A Collaborative Interdisciplinary Research Program on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change

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The growing attention focused on accelerating processes of global environmental change have highlighted the need for increased understandings of the role of humans as initiators of and respondents to rapid changes in natural environmental conditions. Many independent research projects have begun or are being planned by social and behavioral scientists, but these inquiries have heightened the need for coordination of multi-disciplinary analyses of the human dimensions of global environmental change. This project will foster and integrate research on six important aspects of this topic: (1) development of a theory and methodology for studying worldwide changes in land-use patterns, (2) development of an epidemiology linking human health with global environmental change, (3) examination of how institutions manage global change, (4) analyses of how national and international security concerns are related to global change, (5) empirical definition and measurement of "sustainable development," and (6) study of how science and society identify and respond to environmental problems, expand knowledge about the processes producing these problems, and make that knowledge more useful. The award recipient, the Social Science Research Council, will form a new committee on Research on Global Environmental Change to oversee this effort. That committee will commission and respond to review articles from experts on these six issues. Committee members will prepare synthetic articles for inclusion in a volume to present the group's findings, and the committee will sponsor working groups to develop research projects related to each of the issues. This project will provide a number of tangible benefits. The volume containing review and integrative articles on the six issues should furnish scholars with excellent summaries of present knowledge about these critical topics and outline general approaches that are likely to yield substantial contributions to knowledge. By coordinating the development of research projects, the committee will reduce duplication of effort and enable more effective generalization from independent research efforts. Furthermore, the committee's and working groups' efforts should directly involve a much larger number of the nation's leading social and behavioral scientists in analyses of this critical issue than otherwise would become involved.