Strategic Plan for the
Climate Change
Science Program
Final Report, July 2003

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Vision for the Program and Highlights of the Scientific Strategic Plan

Acronyms, Abbreviations,
and Units

Human activities play an important part in virtually all natural systems and are forces for change in the environment at local, regional, and even global scales. Social, economic, and cultural systems are changing in a world that is more populated, urban, and interconnected than ever. Such large-scale changes increase the resilience of some groups while increasing the vulnerability of others. A more integrated understanding of the complex interactions of human societies and the Earth system is essential if we are to identify vulnerable systems and pursue options that take advantage of opportunities and enhance resilience. Basic social science research into human-environment interactions provides a foundation for applied analyses and modeling of human behavior at its interface with global environmental change.

The need for understanding human contributions and responses -- sometimes referred to as the "human dimensions" of global change -- motivates the research questions in this chapter and elsewhere in this plan. Human dimensions research includes studies of potential technological, social, economic, and cultural drivers of global change, and how these and other aspects of human systems may affect adaptation and the consequences of change for society. Much of this research is "cross-cutting" -- integral to explorations of causes and impacts of changes in atmospheric composition, climate, the water cycle, the carbon cycle, ecosystems, land use and land cover, and other global systems. Research on human contributions and responses integrates information from different research elements to establish baseline characterizations of man acting in and reacting to his environment. The complex interactions of multiple environmental stressors on human activities must be examined. It is widely acknowledged that human dimensions research has special challenges associated with the cross-disciplinary nature of its topics and with the mix of qualitative and quantitative data and analyses employed in its pursuit.

Across the range of human dimensions research there is a particularly strong need for the integration of social, economic, and health data with environmental data. Such integration requires data from physical, biological, social, and health disciplines on compatible temporal and spatial scales, to support the synthesis of data for research and to support decisionmaking. There is an especially critical need for geo-referenced data.

A broad research agenda for human contributions and responses has been identified in a series of national and international reports, including the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2001a, b, c, d) and a series of focused reports and monographs from the National Research Council (NRC, 1999a,e, 2001c,e). The NRC report Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions concluded that: "In order to address the consequences of climate change and better serve the Nation's decisionmakers, the research enterprise dealing with environmental change and environment-society interactions must be enhanced." Such an enterprise should include, "...support of interdisciplinary research that couples physical, chemical, biological, and human systems" (NRC, 2001a). This chapter draws from these reports and from priority areas identified by the research community through federal research programs.

Two overarching questions for research on the human contributions and responses to global change are:

These questions frame the human dimensions research outlined in the four key questions that follow.

Human drivers of global environmental change include consumption of energy and natural resources, technological and economic choices, culture, and institutions. The effects of these drivers are seen in population growth and movement, changes in consumption, de- or reforestation, land-use change, and toleration or regulation of pollution. The IPCC (IPCC, 2000 a, b, 2001a, b, c, d), the NRC (NRC, 1999a, 2001a), and additional U.S. studies have summarized social science research on these drivers in the specific context of climate change, and the International Human Dimensions Programme has contributed to this body of knowledge. For example, research has pointed to population changes (including an aging population in the United States with rapid growth of human settlements, especially in the South, West, and coastal areas) that have impacted consumption patterns and other drivers of global environmental change.

Research into the human drivers of global change has focused on changes in land use and energy use. But there is also a growing body of work on fundamental socioeconomic processes that drive human use of the environment (e.g., changes in population densities, advances in technology, the emergence of new institutional structures). Furthermore, current research on sustainability emphasizes the roles played by societies in driving global environmental change. Recent research has also improved our understanding of many of the factors that affect environmentally significant consumption at the household level. Important advances have been made in understanding the effects of economic transformation, for instance, how the growth of the service sector in urban areas contributes both to social wealth and vulnerability of human settlements. Similarly, research on technological change has helped to identify trends in innovation, efficiency, and expanded living standards, and their implications for natural and depletable resources.

Research questions related to human drivers span a range of topics, including: What are the key processes and trends associated with population growth and demographic change, management of natural resources (including land and water), the development of advanced technologies, and trade and global economic activity? How can improved understanding of these issues be used to improve scenarios and projections of global change? Who are the principal actors, both individuals and institutions, and what are the key factors, such as households, markets, property and land tenure, and government policies and practices? How can researchers develop appropriate scenarios and link them to decisionmaking frameworks? How can stakeholder involvement be used to help determine the research agenda? In addition, questions specific to population and technological change and the role of trade and economic activity include:

• How do population growth, composition, distribution, and dynamics (fertility, mortality, migration, and household change) affect the sustainability of energy and land use, economic activity, land cover, the climate system, and other global environmental systems?
• How is the relationship between population dynamics and environmental change affected by the scale at which population-environmental linkages are measured (e.g., the plot, the community, the state, the region, the nation)?
• How do people use information and form perceptions about potential or actual global environmental changes, along with other social, economic, and political considerations, to make decisions about production, consumption (including use of natural resources) and mobility (including migration)?
• What are the roles played by institutions in structuring the activities that drive global environmental change?

• What are the drivers, especially institutional factors that induce technological innovation and adoption of new technologies? What influences the transfer of technology from region to region or country to country? How does technological innovation and transfer impact systemic environmental change and figure in adaptation and mitigation strategies?
• How can research that identifies viable technology options be modeled as policy options?
• What can be projected about the effectiveness, cost, and environmental and health effects of alternative energy and mitigation technologies, including sequestration options?
• How can this research contribute to efforts to develop mitigation technology options by, for example, placing values on such items as temporary carbon storage and the availability of limited resources such as land and water?

• What influences the movement of goods and services domestically and from one country to another? How does movement of goods and services impact global environmental change?
• How do operational and technological changes affect economic productivity and energy use?

Key needs have been identified, including:

Human Contributions and Responses products will provide needed inputs to the Carbon Cycle and Land-Use/Land-Cover Change elements of the plan that are related to changes in energy consumption, technology utilization, and adaptation policies (see also question 9.2).

For the purpose of this question, "global environmental variability and change" includes climate variability and change and related sea level rise. These environmental changes need to be analyzed in the context of other natural and social system stresses, such as land-use and land-cover change, population changes and migrations, and global economic restructuring. There has been significant progress in analyzing and modeling regional vulnerabilities and possibilities for adaptation, including in the context of multiple stresses. Progress has been made in understanding how society adapts to seasonal climate variability and, by extension, how it may adapt to potential longer term climate change (IPCC, 2001b).

The state of global change impact and adaptation research varies, depending on the nature of the impact, the scale of the analysis, and the region of the world. For most types of impacts, this field of inquiry has advanced from modeling direct impacts on natural and human systems (e.g., crops, forests, water flows, coastal infrastructure) to analyses of how people might alter specific activities in reaction to changing climate, and for several types of impacts, anticipatory responses have been investigated as well. For example, with respect to sea level rise, the direct impacts and possible responses are fairly well established for the United States. However, a high priority for research concerns the environmental impacts of adaptive responses in the future.

On a global scale, considerable gaps exist in understanding, modeling, and quantifying the sensitivity and vulnerability of human systems to global change and measuring the capacity of human systems to adapt. For instance, little is known about the effectiveness of applying adaptation experiences with past and current climate variability and extreme events to the realm of climate change adaptation; nor about how this information could be used to improve estimates of the feasibility, effectiveness, and costs and benefits of adaptation to long-term change. Gaps also exist in understanding differences in adaptive capacity across regions of the world and different socioeconomic groups (IPCC, 2001b). Also less well known are the roles that institutional change and consumption patterns in the future will play in the capacity of society to prepare for and respond to global changes.

Figure 9-1: Potential climate variability and change impacts.

Research Needs

Research needs include empirical studies and model-based simulation studies of the influence of social and economic factors on vulnerability and adaptive capacity in households, organizations, and communities; assessments and economic analyses of the potential impacts of climate variability and change (including using products from the Ecosystems research element); retrospective analyses of the consequences of surprising shifts in climate and the ability of society to respond to negative impacts and potential opportunities; and studies analyzing the factors that affect adaptive capacity in the context of multiple social and natural system stresses (climate change, land-use change, population change and movements, sea level rise, changes in political institutions, technology gains, and economic restructuring).

Much of this research will need to be place-based analysis at regional and local scales in order to capture the complexities of the human-environment interface and the adaptive strategies of individuals, industries, institutions, and communities (here connections to the place-based research planned through the Decision Support working group is important). Comparative studies at different locations and in different socioeconomic contexts are critical. Longitudinal data sets need to be developed, as do data sets that track adaptation strategies across time (linkage to the Observing and Monitoring working group is key).

More extensive research crossing social science disciplines as well as research integrating social and natural system components is needed for improved understanding and modeling of impacts and adaptation and their feedback to possible mitigation efforts. Integrating across these connections is complex and will require methods for integrating qualitative and quantitative data and analyses as well as improvements in linking component models. Use of qualitative and quantitative approaches is critical if we are to make progress at a range of scales. Specifically, attention needs to be paid to the associated costs and benefits of adaptation strategies, strategies for mitigating the impacts of global change on different economic sectors and people in different locations and economic brackets, market and non-market valuation of positive and negative impacts, the possibility of new economic instruments for responding to global change, and the role of public and private institutions and public policies in influencing adaptive capacity (IPCC, 2001b). Research could include input from studies of mitigation and adaptation measures undertaken by the Ecosystems research element.

Research on these questions can be expected to improve analytical methods and models of how climate variability and change and sea level rise combined with socioeconomic changes are likely to affect decisionmaking in water management, agriculture, forest management, transportation infrastructure, urban areas, coastal areas, public health, and other climate-sensitive sectors in the United States and developing countries. The research will enable decisionmakers in both the public and private sectors to make more enlightened choices regarding the nature and timing of actions to undertake in response to the challenges and opportunities associated with anticipated climate variability, potential climate change, and sea level rise.

Some expected products/milestones include:

Decisionmaking is rife with uncertainties including risks of irreversible and/or non-linear changes that may be met with insufficient or excessive responses whose consequences may cascade across generations. The difficulties associated with characterizing and explaining uncertainty have become increasingly salient given the interest of policymakers in addressing global environmental change. Uncertainties arise from a number of factors, including problems with data, problems with models, lack of knowledge of important underlying relationships, imprecise representation of uncertainty, statistical variation and measurement error, and subjective judgment (IPCC, 2001b,d).

Illustrative Research Questions

How can methods or approaches be improved:

Associated research needs include analysis of decision processes to identify what information on global environmental variability and change is most useful and at what stage in the decision process that the information is needed. This work will be done in collaboration with the Decision Support Resources development described in Chapter 11.

It is well established that human health is linked to environmental conditions, and that changes in the natural environment may have subtle, or dramatic, effects on health. Timely knowledge of these effects may support our public health infrastructure in devising and implementing strategies to compensate or respond to these effects. Over the past decade, several research and agenda-setting exercises have called for continued and expanded research and development of methods in this area (WAG, 1997; NRC, 1999a, d, 2001c; EHP, 2001; IPCC, 2001b). Given the complex interactions among physical, biological, and human systems, this research must be highly interdisciplinary, well integrated, and span the breadth from fundamental research to operations. A multi-agency interdisciplinary research effort to examine the linkages across these sectors is in place with research focusing on global and developing country impacts, and on the effects of simultaneous environmental and economic shifts on human health and well-being.

Federally supported research has thus far provided information on a broad range of health effects of global change, including the adverse effects of ozone, atmospheric particles and aeroallergens, ultraviolet (UV) radiation, vector- and water-borne diseases, and heat-related illnesses (see Figure 9-2). Research continues to improve understanding of the potential impact of climate variability on certain infectious diseases, and researchers are developing and evaluating tools and information products for anticipating and managing any such impacts that capitalize on the enormous protections afforded by wealth and the public health infrastructure. However, many questions remain unanswered.

Illustrative Research Questions

Research needs include:

A parallel need exists to develop additional appropriate tools and methods for assessing and adapting to potential health outcomes; and for evaluating the impact of research, the effectiveness of Earth science information and products, the methods for communicating that information, and the systematic identification of knowledge gaps and feedback to the research communities.

Products from this area include operational tools, research to support innovative institutional arrangements and processes, and research results that may be used by decisionmakers. Expected milestones, products, and payoffs include:

The study of human contributions and responses to global change within the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) has ties to a number of national and international programs beyond those represented among the CCSP member agencies, including: the International Human Dimensions Program, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, Environment Canada, Health Canada, the Climate Change Technology Program, the National Research Council, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other federal agencies and programs, and to the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (see Chapter 15). Collaborations between the federal agencies involved in global change research and the above-mentioned organizations include co-sponsorship of scientific workshops and conferences, efforts to set scientific agendas in research areas of mutual interest, and collaborative assessments of the state of knowledge.

Furthermore, numerous collaborative research projects between scientists in the United States and other countries are underway. As examples, U.S. scientists collaborate with developing country scientists to analyze coping strategies and the use of climate information in the face of year-to-year climate variability. In addition, U.S. researchers in the field of economics and other areas associated with creating decisionmaking frameworks collaborate through institutions such as Stanford University's Energy Modeling Forum (EMF). For example, an annual EMF meeting of specialists in integrated assessment modeling and related disciplines, such as climate science, biology, and health, has generated a great many successful research partnerships across both countries and disciplines.

The scientific community has called for strengthening international cooperation and coordination related to human contributions and responses research, particularly in the areas of the potential impacts of climate on human welfare and resource management, vulnerability assessments, and adaptation research. Progress depends on advances in these areas, as well as in improvements in climate modeling, observations, and our understanding of the integrated climate system and associated socioeconomic and environmental responses. Cooperation should include the collection and archiving of social and economic data, as well as exchanging methodologies and research insights.