobson (1983~.

170 Technology and the Management of Global Change Technical change is rapidly accelerating, mostly in pursuit of ob- jectives that have little direct connection with environment. On the scale of years, technological innovations can be expected to make only a limited difference in the management of global change.22 On a scale of decades, however, the consequences intended and incidental of technological change for environmental change can be tremendous. Work on life-cycle dynamics of major technical processes suggests that 20 to 40 years is sufficient for oil to displace coal as a world energy source, for the steel industry to shift from open hearth to electric arc processing, or for world turpentine production to shift from biotic to chemical feedstocks (Clark, 1987~. Each of these de- velopments, and many others like them, have had major implications for environmental change, though few were undertaken with envi- ronmental issues in mind. Turning to intentional use of technology to manage environmental change, options exist to eliminate atmo- spheric emissions of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel production (e.g., Haefele et al., 1986) and to radically reduce the danger posed by halocarbons to stratospheric ozone. But between these observations of technical feasibility and useful assessment of the management options that technologies might offer for dealing with global change are a number of basic research questions that have been only partially addressed by existing studies: · What are the major technological trends that are likely to restructure the nature of interactions between environment and de- velopment over the next several decades? ~ What technological opportunities appear most promising in light of what we understand about the quantities and qualities of the key flows of materials and energy involved in global change (White et al., 1988)? o What are the necessary conditions to induce technical in- novations that would relax the constraints posed by global change (Runge, 1986)? · What are realistic penetration and diffusion times for such innovations in the world market (Pry, 1973)? 22The role played by the development of substitutes for certain chloroBuorocarbons in the promotion of the Montreal Protocol on the Ozone Layer may be, but probably is not, something of an exception. See Office of Technology Assessment (1988~.

171 ~ How can both innovation and diffusion of technologies sup- portive of sustainable development be encouraged in an increasingly internationalized technology market (Guile and Brooks, 1987~? ~ To what extent wiD it be most productive to pose the above questions not for individual technologies, but rather for groups of tightly interacting and therefore "co-evolving" technologies (R. Chen, personal communication)? Institutions and the Management of Global Change Humans organize their responses to global change through a wide range of institutions and other structures. The fundamental research challenge is to understand the relative effectiveness of alternative institutions as mechanisms for management of interactions between human and environmental systems. The institutions to be examiner! inclucle not only those involved in classic market and national regula- tory functions, but also an increasing array of voluntary and interna- tional organizations. All of these structures, plus the bodies of policy, law, and practice they reflect, are evolving rapidly in terms of reach and power. Each country's management options are increasingly in- fluenced and constrained by the institutions and policies of other countries. A dynamic, global perspective on the changing efficacy of alternative institutions for managing global change is therefore nec- essary, backed by appropriate comparative and historical research. A limited body of existing scholarship on national and international mechanisms for managing large-scale environmental change provicles the foundations on which such research can build (e.g., Caldwell, 1984; Carroll, 1983; Kay and Jacobson, 1983~. Among the specific questions to emerge from recent reviews, the following stand out as meriting high-priority attention: . What is the special place of the nation-state in managing the interactions between human and environmental systems? How are economy/environment interactions treated in national policy pro- cesses? What determines the prospects for interstate cooperation on environmental problems? How do domestic interests reflect on such foreign policy decisions?23 23These perspectives were articulated by Eugene Skolnikoff of MIT in a letter to William Clark, dated September 22, 1988.

172 What influences "the pace or response-time with which sci- entific information about threats of significant perturbations in the geosphere and biosphere is translated into government action" (Ja- cobson and Shanks, 1987:29~? More generally, which factors place environmental issues on national and international agendas? Which keep them there through time? Which institutional mechanisms might facilitate anticipatory as opposed to reactive agenda setting for issues of global change (Tang and Jacobson, 1988~? · What strategies for environmental protection what mix of education, markets, regulations, and laws seem to work best for dealing with large-scale, long-term problems in specific cultural con- texts (Tang and Jacobson, 1988~? What are the "attitudinal and political preconditions for effective regulation or resource mann.~- ment programs" (Jacobson and Shanks, 1987:29~? O To what extent can methods of environmental protection be transferred from one country to another? What facilitates the trans- fer? What are the limits and barriers to one country's application of strategies successfully employed in another (Tang and Jacobson, 1988~? Despite the generally poor performance of both market and regulatory approaches to problems involving public goods and exter- nalities, "some good solutions to borderline cases, such as research and development, are available through a third option, the 'not-for- profit' sector. This sector has played a very helpful role in such areas as public health and agricultural research associated with the 'Green revolution."' What are the conditions under which it might play an equally important role in managing global change (McLaren and Skinner, 1987:544~? To what extent could trade and investment policies play a role in the management of global change? Do policies that encourage the spread of multinational business enterprises: (~) accelerate the diffusion of advanced pollution control and resource-management techniques; or (2) redistribute environmental degradation to less developed countries (Tang; and Jacobson 19881? . ~ _ , What are the 'iprospects for, and the strength of obstacles to, effective international coordinated regulation and resource man- agement programs addresses] to problems of international and global environmental degradation" (Jacobson and Shanks, 1987:29~? · What new international frameworks, such as the concept of a "planetary trust" developed by Edith Brown-Weiss in the context of U.N. University studies on sustainable development, might provide

173 useful tools for the management of global change (Brown-Weiss, 1984~? In addition to research on these questions, there is a need to provide fore in which such questions can be systematically pursued in close connection with research characterizing the likely nature, extent, and timing of global environmental change per se. Behavior and the Management of Global Change Ultimately, it is certain patterns of human behavior that lead to environmental degradation, and other patterns that result in sustain- able development. Research on global change needs to establish how relevant human behaviors are shaped, and how they can be altered as part of efforts to manage the Tong-term, large-scale interactions between people and their environments. A growing body of schol- arship in economics, psychology, attitude change, communications networks, and social diffusion provides substantial foundations upon which the needed research can be built.24 With some exceptions, however, this work has tended to focus on the determinants and control of individual behaviors. Global change problems, in contrast, highlight the importance of collective action and organizational be- havior in shaping Tong-term, large-scare interactions between people and the environment.25A fundamental challenge in studies of the hu- man dimensions of global change is to work toward a theory of human system behavior that encompasses all these relevant levels of social organization. On the way to such a comprehensive theory, several specific questions merit early attention in research on global change: Why do some individuals exhibit behaviors that contribute relatively much to the forcing globe environmental change, while others choose to behave in ways that contribute relatively littIe?26To what extent do cultural factors, including income, social context,27 24See, for example, Bandura (1986), Lindzey and Aronson (1985), Rogers and Kincaid (1981), Schelling (1978), Winett (1986), and Stokols and Altman (1987~. 25For a general review of the problems of collective action, see Olson (1971~. For a recent anthropological perspective on organizations as the relevant units of behavior, see Douglas (1986~. 26This question has been usefully addressed in the context of behaviors that concern energy use by Cook and Berrenberg (1981~. 27The term "social context" is used here in the sense employed by Douglas and Wildavsky (1982~.

174 access to relevant information, or immediate experience play a role in determining differences in relevant behaviors? Can some groups, organizations (e.g., corporations), or so- cieties be identified as having exhibited behaviors consistent with environmentally sustainable development over extended periods? If so, what special characteristics set these groups apart? What, if any, is the distinctive role of "traditional" knowledge and practice in such cases? · Given that most global environmental changes are both long delayed and common-property in nature, an individual has limited incentive to change his or her own immediate behavior in ways to reduce those changes. Neither markets nor state regulatory systems have proven particularly effective in dealing with the public good and externality dimensions of this situation (McLaren and Skinner, 1987:544~. How can the needed collective behavior changes best be motivated and sustained in the context of global change problems? What can be learned from the recent rise of apparently powerful grass-roots environmental movements and other changes in the val- uation of environmental concerns? What is the role of technical information and expert assess- ment in shaping behaviors relevant to global change? How can such knowledge be framed and communicated in ways that maximize its impact on the public and on support for social action?28 In par- ticular, experience in smaller scale environmental problems strongly suggests that technical information wiB be more effective in changing behaviors when it is conveyed along with assessments of alternative management actions, their likely consequences, and the prospects for fair distribution of costs and sacrifices (Brooks, 1986; White, l98Sb). In what ways can such experience be used to improve the ability of technical information on global change to modify behaviors of in- dividuals, organizations, and nations? What special challenges are posed by the international character of global change? . Fin ally, as in the case of research on institutional questions, there is a need to provide fore in which behavioral issues relevant to the management of global change can be systematically pursued in close 28The wording of this question is from Albert Bandura, in a comment on an earlier version of this report (letter to Dan Druckman of National Research Council staff, dated May 9, 1988~. Bandura cites the work of attitude change theory (McGuire, 1969), decision theory in risk perception (Kahneman et al., 1982), and social cognitive theory (Bandura 1986) as providing relevant guidelines.

175 connection with research characterizing the likely nature, extent, and timing of global environmental change per se. SELECTED RESEARCH CHALLENGES Previous sections of this paper have surveyed the principal ele- ments involved in humans' interactions with the global environment and summarized the major unresolved questions regarding the char- acter, causes, and consequences of those interactions. The objective of this section is to draw from those questions a small number of crosscutting research challenges that, due to their importance, com- plexity, and interdisciplinary character, might best be addressed as part of the formal U.S. contribution to the ]:GBP. Selection of the "challenges" described here is based on the "ex- ternal" criteria of importance described in the introduction of this paper, plus an assessment of the likelihood that results useful for the IGBP would emerge relatively promptly from a serious research effort. Priority is given to human dimensions of global change that achieve their importance through significant interactions with related climatic, biogeochemical, and biotic dimensions of change. Certain such interactions pose special challenges in that they can be ad- dressed effectively only through substantial interdisciplinary research initiatives, which are unlikely to emerge from normal disciplinary pri- ority setting and funding processes. These are highlighted here as topics that may benefit most from, and contribute most through, explicit integration within a focused research program constituting the U.S. contribution to the IGBP. Five specific research challenges are outlined below as a stimulus to further and fuller discussion in the course of the IGBP planning process. It is recommended that study groups of leading scholars in the relevant fields be convener! to develop more completely and criti- cally the detailed research plans that will required if these challenges are to be met. Global [and Use Change One major challenge for research on the human dimensions of global change is to build a better understanding of the processes underlying global land use change. People's use of the earth's land surface is a key focus of the interactions between human and environmental systems involved in

176 global change. Human activities are transforming land surfaces in ways that have profound implications for ecosystems, biogeochemical fluxes, and at least regional climates (Bolin and Cook, 1983; Turner et al., in press). Conversely, changes in the global environments have major implications for human land use (Jaeger, 1988; Parry et al., 1988~. Explaining the large-scale, long-term environmental changes of the last several centuries and predicting such changes for the future both require a deep understanding of the human processes underlying global land use change. Four dimensions of a global land use study are envisioned. The first would be conceptual. It wouic3 entail the construction of a core conceptual model or theory of the causal relations that link underly- ing changes in culture (i.e., population, development, and values) on the one hand, and changes in environment on the other, to human choices that affect Tong-term, large-scare patterns in the use of the lan(l. Among the key processes to be considered in the conceptual model would be those that determine the growth, character, and distribution of population (including rural-urban migration) and of agricultural ~levelopment. Factors influencing relevant technology transfers and Tong-term changes in the trade linkages between places of production and places of consumption would also need to be in- cluded, as wouIc! the economic and institutional mechanisms involved in land use choice and regulation. Somewhat more elusive but almost certainly important would also be processes through which societies perceive the relation between their land use choices and the environ- ment, and processes by which they attempt to intervene and make those relations more to their liking. Other factors and processes wouIcl be added to the conceptual mode] as the study matured.29 Ex- cellent foundations for a conceptual model of the human dimensions of global land use change are provided by the recent publications of the DahIem Conference on resources and development and the SCOPE/TCSU land transformation project (McLaren and Skinner, 1987; Wolman and Fournier, 1987~. 29For example, Pierre Crosson of Resources for the Future has outlined several key areas of basic research relevant to global land use change that need to be pursued over the long run. These include the regional impacts of climatic change, the socioeconomic preconditions for sustainable opening of the Latin American and African frontiers, the prospects for capitalizing on local knowledge in designing sustainable agriculture sys- tems, the relation between land use and species diversity, the problem of yield variabil- ity and crop varieties, the effects of erosion on soil productivity, and the requirements for building the research capacity necessary for developing appropriate technologies for changing land use management. See Crosson (1986~.

177 The second dimension of the study would be historical. It would document how the key variables of land use, population, agricultural prices, and so on, identified in the conceptual model have in fact changed throughout the world over last several hundred years. This work could build on the recent programs of environmental history brought together at the 1987 Clark University/~lASA/WRT project on "The Earth as Transformed by Human Action" (Turner et al., in press). The third dimension of the study would involve in-depth regional case studies of the general relationships suggested in the conceptual and historical work. An explicitly comparative approach would be adopted. One possible framework, proposed by Pierre Crosson (1986) of Resources for the Future, would contrast regions occupying sig- nificantly different places in a two-dimensional field of density of population and density of economic or technological development (e.g., GDP/unit area). Priority regions might then include the tropi- cal forests, semiarid but highly developed areas such as the American Great Plains, and the boreal forest. Other frameworks emphasizing other cultural and environmental differences could also be used. In any event, the choice of regions could usefully be made to complement areas selected for intensive study of natural processes through the "geosphere-biosphere training centers" proposed for the IGBP. The wealth of regional case studies prepared for the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Program as well as the SCOPE and Clark University efforts noted above should also be considered. An obvious oppor- tunity for bilateral and multilateral cooperation also exists here, as evident in proposals for land-use-related studies emerging from recent bilateral discussions between U.S. and Chinese (Tang and Jacobson, 1988) and U.S. and Soviet scholars (Kotlyakov et al., 1988~. Finally, the fourth dimension of the study would involve the construction of future scenarios of global land use change, and ex- ploration of how alternative human choices regarding global change would alter those scenarios. Reference scenarios of the kinds of patterns of land use change that might be associated with ma- jor alternative paths of world economic development are essential to the planning of natural science research and monitoring in the global change program. A precedent exists in the useful (though in- evitably imperfect) scenarios of future energy growth created by the economics community in support of studies on possible impacts of changing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere (e.g., Ed- mon(ls and Reilly, 1985; Nor~haus and Yohe, 1983~. The key here is

178 to view the scenarios not as predictions, but as internally consistent reference cases that can be linked to readily understandable strate- gies of future development (Brewer, 1986; Chen and Parry, 1988; Lave and Epple, 1985~. Some excellent Swedish work has recently been published on methods for assuring that such reference scenarios or "future histories" explore unlikely or surprising possibilities in the interactions between human and environmental systems, rather than simply summarizing conventional wisdom (Svedin and Aniansson, 1987~. A successful study of global land use change wiB require contribu- tions from scholars expert in virtually aD the elements of interaction between human and environmental systems that were described ear- lier in this paper. Due to the tight connections between agricultural clevelopment and land use, however, leadership in this venture might weD be sought from the community of scholars interested in global, Tong-term patterns of agricultural development. Studies related to the global land use project proposed here have recently been recom- mended by a number of groups.30 Industrial Metabolism A second major challenge for research on the human dimen- sions of global change is a better understanding of the "metabolism" of productive and consumptive processes through which industrial societies force changes in the earth's environment. As noted earlier, industrial civilization's transformations of ma- terial an ~ energy resources constitute major sources of global change. Explaining the large-scare, long-term environmental changes of the last several centuries and predicting such changes in the future thus require a deep understanding of the changing "metabolism" of in- dustrial society. Such understanding does not now exist, except for isolated technologies and waste products.3t It needs to be created as 30For example, the SCOPE land use project (Wolman and Fournier, 1987), an ad hoc group on Social Science Contributions to the IGBP convened by the U.S. National Research Council's Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (De- Fries and Druckman, 1988), and the China-U.S. Workshop on Human Dimensions of Global Change (Tang and Jacobson, 1988~. A thoughful discussion of the possibilities for such a study appears in an unpublished note entitled "Some comments and sugges- tions on a social science component of the IGBP" prepared by William E. Riebsame of the University of Colorado in response to an earlier draft of this report (letter to William C. Clark, dated May 17, 1988~. Bathe case of chloroBuorocarbon emissions and stratospheric ozone depletion offers

179 part of a research program on global change. The central goal of an industrial metabolism study would be to understand and document how processes of industrial production transform resource inputs into outputs that must be absorbed and processed by the environment. A materials and energy balance approach would be central to the study, which would seek to develop a rigorous and quantitative un- derstanding of the production and consumption processes involved in transforming basic material flows relevant to global change. The specific categories of industrial activity considered in the study would be selected to provide the most useful interaction with the natural science components of the global change program. The focus would likely include processes related to the flows of heavy metals. sulohur. and halocarbons. Paralleling the land use study recommended above, four dimen- sions of an industrial metabolism study are envisioned. The first would be conceptual. It would entail the selection of materials, en- ergy uses, and consumption processes of most relevance to global change, the construction of a materials and energy balance frame- work covering selected production and consumption activities, and specification of the causal factors determining the rates of transfor- mation of those materials and energy flows. Considered would be the demographic, economic, and institutional factors underlying long- term trends in energy conservation and in the intensity of materials embodied in end-use functions (Goldemberg et al., 1987~. Consider- ations of technology life-cycle (Ayres, 1987) and changing patterns in the places of materials production and consumption (Chisholm, in press) would also be included. Recent studies on materials cycling in global change led by Robert Ayres at IlASA and Carnegie MeHon University provide an example on which this work could usefully build (Ayres and Rod, 1986; Ayres and Tarr, in press). The second dimension of the study would be historical. It would involve documentation of how particular material and energy re- sources have been metabolized through production and consumption processes over periods of decades to centuries. Where appropriate or ~ , ~ , a simple example of the need for some forte of future scenarios as part of a global change research effort. Much attention has been devoted to the creation of such scenarios, and the most sophisticated recent probabilistic assessment (Hammitt et al., 1987) consti- tutes a significant improvement over early trend extrapolations. Nonetheless, it could do no better than assume that chloroBuorocarbon use in the long run would increase proportionally with global economic growth, and that economic growth would follow the trajectories assumed in the best models of energy use and carbon dioxide emissions noted earlier.

180 necessary from the perspective of the natural science investigations of global change, a worId-scaTe perspective would be adopted. The spatial pattern of sources and sinks of industrial metabolites would merit special attention. The Clark University program on environ- mental history noted earlier wiB serve as a useful point of departure (Turner et al., in press). The third dimension of the study would involve in-depth regional case studies of the general relationships explored in the conceptual and historical work. An explicitly comparative approach would be adopted, ideally along lines set to complement the regional studies of land use change described above. Again, the choice of regions would also endeavor to reflect the areas selected for intensive study of natural processes in the "geosphere-biosphere training centers" of the IGBP. Opportunities for multilateral cooperation in this work should prove to be especially strong. Finally, the fourth dimension of the study would involve the con- struction of future scenarios of industrial metabolism and associated materials and energy exchanges with the environment. The objec- tives and approach outlined for the land use scenarios would apply here as well. The previously noted RFF study on atmospheric change and world development suggests the kinds of results that might be obtained (Darmstadter et al., 1987~. Again, the contributions of a wide range of scholars of the human system wiD be required if a major study of industrial metabolism in global change is to succeed. In this case, however, leadership might be sought from members of the engineering community and students of technological change. Studies related to that proposed here have also been recommended by a number of groups.32 Usable Knowledge of Global Change A third major challenge is to make knowledge about globe] change more useful as a guide to human action. As noted above, technical information, popular perceptions, and fundamental values interact closely in shaping human choices. Unfortunately, research 32These include the International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study ini- tiative on human responses to global change (IFIAS, 1987) and the Ann Arbor workshop reported in Jacobson and Shanks (1987~. A new U.S. National Academy of Engineering program on technology and environmental change addressed this issue directly in an August 1988 workshop at Woods Hole, Massachusetts (White et al., 1988~.

181 in understanding the components of choice has rarely been as inte- grated as the components themselves. The goal of this study would be to break new ground in developing an integrated understanding of how to improve the utilization of knowledge in human choices relating global change. Toward this end, the study would focus on determining how the interplay of assessment methods, perceptions, and values might be modified in ways that make possible more in- formed human choices on problems that arise through the long-term, large-scale interactions between peoples and their environments. As argued earlier in this paper, some sort of regional focus would be required in order to address the great variety of environmental conditions, social structures, and human belief systems that shape the meaning of global change for people. One crucial aspect of providing more usable knowledge of global change would be to de- termine experimentally the most useful scale of "region" for use in assessments of global change. Another would be to develop ways of integrating individual, corporate, and state responses within this regional framework. However the regional issue is resolved, it would also be crucial to address explicitly the linkages among regions— how the human consequences of global change in one place affect assessments, perceptions, and consequences of global change in other places. Four dimensions of a study on usable knowledge and global change are envisioned. The first would be conceptual. Following proposals set forth by the U.S.-China Workshop on Human Dimen- sions of Global Change (Tang and Jacobson, 1988), a framework would be developed for summarizing the major variables involved in human choices regarding global change. At a minimum, the frame- work would provide for examining the relation between basic cultural factors (e.g., relevant demographic, developmental, and institutional characteristics) and major components of choice (e.g., risk assess- ments, perceptions, values, and behavior per se). The purpose of the framework would be to provide a structure for the formulation of specific hypotheses, and for the construction and comparison of a variety of empirical case studies (see below). A second dimension of the study would be methodological. One basic requirement is for better methods of monitoring changing pat- terns of peoples' perceptions and values regarding the long-term, large-scale interactions between human and environmental systems. As discussed below in the final section on selected research challenges,

182 there currently exists no capability for reliably monitoring these cru- cial determinants of the human dimensions of global change. At a minimum, an evaluation is needed of the relative feasibility and util- ity of global monitoring approaches relying on formal questionnaires as opposed to surveys of relevant material drawn from such sources as newspapers, literature, Ed art. Another important methodological task would be the design and evaluation of approaches for resolving some of the major short- comings of existing assessment methods that were identified in this chapter. Special attention would be given to methods for handling multidimensional syndromes of environmental change and for map- ping assessments of such syndromes on a regional basis through the use of geographic information system technologies. Work would also be required on the technical clifficulties of integrating values relating to the timing and uncertainty of consequences into the assessments. These methodological studies should be conducted experimentally. Each proposed improvement in assessment methodology should be evaluated in terms of its actual impact on the perceptions or values of potential assessment users. The third dimension of this effort would consist of in-depth re- gional case studies. As suggested by the conceptual framework noted above, an effort would be made to compare the determinants of human choice on particular problems of large-scale, Tong-term envi- ronmental change across a wide range of cultural contexts. A strong historical orientation would almost certainly be useful here, leading to an understanding of how technical information, perceptions, and values have in fact interacted in shaping the evolution of various societies' responses to problems of global change. Finally, the study would have a forward-Iooking dimension. This would seek to formulate recommendations regarding how the worId's rapidly growing technical knowledge regarding global change could be better assessed, formulated, and communicated so as to make a more useful contribution to relevant human choices being made around the world. Once again, the hallmark of this work should be its experimental orientation. Alternative approaches to assessment and communication should be encouraged and then critically evaluated in terms of their actual impacts on perceptions, values, and behavior. Leadership in the "usable knowledge" effort might be sought from scholars of human behavior, especially those who have been involved in studies of environmental hazards and risks. Experience

183 also suggests, however, that the organizations likely to be responsi- ble for global change assessments in the United States, notably the National Research Council, the Office of Technology Assessment, the appropriate executive agency groups, and the major nongovernmen- tal organizations- should be intimately engaged in this effort if it is to have any chance of influencing their practices.33 A number of other groups, including the World Commission and Environment and Development, have proposed studies related to that outlined here.34 Institutions for Management A fourth major challenge is to better understand the ways in which institutions at Al scales interact in shaping the human system's capacity for coping with global change. The institutional challenges posed by global change are substan- tial and varied. They range from providing for the basic research and monitoring that generate the technical knowledge base, through fa- cilitating consensus building on required responses, to implementing coordinated actions in a great variety of local, regional, and national contexts. In a few cases, notably the recent protocol on protection of the ozone layer, interactions among institutions have evolved over a period of decades to the point that what began as the concern of a few scientists is beginning to translate into coordinated and elective 33The barriers faced in getting such institutions to adopt more self-conscious and experimental approaches to their work are profound. Several years ago, the U.S. Na- tional Research Council convened a special governing board committee on the assessment of risk in NRC reports with the explicit purpose of addressing many of the difficulties raised here (NRC, 1981~. The report of the committee contained a number of excellent and feasible recommendations that have been virtually ignored by the NRC since their publication in 1981. In particular, subsequent NRC studies of the greenhouse effect and acid deposition suffer from shortcomings in the treatment of uncertainty that the NRC's own guidelines, if followed, would have substantially mitigated. 34 The study proposed here might be one of the more productive ways to implement the WCED (1987) recommendation for a "global risk assessment." Related studies have been proposed by the International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study work- shop on Human Responses to Global Change (IFIAS, 1987), the U.S.-China Workshop on Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (Tang and Jacobson, 1988), and the new SSRC program on global change (Rockwell and Kasperson, 1988~. Links between this effort and the planed International Decade for Natural Hazard Reduc- tion would almost certainly be beneficial to both. The IDNHR is described in NRC (1987~. In the form described by the NRC document, however, IDNHR would have serious shortcomings as a model for work on risk assessment and management for global change. In particular, the human dimensions of the proposed program strongly empha- size engineering over behavioral approaches to coping with hazards. Whether a more balanced treatment of human response can be evolved remains to be seen. For a critical review of IDNHR, see Mitchell (1988~.

184 action at the international scale. In numerous other cases such as desertification, however, institutional mechanisms have been inade- quate to translate concern into better management. Unfortunately, we have little understanding of why our institutions have coped bet- ter with some long-term, large-scale environmental problems than with others. We know even less about how present institutional structures might be redesigned better to cope with the increasing scale and urgency of global change. Individual studies have, of course, illuminated important com- ponents of the overall environmental management picture. Thus we have treatments of the roles played by markets, international law and treaties, international organizations in the public and private sectors, international mechanisms for the exchange of scientific information, behavioral "regimes" based on informally shared norms, voluntary organizations, and so on (e.g., CaldweH, 1984; Carroll, 1983; Kay and Jacobson, 1983~. There also exist a number of comparative studies examining different styles of environmental decision making at the national scale (e.g., Brickman et al., 1985; Enioe, 1975; Lun~qvist, 1980; Vogel, 1986~. backing, however, is a strategic or synoptic ap- proach that puts these individual pieces into perspective, assesses their relevance and limitations with regard to the problem of manag- ing sustainable development in the face of global change, and focuses attention on missing dimensions of present understanding. The first phase of the study proposed here would be concep- tual. On the cultural side, a framework would need to be developed for assessing how the capacity of human institutions to cope with global change is shaped by demographic, organizational, and devel- opmental factors that vary tremendously from place to place around the world. On the environmental si(le, this effort would need to characterize how the environmental syndromes of global change are different, in a managerial sense, from the problems we have learned to deal with in the past. The rapidly changing spatial scale of hu- man disruptions of the environment is clearly one important aspect, as is the increasing temporal scale (e.g., the long residence times of chIorofluorocarbons in the stratosphere). On the institutional side a framework would be needed for assessing how effectively different or- ganizational approaches to research administration, regulation, and interjurisdictional coordination have dealt with the changing nature of environmental problems. The internal evolution of institutions would need to be considered here. It seems almost certain that the "maturing," on a time scale of decades, of structures as different as

185 the Sierra Club, the EPA, and United Nations Environment Pro- gram has profound and not necessarily positive—implications for societies' capacities to manage global change. The present and po- tential role of the media in these processes would clearly merit special attention. The recent report of the U.S.-China Workshop on Human Dimensions of Global Change provides a detailed discussion of how this conceptual framework might evolve (Tang and Jacobson, 1988~. The second phase of the study would involve comparative histor- ical case studies of how institutional structures, interrelations, and performance have co-evolved in the course of humanity's efforts to come to terms with specific problems of long-term, large-scare envi- ronmental change. Each study would adopt a global perspective from which to compare the performance of a number of local, national, en cl international entities. Special attention would be given to how institutions serving one functional or regional constituency interact with other institutions in attempting to come to terms with what global change means for their own action agendas. The third phase of the proposed study would be synthetic. Its objective would be to draw from the theoretic and case study work specific recommendations for improving local, national, and interna- tional institutional structures for coping with global change. The proposed study on institutions for the management of global change would require contributions from political scientists, legal scholars, students of international negotiations, and a variety of other social science disciplines. Close collaboration with the natural sci- entists engaged in research and assessment of global change would also be required. Leadership might be sought from scholars who have been active in comparative studies of institutional performan ce in en- vironmental regulation. Studies related to that proposed here have recently been recommended by a number of groups.35 An example of the way in which such a study might be structured is provided by the project on international institutions and the environment carried out several years ago by Kay and Jacobson (1983) under the auspices of the American Society of International Law. 35 Particularly strong cases are made in the reports of the Dahlem Conference on resources and development (McLaren and Skinner, 1987) and the Ann Arbor (Jacobson and Shanks, 1987) and U.S.-China (Tank and Jacobson, 1988) workshops on Human Dimensions of Global Change.

186 Documentation Each of the selected research challenges highlighted in this sec- tion, plus a number of the basic research questions raised above, has significant documentation aspects that are integral to its success. Two basic challenges concerning documentation of the human ~li- mensions of global change should, however, be singled out for special consideration in the formal U.S. contribution to the IGBP. Environmental History The first of these is an "electronic atlas" for unifying the doc- umentation of environmental history research relevant to global change. As noted earlier in this paper, environmental history stud- ies have advanced significantly over the past decade, a.ncl are now beginning to produce quantitative global data on century-scare in- teractions of human activities and the environment. More such data will emerge in the course of the global change program, particularly in the context of the land use and industrial metabolism studies suggested above. Now is the time to build a unified framework for organizing these historical data in a form that makes them readily accessible both to scholars of global change and to the regional and national planners who need to use that scholarship. The concept of an "electronic atlas" was raised by participants at the recent Clark University symposium on "The Earth as Transformed by Human Action" (Turner et al., in press). The intent was to create a spread- sheet and global mapping package designed for handling historical environmental data that could be run on desktop computers, but would be compatible with the more complex data bases being used for contemporary land use and remote sensing data. The software would be widely distributed for general use. The acceptance of new data sets into the official "atlas" would be determined by an e(litorial board of natural and social scientists, modeled on the boards that now govern the commissioning and acceptance of contributions to projects like the "world histories" of various academic presses. Disks containing parts or all of the current version of the atlas would be made widely available as a research and planning tool. Integration with the mapping functions of the "usable knowledge" effort outlined above might be contemplated.

187 Perceptions and Values A second proposed program of documentation concerns changing patterns of human perceptions of and attitudes toward global change. The Ann Arbor workshop developed a strong case that because human beings and their institutions are ultimately re- sponsible for actions that affect the Earth system, it will be important to monitor public attitudes and behavior. The sooner the international base-line surveys of attitudes and behavior con- cerning the ecosystem are conducted the better, for such base-line surveys will be an essential step in attempting to monitor and understand attitudinal change with respect to the issues that affect the Earth (Jacobson and Shanks, 1987:23~. We have passed through the time of people's first encounter with images of their planet viewed from space without any system- atic survey knowledge of how that possibly revolutionary perspective may have changed our perceptions and values. If the next decade's research on global change is anywhere nearly as productive and sur- prising as its proponents hope, then the new knowledge it produces should affect us, the human component of global change, in ways we cannot now envision. It would be ironic indeed if we ended up knowing more about the changes in our planet than we know about the corresponding changes in ourselves. Some sort of periodic, global record of people's perceptions of, and values regarding, long-term, large-scare interactions between human and environmental systems should be an integral part of the documentation of global change. Whether the "surveys" on which such documentation of global change is based should include a wide range of cultural products- e.g., newspapers, literature, art as weD as responses to specially prepared questions is an open methodological question addressed in the stu(ly of "usable knowledge" proposed above. In any case, however, the surveys will almost certainly be more illuminating if they are designed jointly by teams of scholars expert in both the environmental and the human dimensions of global change. REFERENCES Ayres, R. U. 1978. Resources, environment and economics: Applications of the materials/energy balance principle. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Ayres, R. U. 1987. The industry-technology life cycle: An integrating meta-model? Research Report No. RR-87-3. Laxenburg, Austria: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

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196 Wuebbles, D. J., and J. A. Edmonds. 1988. A Primer on Greenhouse Gases. DOE/NBB- 0083. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Energy. ANNEX A: PROGRAMS ON THE HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE: A PARTIAL LISTING [The purpose of this list is to encourage communication among the various institutional programs that are developing an explicit focus on the human dimensions of global environmental change. Many groups, of course, are pursuing studies related to this topic. Those listed here have undertaken efforts more or less directly related to the IGBP initiative. The named individuals should be able to provide further information. This listing is clearly incomplete.] Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan tHarold Jacobson. Institute for Social Research. The Univ. of Michigan. Ann Arbor, MI 48106] European Science Foundation, Standing Committee for the Social Sciences. [John H. Smith. ESF. 1 quad Lezay-Marnesia. F-67000 Strasbourg, France] International Studies Association, Ad Hoc Committee on the In- ternational Geosphere-Biosphere Program. tHarold Guetzkow. De- partment of Political Science. Northwestern Univ. 601 Univ. Place. Evanston, TE 60208] International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study/ Interna- tional Social Science Council/ United Nations University [fan Bur- ton. IFlAS. 39 Spadina Rd. Toronto, Ontario. Canada M5R 2S9] International Union of Psychological Science, U.S. National Com- mittee. [Mark Rosenzweig. Department of Psychology. Tolman Hall. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720] Social Science Research Council. [Richard Rockwell. Social Science Research Council. 605 Third Ave. New York, NY 10158] U.S. Department of State, Office of the Geographer. [George Demko. Office of the Geographer. Department of State. Washington, DC 20520] U.S. National Academy of Engineering. [Jesse Ausubel. NAE Pro- gram Office, 2101 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20418]

197 U.S. National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council. [Ruth DeFries, Committee on Global Change; Dan Druckman, Com- mission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, 2101 Con- stitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20418] U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Social and Economic Sciences. [Roberta Balstad Miller. NSF. Washington, DC 20550] ANNEX B: THE PREPARATION OF THIS PAPER The present composition of the Committee on Global Change reflects the early focus of the IGBP on the natural sciences. In order to pursue the committee's conviction that understanding of global change nonetheless must encompass human interactions with the natural system, it was therefore necessary to draw from a wide range of outside expertise in the social sciences and engineering. This task was facilitatecl by the many symposia, workshops, and studies on the human dimensions of global environmental change that the social science and engineering communities have recently conducted under impetus of the IGBP and its underlying themes. Instead of cluplicating the work of these activities through committee-sponsored workshops, committee members or staff participated directly in the following efforts: the Ann Arbor workshop on an "International Social Science Research Program on Global Change" (Jacobson and Shanks, 1987~; ~ the Clark University environmental history symposium on "The Earth as Transformed by Human Action" (O'Riordan, 1988a; Turner et al., in press); ~ the WorI<1 Climate Impacts Program study or1 "Developing Policies for Responding to Climatic Change" (Jaeger, 1988~; the ad hoc meeting of the National Research Council's Com- mission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education to review possible social science initiatives in support of a U.S. Global Change Program (DeFries and Druckman, 1988~; ~ the China-U.S. workshop on the "Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change: Proposals for Research" (Tang and Jacobson, 1988~; ~ the Social Science Research Council project on "The Social Sciences and Global Environmental Change" (Rockwell, 1988; Rock- we] and Kasperson, 1988~; ~ the National Academy of Engineering Woods Hole workshop on "Technology and Environment"; .

198 · the European Science Foundation workshop on '`Environment and Development" (Hagerstrand, 1988; Nowotny, 1988; O'Riordan, 1988b); and ~ the symposium organized by the International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study (IFlAS), the International So- cial Science Council (ISSC), and the United Nations University (UNU) on "Human Response to Global Change" (IFlAS, 1987; IFlAS/ISSC/UNU, 1988~. In addition to this direct engagement, a number of recent reports prepared by other groups interested in the human dimensions of global change have been reviewed in preparing this paper. Among the most important to our conclusions are the following: . the strategic review of future directions performed by the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Program's General Scien- tific Advisory Pane] (UNESCO, 1986~; · the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis pro- gram "Sustainable Development of the Biosphere" (Clark and Munn, 1986~; the Social Science Research Council conference "Forecasting in the Natural and Social Sciences" (Land and Schneider, 1987~; ~ the DahIem Conference "Resources and World Development" (McLaren and Skinner, 1987~; ~ the report of the World Commission on Environment and De- velopment (the BrundtIand Commission) on "Our Common Future" (WCED, 1987~; · the report of a Royal Society of Canada meeting entitled "Hu- man Dimensions of Global Change: the Challenge to the Humanities and Social Sciences" (Braybrooke and Paquet, 1987~; and the report of a joint U.S.S.R.-U.S.A. study on "Global Change: Geographical Approaches" (Kotlyakov et al., 1988~. This paper was prepared by committee member William Clark with the objective of synthesizing the substantive findings and rec- ommendations of the work cited above, and of assessing the relevance of those findings to initial plans for U.S. participation in the IGBP. Earlier drafts of the chapter were extensively reviewed by members of the social science and engineering communities, whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged in Annex C.

199 References Braybrooke, D., and G. Paquet. 1987. Human Dimensions of Global Change: The Challenge to the Humanities and the Social Sciences. Ottawa: Royal Society of Canada. Clark, W. C., and R. E. Munn (eds.~. 1986. Sustainable Development of the Biosphere. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DeFries, R., and D. Druck~nan. 1988. SUITABLY report of meeting of the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education's Ad Hoc Group on Social Science Contributions to IGBP, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., February 23, 1988. Hagerstrand, T. 1988. A look at the political geography of environmental management. Paper presented at the workshop on Environment and Development. European Science Foundation. Oslo, September 15-16, 1988. International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study (IFIAS). 1987. The Human Response to Global Change: Prospectus for an International Research Program. Toronto, Canada: IFIAS. Jacobson, H. K., Ed C. Shanks. 1987. Report of the Workshop on an International Social Science Research Program on Global Change, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. Jaeger, J. 1988. Developing policies for responding to climate change. Summary of the discussions and recommendations made at workshops held in Villach, Austria, and Bellagio, Italy, World Meterological Organization. World Climate Program Publ. No. 1 WMO/TD-No. 225. Geneva: WMO. Kotlyakov, V. M., J. R. Mather, G. V. Sdasyuk, and G. F. White. 1988. Global change: Geographical approaches. Pp. 5986-5991 in Proceedings, National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 85. Land, K. C., and S. H. Schneider (eds.~. 1987. Forecasting in the Social and Natural Sciences. Dordredbt, Netherlands: Reidel. McLaren, D. J., ``nd B. J. Skinner. 1987. Resources and World Development. Dahlem Workshop Report No. 6. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Nowotny, H. 1988. The problem of waste-a problem of cultural evolution? Paper presented at the Workshop on the Environment and Development, European Science Foundation, Oslo, September 1~16, 1988. O'Riordan, T. 1988a. Special report: The earth as transformed by human action. Environment 30~1~:25-28. O'Riordan, T. 1988b. A possible agenda for collaborative European research on environmental futures. Rodkwell, R. 1988. Human processes in earth transformation: A proposed council program on the social sciences and global environmental change. Items 42~1/2~:16- 18. Rockwell, R., and R. Kasperson. 1988. Proposal for a research planning and field development program: The social sciences and global environmental change. New York: Social Science Research Council. (Available from Richard Rockwell at SSRC, 605 Third Ave. New York, NY 10158.) Tang Xisoyan, and H. K. Jacobson. 1988. Human dimensions of global environmental change: Proposals for research. Surrunary report of the Chinese-U.S. workshop, Peking University, Beijing, May 12-16, 1988. (Washington: International Pro- grams Division, National Science Foundation. Available from Alice Hogan of NSF`, Washington, OC. 20550~.

200 Turner, B. L., W. C. Clark, R. W. Kates, J. T. Mathews, J. R. Richards, and W. Meyer (eds.~. In press. The earth as transformed by hump action. Proceedings of an international symposium held at the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, Worcester, Mass, October 25-30, 1987. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 1986. Man and the Biosphere Program. Final report of the General Scientific Advisory Panel. MAB Report Series No. 59. Paris: UNESCO. World Commission on Environment Ed Development, the Brundtlamd Commission. 1987. Our Common Future. New York: Oxford University Press. ANNEX C: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Comments on earlier drafts of this essay from the following peo- ple have contributed significantly to its content and style: Jesse Ausubel, Richard Bishop, Harvey Brooks, Robert Chen, Jerome Clubb, Philip Converse, Chester Cooper, Joel Darmstadter, George DemPo, John Firor, Roland Fuchs, Robin Gregory, Harold Guetzkow, Wayne Holtzman, Harold Jacobson, Robert Kagan, Roger Kasper- son, Robert Kates, Roberta Miller, James Mitchell, Sherry Oaks, Ted Parson, Steve Rayner, John Richards, William Riebsame, E. Fred Roots, Norman Rosenberg, Mark Rosenzweig, Thomas Schelling, Stephen Schneider, T. Paul Schultz, Eugene Skoinikoff, Peter Tim- merman, Barbara Torrey, Amos Tversky, Edith Brown-Weiss, and Dorothy Zinberg. A special debt is owed to Gilbert White, who, in addition to constructive criticism, provided unpublished manuscripts from which this paper draws heavily.

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