Social Learning in the Management of Global Environmental Risks

人们日益认识到全球范围内环境变化的严重性和性质，导致人们越来越关注个人和机构将如何应对这种变化，并制定集体应对措施，以减少或消除有害的人类行为，或减轻这种变化的有害影响。该项目将启动一项长期研究计划，以评估社会集体了解全球环境风险的过程。在对社会了解这类风险的方式进行分析之后，调查员将找出阻碍学习进程的障碍，并提出可能减少这些障碍的组织和管理举措。后一项目标将通过对七个国家(美国、苏联、联合王国、德意志联邦共和国、瑞典、俄罗斯、英国、德国、瑞典)的六组关键行为者(科学家、政府、国际政府组织、非政府组织、企业和媒体)在社会学习三种特定环境风险(气候变化、臭氧消耗和酸氧化剂污染)中的作用进行比较案例研究来实现。荷兰和印度)。这个最初的项目将集中在美国和德国的一般理论的发展和案例研究分析程序的改进。这项提议将扩大对人类机构如何以若干关键方式应对全球环境变化的一般理解。它将扩展关于组织学习和应对大规模问题的方式的一般理论，并将提供生态学、经济学、社会学和地理学中使用的调查方法如何整合的具体演示。在提供有关美国和德国这一问题的具体见解的同时，该项目还将为更精细的项目奠定更坚实的基础，涉及更多国家和更广泛的问题，从而增强该研究人员和其他研究人员未来研究的前景。

Growing awareness of the magnitude and character of environmental change on a global scale has led to increasing concern about how individuals and institutions will respond to such changes and develop collective responses that reduce or eliminate harmful human actions or that alleviate the detrimental impacts of such changes. This project will initiate a long-term research program to evaluate the processes by which societies collectively learn about global environmental risks. Following analysis of previous studies of the ways in which societies have learned about these types of risks, the investigator will identify obstacles that impeded the learning process and will propose organizational and managerial initiatives that might reduce those obstacles. The latter objectives will be undertaken through comparative case studies of the roles of six critical sets of actors (scientists, governments, international governmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations, businesses, and the media) in social learning about three specific environmental risks (climate change, ozone depletion, and acid-oxidant pollution) in seven nations (U.S.A., U.S.S.R., United Kingdom, Federal Republic of Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and India). This initial project will focus on development of the general theory and refinement of case-study analytic procedures in the U.S.A. and Germany. This proposal will expand general understandings of the ways in which human institutions respond to global environmental change in a number of critical ways. It will expand general theory regarding the ways in which organizations learn and respond to large-scale problems, and it will provide specific demonstrations of the ways in which investigative approaches used in ecology, economics, sociology, and geography can be integrated. While providing specific insights about this problem in the U.S. and Germany, the project also will lay a sounder foundation for more elaborate projects dealing with more nations and a broader range of issues, thereby enhancing prospects for future research both by this investigator and by others.