Social Learning in the Management of Global Environmental Risks

随着政府和其他机构意识到新的 关于环境变化的信息，他们 改变他们的目标、期望和行为。 这个过程， 机构改变他们的技能，信仰和/或解释， 对新的信息和经验的反应被称为社会学习。 大多数关于学习的研究都集中在个人和小团体上。 该项目将继续以不同的规模进行研究，重点是 国家政府改变态度和行为的方式 随着新信息的出现， available. 1989年开始的工作将继续进行， 在联邦的一个案例研究中， 德国共和国 这些努力将奠定基础， 随后的比较分析，也将包括联合国 美国，荷兰，瑞典，苏联，英国和 欧洲共同体。 在每个辖区内，新闻报道， 官方记录和其他信息来源将用于 概述重大环境事件的历史顺序， 应答 在不同的流程中， 将比较的状态是（1）风险识别和 特征描述，（2）风险背景，（3）风险估计，（4） 确定控制备选办法，（5）评估 实施，（6）目标选择，（7）策略选择，（8） 战略实施;（9）战略评估。 该项目将继续研究一条重要的路线， 研究人类机构感知和 应对不断变化的环境条件。 它还将增强我们 对大型复杂机构如何运作的一般理解，以及 它将提供一个比较框架，用于评估 不同的国家评估和应对全球环境变化。

As governments and other institutions become aware of new information about changing conditions in their environments, they alter their goals, expectations, and behavior. This process by which institutions change their skills, beliefs, and/or interpretations in response to new information and experiences is called social learning. Most research on learning has focused on individuals and small groups. This project will continue research at a different scale, focusing on the ways that national governments alter their attitudes and actions with respect to environmental risks as new information becomes available. Work begun in 1989 will be continued, with initial emphasis on the prototyping of research methods in a case study in the Federal Republic of Germany. Those efforts will lay the foundation for a subsequent comparative analysis that also will include the United States, the Netherlands, Sweden, the U.S.S.R., the United Kingdom, and the European Community. Within each jurisdiction, news reports, official records, and other sources of information will be used to outline the historical sequence of major environmental events and responses. Among the major functions for which processes in different states will be compared are (1) risk identification and characterization, (2) risk context, (3) risk estimation, (4) identification of control options, (5) assessment of costs of implementation, (6) goal selection, (7) strategy selection, (8) strategy implementation, and (9) strategy evaluation. This project will continue research on an important line of inquiry into the processes by which human institutions perceive and respond to changing environmental conditions. It will enhance our general understandings of how large, complex institutions function, and it will provide a comparative framework for assessing the ways in which different nations evaluate and deal with global environmental change.