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

对加速全球环境变化进程的日益关注突出表明，需要更多地了解人类作为自然环境条件快速变化的发起者和答复者的作用。社会和行为科学家已经开始或正在计划许多独立的研究项目，但这些调查加剧了协调对全球环境变化的人类层面进行多学科分析的必要性。该项目将促进和整合这一专题的六个重要方面的研究：(1)发展研究全球土地利用模式变化的理论和方法，(2)发展将人类健康与全球环境变化联系起来的流行病学，(3)审查各机构如何管理全球变化，(4)分析国家和国际安全关切如何与全球变化相关，(5)“可持续发展”的经验定义和衡量，以及(6)研究科学和社会如何识别和应对环境问题，扩大关于产生这些问题的过程的知识，并使这些知识更有用。获奖者，社会科学研究理事会，将成立一个新的全球环境变化研究委员会来监督这一努力。该委员会将委托并回应专家就这六个问题发表的评论文章。委员会成员将准备合成文章收录在一卷中，以介绍该小组的发现，委员会将赞助工作组开发与每个问题相关的研究项目。这个项目将带来许多实实在在的好处。这本包含关于六个问题的综述和综合文章的卷应该为学者们提供关于这些关键主题的现有知识的极好总结，并概述可能对知识做出重大贡献的一般方法。通过协调研究项目的发展，委员会将减少重复工作，并使独立研究工作能够更有效地推广。此外，委员会和工作组的努力应该让更多的国家领先的社会和行为科学家直接参与这一关键问题的分析，而不是其他方式。

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.