A Leadership Workshop to Meet the Challenge of Global Climate Change

气候变化现在被广泛认为是不可避免的和全球范围的，但其对陆地、海洋和人类生态系统的影响是不均衡的。人类对即将到来的变化的反应，无论是自愿的还是必然的，都将同样参差不齐，或许比推动它们的物理和生态变化更难预测。随着来自过去档案的证据不断积累，模型在模拟现在和预测未来的能力方面也有所提高，因此，证据越来越明显地表明，变化正在发生。变化在空间上是不均匀的，对地球不同地区的气候带和气候动态产生了不同的影响。预计变化将极端的地区靠近预计变化不大的地方。在这个世界上，人类的福利和发展进步在空间上也是不均衡的，许多全球变化的力量造成了这些变化，包括人口的持续增长，特别是在较贫穷的国家，通过人类占有重新塑造地貌，以及自然资源的无休止地枯竭。世界各地人民及其生态支持系统的结果极难预测，但正如预期的那样，世界上较贫穷的地区是我们最早看到的最严重的地区。各国政府、联合国等国际组织和非政府组织对气候变化的反应一直不一致和不连贯。提出的政策选择和工程补救措施多种多样，有时甚至有些离奇。公众知之甚少，分歧严重。PIS将组织一个为期一天的高级别社区领导力研讨会，以开始塑造这样的反应。他们将召集国家研究和教育领导人以及参与经济和政策辩论的高层人士，讨论如何重塑国家对全球气候变化的意识。会议将包括一整天的讨论和前一天晚上的讨论。为了确保这一进程的有效性，讨论将由一名专业协调员主持，他将负责在会议结束后不久及时提交一份简洁的成果文件。智力上的优点：这种研讨会的智力价值将是制定一项研究和教育议程，由能够实施变革以迎接挑战的机构和机构中的主要行为者商定。广泛影响：这种议程将广泛影响全国研究界，以在全球变化研究中创造一致和重点的努力。

Climate change is now widely agreed to be both inevitable and global in scale, but uneven in its consequences for ecosystems on land, in the oceans and for people. Human responses to impending changes, by choice or by necessity will be equally uneven and perhaps more difficult to predict than the physical and ecological changes driving them. As evidence from the past archive has built and models have improved in their ability to simulate the present and project into the future, so the evidence has accumulated increasingly clear signs that change is under way. Changes are spatially uneven, effecting climate zones and climate dynamics differently in different parts of the planet. Regions where changes are expected to be extreme lie close to places where little change is expected. These physical changes imprint themselves on a world where human welfare and development progress is also spatially uneven, sculptured by many forces of global change including the continued growth of population, especially in the poorer countries, the re-shaping of landscapes through human appropriation and the relentless depletion of natural resources. The outcomes for people and their ecological support systems throughout the world are extremely difficult to predict, but as expected the poorer parts of the world are where we see the most severe early.Responses to climate change by national governments, international organizations like the UN, and NGOs have been inconsistent and incoherent. Proposed policy options and engineering remedies are diverse and occasionally bizarre. The public is ill informed and deeply divided. The PIs will organize a one-day high-level community leadership workshop to start to shape such a response. They will assemble national research and education leaders as well as those involved at a high level in the economic and policy debates to deliberate on how to re-shape the country's consciousness on global climate change. The meeting will involve one full day and a preceding evening discussion. To ensure the effectiveness of the process the discussions will be moderated by a professional facilitator who will be responsible for delivering a succinct outcome document in a timely manner shortly following the meeting.Intellectual Merit: The intellectual merit of such a workshop will be the setting of an agenda for research and education, agreed upon by the countries' leading actors in agencies and institutions that can effect change to meet the challenge.Broader Impacts: Such an agenda will broadly impact the research community throughout the country to create a coherent and focuses effort in global change studies.