Capacity Building for Global Change

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The Global Change SysTem for Analysis, Research and Training (START), as the major international outreach program of three of the major international global change research programs - the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), and the International Human Dimensions (of Global Environmental Change) Program (IHDP) - will undertake efforts to develop scientific capabilities in global change research in developing countries of Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. START will also promote collaboration in global change research and related scientific activities among scientists from the countries of these regions and between scientists from these countries and scientists from the United States and other countries with advanced capabilities in global change research.START will focus on six scientific areas of high priority for the international programs and for U.S. research on global change. These areas are: (1) regional climate variability and change; (2) changes in the composition of the atmosphere and its effects; (3) land use/land cover change, especially its biophysical and biogeochemical aspects; (4) interaction between global change and terrestrial ecosystems and their biodiversity; (5) interaction between global change and oceans, coastal zones, and inland waters and their biodiversity; and (6) scientific problems that cut across these areas, e.g., interactions between global change and food systems and between global change and water resources.These activities are expected to lead to improved understanding of global change and its particular characteristics and consequences in Asia, the Pacific, and Africa; improved and expanded input from the scientists of these regions to global efforts, especially to global modeling; and improved scientific capabilities in these regions to contribute to and participate in global change research at local, regional and global levels. In Asia and the Pacific, START will collaborate closely with the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN). START will extend the monitoring system for extreme events it has developed in northern Africa to other parts of the continent and will convene a workshop on the relationship of global change to freshwater resources, with a special focus on the arid and semi-arid regions of Africa. START will work closely with the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) to assure full and active participation by African scientists in these activities. Two other areas of emphasis in Africa will be (1) the interactions between global change and food systems and (2) land use/land change/ecosystem variability, both areas of exceptionally high priority for African countries. START will also extend efforts to assess the impacts of and adaptation to climate change in southern Africa, particularly by promoting development of a network for this process and development of analytical tools for such an assessment. START will also address polar coastal zones and change in these zones by convening a "synthesis and futures meeting" to bring together scientists active in the Russian Arctic to review past research on changes in coastal zones in the Arctic and their relationship to global change and then to consider how best to plan future research in this area.