PREFACE

This document reports on the first Workshop on Global Environmental Assessment and Public Policy. The Workshop was convened jointly by the Committee on the Environment of Harvard University and the Center for the Application of Research on the Environment (CARE) of the Institute of Global Environment and Society, Inc. The 1997 Workshop, entitled: A Critical Evaluation of Global Environmental Assessments: The Climate Experience, took place from June 22-26, 1997 at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. The 1997 Workshop was supported by contributions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation. This Workshop Report was published by the Center for the Application of Research on the Environment of the Institute of Global Environment and Society, Inc. pursuant to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Award No. NA77GP0417.

The 1997 Workshop was the first in a series of annual sessions designed to provide an opportunity for review of, and reflection on, the relationship between the process of assessing global environmental problems and related decision making in the public and private sectors. The Workshop series provides an opportunity for in-depth, strategic discussion among a selected group of representatives from three key communities: (i) practitioners and managers of scientific assessments; (ii) intended users of scientific assessments; and (iii) scholars of the assessment process. The participants in the 1997 Workshop are listed in Appendix 1.

Through organized, highly-interactive discussions, Workshop participants had an opportunity to: review lessons learned from past experience and evaluate the transferability of those lessons to future assessments; describe the strengths of current approaches and identify opportunities to improve both the conduct and utility of future assessments; and develop a more complete understanding of the role that the assessment of global environmental problems plays at various levels of public- and private-sector decision making. By establishing and sustaining a critical, continuing dialogue among assessment practitioners, users and scholars, the series of Workshops initiated in June 1997 seeks to support the development of an increasingly informed and reflective community of individuals engaged in understanding and shaping the relationships between science and policy in global environmental affairs.

The Workshop series is an extension of the Global Environmental Assessment (GEA) Project, an inter-institutional endeavor based at Harvard University and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. The GEA Project is supported by a core grant from the National Science Foundation (Award No. SRB-9521910) for the "Global Environmental Assessment Team"), supplemented by funds from it s participating institutions and other Federal agencies. Additional support is provided by the Department of Energy (Award No. DE-FG02-955ER62122) for the project "Assessment Strategies for Global Environmental Change," the National Institute for Global Environmental Change Great Plains Office (Award No. LWT 62-123-06518) for the project "Towards Useful Integrated Assessments: A Bottom-up Approach, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change at Carnegie

The core of the Project is its Research Fellows, recruited each year through an international competition. Fellows spend the year working with one another and project faculty as a Research Group exploring histories, processes and effects of global environmental assessment. (Further information on the Project is provided in the Overview paper of this volume, and on its Web site. Membership in the 1997 GEA Research Group – the group of Fellows and faculty active in the Project from September 1996 through June 1997 -- is given in Appendix 2.) Building on a year of scholarship by the GEA Research Group, the June 1997 Workshop focused specifically on the past three decades of climate assessment experience as a dynamic learning process. In addition to the individual research papers prepared during the year (see Appendix 3), the GEA Research Group prepared a set of three Theme Papers synthesizing the year's work under the following headings:

Explaining the Form of Assessments: Why Do We Get the Assessments We Do?

Shaping Knowledge, Defining Uncertainty: The Dynamic Role of Assessments

How Can Assessment Processes and Outcomes Be Improved?

Using the work of the GEA Research Group as background material, Workshop participants explored and extended the GEA findings first in a one-day opening plenary, and then through two days of parallel working group sessions organized around the three themes noted above. The original Theme Papers and the Rapporteurs' reports from the Working Groups' deliberations provide the heart of this Workshop report. In addition to the three Working Group Theme Papers, Workshop participants benefited from an Overview paper on Global Environmental Assessment and Public Policy that appears as the first chapter in this Workshop report.

For the last day of the Workshop, participants explored the implications of the retrospective insights developed early in the week for the United States’ emerging strategy for conducting Congressionally mandated national assessments of global environmental change. Three new parallel working groups were convened in which Workshop participants reviewed background material provided by the Federal agency sponsors and explored issues related to: (i) political legitimacy and scientific credibility in the design of a national assessment process; (ii) designing and conducting a national assessment process which effectively addressees regional and sectoral impacts and response strategies; and (iii) the incorporation of appropriate review and evaluation mechanisms in the design and conduct of a national assessment process. Chapter 5 of this report provides a summary of the Workshop deliberations on the national assessment strategy.

As Workshop convenors, we extend our thanks to the 1997 GEA Research Group and Workshop Participants for the energy, enthusiasm, tolerance and dedication that, together with their intellectual contributions, combined to make the Bar Harbor experience such an exciting and productive one. In particular, we would like to thank the 1997 Research Fellows: Shardul Agrawala, David Cash, Karen Fisher-Vanden, Wendy Franz, Alastair Iles, Milind Kandikar, Marybeth Long, Clark Miller, Anthony Patt, and Ambuj Sagar. Their research and meeting contributions have been fundamental to the success of the GEA venture.

We are especially grateful for the support and guidance we received from Mike Hall at NOAA, Ari Patrinos and John Houghton at DOE, Robert Corell, Cheryl Eavey, and William Blanpied at NSF, Robert Harriss at NASA, and William Easterling at the National Institute for Global Environmental Change.

Our deep appreciation also goes out to Rebecca Storo, Ingrid Teply-Baubinder, Larisa Dolhancryk, Angela Williams and Nancy Deller for their secretarial and administrative support; to Diane Lask from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research who provided primary logistical and meeting support for the Workshop; and finally to all our hosts at the College of the Atlantic who provided the setting, nourishment, and ambiance that so contributed to the Workshop's success.

William C. Clark James McCarthy Eileen Shea