This paper provides an introduction, background and overview to the Workshop on Global Environmental Assessment and Public Policy -- A Critical Evaluation of Global Environmental Assessments: The Climate Experience. The workshop brought together scholars and practitioners in a joint effort to fashion a deeper critical understanding of global environmental assessment and its role in shaping the relationship between science and policy. Part 1 of this paper describes the GEA Project of which the Workshop is a part, summarizing its motivations, goals and strategic plan. Part 2 reviews the Project's first year of research on assessments of climate change and previews some of its more general findings. Finally, Part 3 turns to the Workshop proper and reviews its objectives, organization and point of departure. 

1. THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT PROJECT 
1. Background And Motivation

 The demand for policy relevant science to illuminate problems of global environmental change has never been greater. All indications are that it will increase even more through the foreseeable future. At least 200 international environmental treaties are already in force, covering subjects ranging from whaling to climate change. Many of these require periodic reviews of the state of the relevant science, and are amended systematically to reflect changing implementation experience, social goals, and research findings. A variety of recent and forthcoming agreements -- for example concerning the protection of biodiversity -- seem certain to generate even more ambitious calls along the lines voiced by Presidential Science Advisor John Gibbons that "research has to be directed toward answering current and anticipated policy questions, and policy has to respond to new research results" (Gibbons, 1993).

 Scientists and other scholars from around the world have responded in gratifying -- even alarming -- numbers to the challenge of creating assessments as a "bridge between science and policy" on these global environmental issues (Carnegie Commission on Science, 1992). Over the past 30 years, at least a hundred formal assessment reports dealing with the global climate issue have appeared in the US alone. More than 2,500 individual scholars from around the world participated in the last round of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the vast majority without pay and at substantial cost to their research, teaching and personal lives. Surprisingly, however, this rapid growth in the demand for, and supply of, global change assessments has not been accompanied by any systematic effort to evaluate or learn from our accumulating assessment experience. As a result, there is little understanding or consensus today regarding:

 Why some kinds of assessments are performed, while others are not;

• How assessments have actually affected society’s understanding of global environmental issues, and its scientific research on them;
• Under what conditions and in what ways assessments have been able to influence the preferences, behaviors, and policies of significant actors in domestic and international arenas;
• What makes a specific assessment credible to some users, but not to others, whether from different sectors or disciplines or countries; or
• How assessments can be designed and implemented to better serve specific needs.

 Some individual participants in the assessment process have amassed significant practical experience and wisdom relevant to these questions. But there has been little effort to codify that experience or to evaluate critically its relevance to new problems or contexts. And though many members of the first generation of participants in, and observers of, global environmental assessment will retire in the 1990s, there has been little systematic effort to train a younger generation of scientists, scholars, and policy advisors to fill their shoes.

 The Global Environmental Assessment (GEA) Project was formed to address these issues by a multidisciplinary group of scholars from a wide range of backgrounds. (Core faculty and senior research staff are listed Box 1. Brief biographies are contained in Annex 1.) Some of us have worked as scientists in assessments of global environmental issues, or conducted global environmental assessments, or both (e.g., Frosch, Holdren, Jaeger, McCarthy, McElroy). Others are addressing more generally the problems of the use of science in policy contexts (e.g., Clark, Dickson, Jasanoff, Parson, Stavins). Still others are studying how action on international problems ranging from defense to economic growth to environmental protection comes to be undertaken and coordinated despite the absence of authoritative rule making structures (e.g., Chayes, Connolly, Keohane, Mitchell). Several of us, representing a cross-section of these groups, have just completed a comparative historical study of how countries around the world had "learned" to deal with emergence of global environmental issues onto their policy agendas during the period between the International Geophysical Year (1957) and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992). The National Science Foundation’s call in 1994 for proposals to establish research centers on global environmental change and assessment provided a motivation and opportunity to pool our concerns, perspectives and methods. In 1996 we were awarded a five year core grant around which we are now building a research and training program designed to illuminate the issues raised above.

 Box 1: Core GEA Faculty and Senior Research Staff

 The Project’s goal is to develop an understanding of the actual relationships among science, assessment, policy and management in social responses to global environmental change.

 The Project is explicitly global in scope, seeking to understand the special problems, challenges and opportunities that arise in efforts to develop common scientific assessments that are relevant and credible across multiple national circumstances and political cultures. We view global environmental change broadly, as it is conceived by efforts such as the International Geosphere/Biosphere Program and Agenda 21, including but not restricted to climate issues. (Indeed, one of the major challenges facing the project is to explore the extent to which assessment experience with such problems as ozone depletion and climate change has lessons for other areas such as biodiversity.) Finally, we have adopted a long term perspective focused on the interactions of science, assessment and management over periods of a decade or more rather than concentrating on specific studies or negotiating sessions.

 The Project has adopted a four-prong strategy in pursuit of its goals:

Fellows: Each year we recruit a group of pre- and post-doctoral fellows to the Project through an international competition, supplemented with selected students from our own institutions. (This year’s fellows are listed in Box 2. Biographical information is included in Annex 2.) These individuals are drawn from the natural and social sciences. As described below, they receive training in relevant interdisciplinary research methods, and collaborate with faculty in research on global environmental assessment. As the Project develops, we seek to build an international network of alumnae especially knowledgeable about, and sensitive to, questions concerning the conduct and impact of global environmental assessments.

  Training and research seminar: A year-long training and research seminar exposes faculty and Fellows to a range of relevant research and professional perspectives. (Speakers for the 1996/7 academic year are listed in Annex 3.) For most of the year, the seminar is based at Harvard. For the months of January and February, however, the seminar and the Fellows move to our collaborating institution, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. As IIASA is one of the world’s foremost centers for international environmental assessments, this shift of venue allows for inclusion of a much wider range of national experiences and disciplinary approaches in the Project.

  Research papers: Fellows and faculty collaborate in shaping and conducting empirical research studies on particular aspects of assessment through the course of the year. These will be circulated for review as Project Discussion papers before being targeted at relevant conferences and journals. (This year’s research papers are discussed in more detail in Section II, below.)

  Scholar/ Practitioner Collaboration: The GEA Project is a university-based research venture seeking to understand assessments, not an applied policy effort seeking to perform or design assessments. Nonetheless, a scholarly perspective alone can only yield a partial understanding of constraints, opportunities and trade-offs faced by assessment practitioners. Much of the Project’s potential therefore lies in its ability to integrate the detached, long-term and scholarly perspectives emerging from our own research with the up-close-and-personal "view from the trenches" of experienced assessment practitioners and users. To promote such an integration of scholar, practitioner and user perspectives, we have initiated a collaboration with the Center for the Application of Research on the Environment (CARE) of the Institute of Global Environment and Society, Inc. Working with CARE, plus a group of research and assessment managers from NOAA, DOE, NASA and NSF, the Project has planned a series of annual collaborative Workshops on Global Environmental Assessment and Public Policy. (CARE senior staff and the Federal agency advisors who served as the Steering Committee for the Workshop are listed in Box 3.) Our hope is that these GEA/CARE Workshops will evolve into the sort of collaborative forum where scholars and practitioners can join together in the critical evaluation of assessment experience -- a forum that has been sadly underdeveloped in the global environmental field. The first Workshop was held on June 22-26, 1997 in Bar Harbor, Maine.

 1.3 An Experimental Endeavor

 The Global Environmental Assessment Project/CARE collaboration is an experimental endeavor or, more accurately, several of them. We are trying to develop institutional settings and processes that will promote truly interdisciplinary work on hard problems at the interface of the natural and social sciences. We are trying to create research on the assessment process that is both theoretically sound and practically useful at the same time. We are trying to build paths of professional training and career development that will let younger scholars and professionals come to carry out collaborative work on global environmental assessments as a centerpiece, rather than side-show, of their lives. We are trying to catalyze a truly collaborative undertaking between scholars and practitioners in exploring problems of global environmental assessments.

 As in any experimental venture, our goal is therefore to fail early and often, while surviving to learn from the experience.

 The Project began its work in 1996 with a focus on assessments of global climate change. As a practical matter, we concentrated this year on assessments involving substantial input from US scholars, whether performed in the United States or under international auspices. (We did, however, begin our international comparative work with one case study involving India.) In future years, we will expand our horizon to include comparative studies of other environmental problems, and other countries’ approaches to them. In the sections that follow, we provide a brief history of the climate change issue as it has evolved for the United States, an overview of the major assessments that have accompanied that evolution, and a summary of the specific research studies undertaken as part of the Project.

 Early developments in the understanding of global climate change and the greenhouse effect took place in Europe, as suggested in the summary chronology presented in Table 1. American scientists had written on the possible relationship between industrial CO₂ emissions and climate change since the 19th century and were generally aware of European work. The modern debate, however, was largely initiated in a 1957 publication by Roger Revelle and Hans Suess. They argued that the oceans would not, as generally expected at the time, rapidly absorb human emissions of CO₂. With scientific rather than environmentalist fervor, the authors noted that through the resulting increase in atmospheric CO₂, "Human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geo-physical experiment [that...] if adequately documented, may yield a far-reaching insight into the processes of determining weather and climate." (Revelle and Suess, 1957).

 Climate change thus became the first atmospheric issue to appear on America's scientific agenda as a global environmental problem. It was slow, however, to receive widespread public attention, overshadowed initially by acid rain and riding the coattails of the stratospheric ozone debate onto the policy agenda only during the late 1980s. Public and political attention to the issue rose to a peak at the end of the 1980s, and has since fallen to levels not much different than what they had been in the 70s and early 80s (see Figure 1). The Framework Climate Convention ultimately tabled at Rio in 1992 took a watered-down form that was acceptable to the United States, which signed it. In part, this was because domestic American interests had in fact succeeded in shaping the Convention to fit their views. In addition, however, it was because other powerful nations had softened their initial positions as their own business interests and energy ministries had belatedly asserted similar pressures to those experienced from the outset by American negotiators. American advocates of a stronger Convention took heart as presidential candidate William Clinton and his environmentalist running mate Albert Gore campaigned on a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. Clinton and Gore emerged victorious from the November 1992 elections. But neither those elections nor the next had been about the environment and -- as subsequent events would show unambiguously -- a generation of geophysical experimentation had still not prepared America to incur real costs for mitigating what is still seen as a worrisome but still hypothetical and distant greenhouse problem.

 (An extended version of this historical sketch is provided in Annex 4. See also Clark and Dickson, 1998.)

 America has an exceptional appetite for formal assessments aimed at linking scientific research to policy problems. This has been as true in the area of global environmental policy as in any other, with literally hundreds of substantial assessments on the issues of global climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion alone published over the last several decades. (A list of the principal assessments reviewed in our GEA research program over the last year is provided in Table 2.)

The national government has been the principal source of global climate assessments, though NGOs, industry, academia and -- more recently -- international organizations also issued their own. Especially for government, the nominal objective for global environmental assessments has been clear and consistent: to provide a comprehensive, integrated evaluation of the causes, impacts, costs, and response options in order to support the development of appropriate policy with the best available expertise. This "integrated assessment" philosophy was initially articulated for the Climate Impact Assessment Program (CIAP) mounted in response to the SST-ozone controversy of the early 1970s. It reappeared in the early planning for a National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP) and the National Program on Carbon Dioxide, Environment and Society in the late 1970s. And it was essentially unchanged in the U.S. Global Change Research Act and related program plans adopted in the early 1990s.

 American assessment practice, however, has been much different than its assessment principles. A central research task of this project has been to stand back from the last 30 years of American experience in climate assessment and characterize what has actually happened, as opposed to what was intended. The preliminary results of our work are summarized in the following sections.

 2.3 Research On Climate Assessments Undertaken By GEA Project Participants

 The Project built its empirical research on a foundation of extensive historical studies of the development of global environmental issues and policy that had recently been completed by several participating faculty (Haas, Keohane and Levy, 1993; Parson, 1993; O’Riordan and Jaeger, 1996; Keohane and Levy, 1996; Social Learning Group, 1998). In addition, it made use of ongoing investigations into strategies for the assessment of global environmental change, with special attention to linkages between local and global scales. Finally, it utilized and contributed to the library archive on international environmental policy and assessment under development at Harvard University (see Annex 5).

 From these foundations, the Project developed a standard research protocol to characterize the origins, process, content, and outcomes of specific assessment efforts. The protocol was applied to approximately 20 of the most significant assessments listed in Table 2. (Those assessments denoted in the Table with an * were examined in detail.) A number of detailed findings emerged from this work and were reported at a two-day meeting of all project participants in November, 1996. More important, however, was a fundamental reorientation in our research approach that emerged from Project members’ collective attempt to make sense of the preliminary data.

 The GEA research had been initiated on the plausible assumption that its analytic focus ought to be individual assessment reports such as those listed in Table 2, together with their individual impacts as "bridges" joining research, policy, and management. The Project’s preliminary studies, however, suggested that this was an overly constraining model that left out much of what seemed important about the roles of assessment in the climate issue over the last quarter century. More consistent with our initial findings were the following propositions: 

• Assessment is most helpfully viewed as a social process, including but not restricted to its formal products. The scientific content of assessments remains central to this view. But the social process perspective also directs attention beyond the content of assessment reports to encompass questions regarding participation, presentation, evaluation and, above all, how the boundary between the scientific and policy dimensions of assessment are negotiated and legitimized. In particular, this view treats assessment as one of multiple channels through which knowledge about global environmental issues is communicated among various scholarly disciplines and policy actors. 
• The context within which that process occurs provides constraints and opportunities that significantly affect the outcomes of assessment efforts. This perspective recognizes that individuals responsible for the management and conduct of assessments make numerous important choices about design and conduct. It emphasizes, however, the potential influence of outside factors ranging from the current state of knowledge and policy development, through institutional settings, to contemporary politics. 
• Assessment is most helpfully seen as an intrinsically dynamic, iterative affair rather than a one-time act of decision advice. Through time, assessment processes can either accumulate or dissipate capacity, credibility, and sophistication. They can identify common pitfalls and subsequently avoid them – or make the same mistakes over and over. They can build on past experience – or become captive of previous and outdated frames of reference. In any event, the "effectiveness" of assessments lies at least as much in how they deal with these dynamics as in any particular report they may produce.

These propositions led us to identify a number of specific topics as both important to the evolution of social responses to the climate change issue, and as likely to yield significant insights into the broad questions of science and policy that motivate the study. Preliminary reports on this research were included in the briefing materials for the Bar Harbor Workshop.

 Revised versions are published as Discussion Papers at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Environment and Natural Resources Program and IIASA in preparation for publication in appropriate journals.

 Short synopses of the research are given below. The first three papers look across a range of particular assessments to examine variation and changes in what has been assessed: emissions, extreme events, impacts, and policy. The next four papers explore assessment as part of a broader pattern of communication among scientists, advocates, decision makers, and the public. Finally, the last two papers focus on the dynamics of assessment, one dealing with the evolution of the process itself in the specific case of the IPCC, the other evaluating the impact of assessments on development of the climate issue.

Many assessments of climate change fail to consider the possibility of low probability, yet catastrophic, outcomes of greenhouse warming. A noteworthy example is the potential rapid deterioration of the West Antarctic ice sheet. If the ice sheet were to melt, as a minority of scientists believe it may, sea levels could rise by five meters or more in the next century. This study seeks to develop a theory that can predict why certain classes of assessments assess extreme outcomes, while other classes of assessments ignore them. Work in behavioral psychology argues that individual decision-makers display predictable bias when interpreting low probability events, either underestimating or overestimating the associated risks. Drawing on this work, this study theorizes that assessors who operate by consensus, and who are trying not to create controversy, will avoid issue areas, such as low probability outcomes, where biased interpretations are likely. Staff advisors who are asked to assess such issue areas will seek to offer explanations that overcome people’s propensity for bias. Finally, advocates writing assessments will seek to take advantage of people’s bias. Using a case study of the West Antarctic ice sheet issue, this study finds empirical evidence that supports these predictions.

This paper explores climate change impact assessment, an area of increasing importance in regard to climate change science and policy-making. Through an historical overview of impact assessment and through case studies of sea-level rise and health impact sectors we document some of the major trends and debates that have characterized the impacts field. Our findings reveal ways in which the definition and analysis of impacts reflect aggregation of scientific, political, and societal issues. We also suggest that impact assessments can be thought of as "trading zones" in which negotiations take place between many actors over data, research priorities, participation, and methodological issues. These negotiations, in turn, have important implications for knowledge and power. For example, impacts and assessments of impacts are closely tied to organization within the scientific community, dominance of various research methodologies, boundaries that differentiate science and policy, and the viability of certain climate change policy responses.

This paper explores the factors influencing the types of policy instruments seriously considered and actively promoted by US policymakers over time in the climate change debate. A variant on Kingdon’s model is used to describe how these factors and actor groups affect the pool of instrument considered—not only influencing which instruments go into the pool but also which ones bubble to the top and which ones sink to the bottom in prominence. In the model presented in this paper the following three process streams coupled with influence of time and historical experience determine the prominence of individual policy instruments in the pool: (1) a "politics/economics" stream which contains contextual factors (such as national mood and macroeconomic conditions) that constrain the type of policy instruments policymakers can consider; (2) a "policy options" stream which generates and promotes particular policy instruments; and (3) an "issues" stream which contains the policy goals faced by policymakers at the time. Actor groups can affect any of these streams and can act as "policy entrepreneurs" by advocating the use or disuse of certain instruments.

With regard to formal (i.e., report-like) assessments, this paper finds that although formal assessments have seemingly had little direct impact on US policy responses in the past, it is not the case that they have had no indirect impact or will not have a larger direct impact in the future. This lack of direct impact could be explained by (a) the primary use of alternative channels of information (e.g., advisors, briefings, memos) by policymakers; (b) the lack of attention given in assessments to the contextual factors constraining policy instrument choice; (c) the discrepancies between the goals assumed by assessors (e.g., a specific environmental goal) and the actual goals faced by policymakers; and (d) the assessment’s intended audience.

This report is a product of joint work between Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) on global environmental change information policy. It recommends a multiple and pluralistic structure for assessments of global environmental change that is coupled with a strong information management program. No single assessment, or assessment methodology, is likely to produce an answer that will convince policymakers that action, or inaction, is required with respect to changes in the global environment. Rather, policymakers are likely to look at the results of many assessments that use different methods and are performed by competing stakeholders. Global environmental change information systems and policies must be structured to support these attributes of the policy process. This can be achieved by supporting a broad base of user communities, establishing a collaborative network of interdependent information providers, establishing effective guidelines for contributing the data and information compiled during individual assessments to the broader community, encouraging commercial and non-profit redistribution of available data and information, and integrating access mechanisms for scientific literature and its supporting data and information. (This paper was completed before the GEA research began, and reflects the thinking of a commission rather than the GEA Group. The paper nonetheless informed our studies, and is circulated for the first time in the context of the GEA Project.)

If a goal of the Global Environmental Assessment and Public Policy Workshop is to "develop a more complete understanding of the role that the global assessment process plays in the context of various levels of public- and private-sector decision making," one critical focus of discussion should be on the process by which scientific and technical information about climate change risks, mitigation, and adaptation is transferred and communicated to various stakeholders across different levels of scale. It is argued that only by consciously crafting such a process, and identifying opportunities and pitfalls, can we encourage effective information flow. This briefing paper poses questions which can help focus debate on how such a process might be structured to address the multi-scale, multi-stakeholder nature of human-induced climate change. US agriculture is the case that is used to illuminate concepts, though similar questions would need to be addressed in other sectors as well.

For more than a decade climate change has been the focus of much research and analysis. Despite the global implications of the problem the majority of research and analysis has involved researchers from industrialized countries. This paper analyzes how climate change research and analysis is performed in India, a major lesser-industrialized country. We explore the factors that play a role in shaping the capability of India to carry out, and respond to, climate change analyses. We also sketch out the links between national research and assessment capability and national policy making and how these links may have evolved and been mobilized in response to the international climate change debate. We also examine the Indian participation in, and perceptions of, the IPCC process. This allows us to reflect on the potential pitfalls for international assessment processes, and on the role that India can play in the global debate on climate change.

Efforts to protect the global environment often assume that problem framings flow unproblematically from scientific descriptions of natural and human processes. Since problem framings also embed tacit assumptions about public values and social order, however, their uncritical acceptance can lead to value conflict, unproductive policy development, and unrecognized opportunities for improving our knowledge of environmental problems and potential solutions. At the same time, taking framings for granted can lead to unjustified expectations about the ease with which robust problem framings can be achieved. In this discussion of the use of national inventories of greenhouse gas emissions to monitor the emerging climate regime, I argue that recent scholarship in science studies provides a more critical approach to understanding the framing of environmental problems that can help avoid these difficulties. By clarifying value choices available, such an approach can provide better explanations of current controversies and provide information on areas where future value conflicts may occur and can also improve public understanding of the multiple components of problem framing and the complex socio-technical developments necessary to support them.

Climate change is a problem which is global both in terms of causes and consequences. The uncertainties are large and likely to persist. Meanwhile, the political and economic stakes of both action and inaction are much higher than those in other transboundary concerns such as acid rain and ozone depletion. The public policy impact of scientific opinions on climate change, therefore, not only depends upon what is being said, but also, who is advancing those conclusions and how they were arrived at. This was the rationale behind the setting up of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. In the years since, the IPCC has attempted to walk the tightrope of being scientifically sound and politically correct. This paper examines the processes which led to its creation and how it has evolved over two assessment cycles. The paper attempts to address the question of whether such an assessment set-up was necessary, if indeed it has been relevant, and what some indicators might be to evaluate the performance of the IPCC.

The observation has been made that the climate change issue broke onto the international policy making agenda in the mid 1980s, between 1985 and 1988. The issue moved from the realm of science to the realm of politics. As such, this period provides fertile ground for exploration of the relationship between science, knowledge, and action on international environmental issues. This relationship is the emphasis of this study, as it provides an account of the transition of climate change to the international policy agenda. This study explores the often made claim that it was the development of a scientific consensus, a reframing of the climate debate, and attention from an international group of scientists that pushed the issue into the international political spotlight by the late 1980s. The Villach 1985 conference is often cited as the source for these claims. This study contends that the 1985 Villach conference did not represent a significant change in scientific conclusions about the problems of climate change. Rather, a new emphasis on certain scientific facts, the unique quality of the international group of scientists, and new perceptions of the opportunity for action on international environmental problems led the Villach group to reach a new set of political and policy conclusions which emphasized the urgency of action. Several policy and science entrepreneurs advocated action to address problems of global environmental change. Their conclusions coincided with a number of other developments, including extreme weather in the United States and the successful negotiation of an international agreement to protect the ozone layer, which pressed in the direction of further international attention to environmental problems. By 1988, a variety of international players were involved in shaping the debate about responses to climate change. 

These detailed research studies provide the empirical foundation of the broader thematic papers on which the Workshop focused. Most of the authors were present at the Workshop and were available to expand on their findings as appropriate.

 As noted above, a central goal of the GEA Project is to shape a critical understanding and evaluation of experience in global environmental assessment that draws collectively on the perspectives of assessment producers, users, managers and scholars. The Workshop on Global Environmental Assessment and Policy is our prime vehicle for promoting the collective, collaborative part of this agenda. The 1997 Workshop was designed as the first of what we hope will become a series of annual sessions bringing together these communities to share insights and explore ideas.

 3.1 Design

 We designed the Workshops on the model of the (late) Dahlem Conferences. One overview presentation sets the stage along lines outlined in this paper. Participants then were organized into three set Groups, each consisting of a mix of assessment scholars, practitioners, and user/managers. Each Group spent the bulk of the Workshop in organized, interactive, and detailed discussion of one broad question relating to global environmental assessments. Plenary sessions, however, provided ample opportunities to compare and cross-fertilize findings.

 The questions for the 1997 Workshop were selected based on the most interesting findings of the GEA research work and negotiations with CARE and the Workshop Steering Committee: 

• Why do we get the assessments we do? (Explaining the form of assessments)
• What are the dynamics through which assessments shape knowledge and define uncertainty?
• How can assessment processes and outcomes be improved? 

For each question, a background paper was prepared by GEA Project participants. Abstracts are provided below. Workshop discussions used the background papers as a point of departure. The goal was to shape a collective understanding of insights into the question, not to provide a critique or revision of the background paper. A synthetic rapporteur’s report on each group’s discussions has been prepared under the leadership of a senior faculty member from the GEA team. These reports, following the Dahlem model, are intended to be substantial contributions to contemporary debate. As such, they are issued in the name of the Global Environmental Assessment Project. They are not, however, intended to be consensus documents, but rather to reflect a range of contemporary findings and opinion. The rapporteur reports and accompanying background papers are included in this Workshop report.

3.2 Working Group 1: Explaining The Form Of Assessments: Why Do We Get The Assessments We Do? 

This paper considers why we see the variations in assessment form that we do. In particular, it examines how the context in which assessments take place interact with assessors’ decisions over time to yield the form that assessments take. The paper sketches a classification of assessments in terms of their substantive, procedural and contextual characteristics. From an analysis of a wide range of climate assessments, it then advances a number of propositions concerning the factors affecting the degree of consensus an assessment is likely to entrain, the credibility of an assessment for various groups, the ways in which an assessment is likely to address policy issues. Further observations are advanced on the likely implications for assessments when the political saliency of an issue increases, or the range of sponsoring organizations, interests or countries increases. Finally, the paper poses a series of potential discussion questions for the workshop regarding the negotiation of assessment content between assessors and their sponsors, the implications for assessment of issue maturation (for example from a purely scientific to a political question), and the role of entrepreneurship and leadership for the assessment process. 

What are the relationships between assessments, knowledge, and knowledge communities? Assessments are often viewed as documents that communicate information from scientists to policymakers. This paper develops an extended model of assessments as dynamic processes of communication that focuses attention on who is communicating, what is communicated (or not, as the case may be), and how various messages interrelate over time as assessments evolve. In particular, it considers the roles of assessments in framing and communicating information among scientists, policy makers, and citizens in modern democracies, as well as how assessments and their roles in society evolve over time. It then turns to an examination of how this model alters conventional understandings of uncertainty in assessments and the importance of assessments to the growth of new knowledge communities. Finally, it proposes a series of questions related to trust and credibility, capacity-building, and assessment evaluation that flow from our proposed model of assessments as a common process. 

3.4 Working Group 3: How Can Assessment Processes And Outcomes Be Improved? 

This paper addresses the outcomes of assessments and the elements of context, content and process that are responsible for them. This is followed by a discussion of the pitfalls that have influenced outcomes. Four main outcomes of assessments are identified: a change or stabilization of policy position; a change of the scope of the debate; a change of the position of the issue on scientific or political agendas; and a change of the research and/or policy community engaged with the issue. Elements of context, content and process can affect outcome. Of importance are scientific context, e.g., the state of the scientific community; political context, e.g., the domestic or international political situation; economic context, e.g., the state of the national economy; and other contextual constraints, e.g., the way that science and policy communities are linked. Elements of content include the scope of the assessment and the treatment of uncertainty. The significant elements of process include the assessment design, the participation and the follow-up to the assessment. The major pitfalls include a failure in the follow-up to the assessment, ignoring the context within which the assessment is carried out, ignoring the needs of potential users, and inappropriate participation and content.

SOURCE: Social Learning Group. 1998. Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks: A Comparative History of Social Responses to Climate Change, Ozone Depletion, and Acid Rain. Cambridge: MIT Press.

This list is a chronological sample of major US and international assessments of the climate issue. In each case, an indication is given of what kind of community sponsored the assessment: scientific community (Sc), government (Govt), non-governmental organizations (NGO), and international institutions (II). Assessments marked with an * were studied in detail using the Project’s standard research protocol. The GEA Fellow responsible for the study is named following the *.

President's Scientific Advisory Committee (PSAC). Environmental Pollution Panel. 1965. Restoring the Quality of our Environment. Washington, DC: The White House. (Govt)

 Study of Critical Environmental Problems (SCEP). 1970. Man’s Impact on the Global Environment. C.L. Wilson and W.H. Matthews, ed. Cambridge: MIT Press. (Sc)

 Study of Man’s Impact on Climate (SMIC). 1971. Inadvertent Climate Modification. W.H. Matthews, W.W. Kellogg, and G.D. Robinson. eds. Cambridge: MIT Press. (Sc)

 NRC. 1977. Energy and Climate. Geophysics Study Committee, Geophysics Research Board, and Assembly of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. (Sc) [* Fisher-Vanden]

 National Defense University (NDU), Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and Institute for the Future (IFF). 1978. Climate Change to the Year 2000. Washington, DC: Defense Documentation Center. (Govt)

 World Climate Conference. 1979. Proceedings of the World Climate Conference: A Conference of Experts on Climate and Mankind, Geneva, 12 -23 February 1979. WMO (Series); no.537. Geneva: Secretariat of the World Meteorological Organization. (II) [* Miller]

 Department of Energy (DOE). 1979. Workshop on the Global Effects of Carbon Dioxide from Fossil Fuels. Carbon Dioxide Effects Research and Assessment Program, Elliot, William and Lester Machta (eds.) Miami Beach, Florida, March 7-11, 1977. CONF--770385. (Govt)

 Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE). 1979. The Global Carbon Cycle. SCOPE 13. Workshop on the Carbon Cycle (1977: Ratzeburg, Germany), Bert Bolin (ed) Chichester; New York: Wiley. (II)

 NRC. 1979. Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. Report of an Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate, Woods Hole, MA, July 23-27, 1979. Assembly of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Climate Research Board. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. (Sc)

 JASON. 1979. The Long-term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate. JSR-78-07. Arlington, VA: SRI International. (Sc)

 JASON. 1980. The Carbon Dioxide Problem: DOE Program and a General Assessment. JSR-80-06. Arlington, VA: SRI International. (Sc)

DOE. 1980. Workshop on Environmental and Societal Consequences of a possible CO₂-induced Climate Change. Carbon Dioxide Effects: Research and Assessment Program. Boulding, E. and S.H. Schneider (eds) CONF-7904143. Washington, DC: US DOE. (Govt)

NDU, USDA, DARPA, NOAA, IFF. 1980. Crop Yields and Climate Change to the year 2000. Washington, DC: GPO. (Govt)

SCOPE. 1981. Carbon Cycle Modeling. SCOPE 16. Based on a Workshop on Global Carbon Cycle Modelling held at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, March 1979. Bert Bolin et al. (eds) Chichester: Wiley. (II)

World Meteorological Organization (WMO), UNEP, ICSU. 1981. On the Assessment of the Role of CO₂ on Climate Variations and their Impact. Meeting of Experts held in Villach, Austria, November 1980. Geneva: WMO. (II) [* Sagar]

 Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). 1981. Global Energy Futures and the Carbon Dioxide Problem. Washington, DC: CEQ. (Govt)

 SCOPE. 1983. The Major Biogeochemical Cycles and their Interactions. SCOPE 21. Bert Bolin et al. (eds) Chichester; New York: Wiley. (II)

 NRC. 1983. Changing Climate. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. (Sc) [*Fisher-Vanden]

 NDU, USDA, DARPA, NOAA, IFF. 1983. The World Grain Economy and Climate Change to the Year 2000: Implications for Policy: Report on the Final Phase of a Climate Impact Assessment. Washington, DC: GPO. (Govt)

 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 1983. Can We Delay a Greenhouse Warming?: The Effectiveness and Feasibility of Options to Slow a Build-up of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere. by Stephen Seidel, Strategic Studies Staff, Office of Policy Analysis, Office of Policy and Resources Management, Washington, DC: U.S Government Printing Office. (Govt) [* Cash]

 United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), WMO, ICSU. 1985. An Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and of other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variation and Associated Impacts. Villach, Austria. (II) [* Long]

 DOE. 1985. Characterization of Information Requirements for Studies of CO₂ Effects: Water Resources, Agriculture, Fisheries, Forests and Human Health, DOE/ER-0236, Washington, DC: US DOE. (Govt) [* Long]

DOE. 1985. Detecting the Climatic Effects of Increasing Carbon Dioxide, DOE/ER-0235, Washington, DC: US DOE. (Govt) [* Long]

DOE. 1985. Glaciers, Ice Sheets, and Sea Level: Effect of a CO₂-induced Climatic Change, DOE/ER/60235-1, Washington, DC: US DOE. (Govt) [* Long]

DOE. 1985. Projecting the Climatic Effects of Increasing Carbon Dioxide, DOE/ER-0237, Washington, DC: US DOE. (Govt) [* Long]

MacDonald, Gordon. 1985. Climate Change and Acid Rain. McLean, VA: Mitre Corp. (Sc)

SCOPE. 1986. The Greenhouse Effect, Climatic Change, and Ecosystems, SCOPE 29, Bert Bolin et al. (eds.) Chichester; New York: Wiley. (II) [* Agrawala]

EPA and UNEP. 1986. International Conference on Health and Environmental Effects of

Ozone Modification and Climate Change. Washington, D.C.: EPA. (II) [* Franz]

Mintzer, Irving. 1987. A Matter of Degrees: The Potential for Controlling the Greenhouse Effect. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. (NGO) [* Patt]

Jaeger, Jill. 1988. Developing Policies for Responding to Climatic Change. A Report to the UNEP and WMO, WMO/TD-No. 225. A summary of the discussion and recommendations of the workshops held in Villach, Austria, Sept. 28 - Oct. 2, 1987 and Bellagio, Nov. 9 - 13, 1987 under the auspices of the Beijer Institute, Stockholm. (II) [* Botcheva]

EPA. 1989. The Potential Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States. Smith, J.B., and D. Tirpak, (eds). Washington, DC: US EPA, Office of Policy, Planning, and Evaluation. (Govt) [* Kandlikar]

Rosenberg, N., P. Crosson, W. Easterling, K. Frederick, and R. Sedjo. 1989. Policy Options for Adaptation to Climate Change. Discussion Paper ENR 89-05. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future. (NGO)

Jaeger, Jill et al. 1989. The Full Range of Responses to Anticipated Climate Change. UNEP and Beijer. (NGO) [* Kandlikar]

EPA. 1990. Policy Options for Stabilizing Global Climate. Lashof, Daniel and Dennis Tirpak (eds.) EPA 21P-20003.1, Washington, DC: US EPA. (Govt) [* Cash]

 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 1990a. Climate Change: The IPCC Scientific Assessment. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. (II) [* Agrawala]

 IPCC. 1990b. Climate Change: The IPCC Impacts Assessment. Report from Working Group II to IPCC. Canberra: Australian Govt. Pub. Service. (II) [* Agrawala]

  IPCC. 1990c. Climate change: The IPCC Response Strategies. Report from Working Group III. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. (II) [* Agrawala]

 Jaeger, Jill. 1990. Responding to Climate Change: Tools for Policy Development. Stockholm: Stockholm Environment Institute. (NGO)

 Jaeger, Jill and Howard Ferguson, eds. 1991. Climate Change: Science, Impacts and Policy. Proceedings of the Second World Climate Conference, Geneva, 1990. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. (II) [* Iles]

 Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). 1991. Changing by Degrees: Steps to Reduce Greenhouse Gases, OTA-0-482. Washington, DC: US GAO. (Govt)

 DOE. 1991. Processes for Identifying Regional Influences of and Responses to Increasing Atmospheric CO₂ and Climate Change - The MINK Project. Springfield, VA: NTIS. (Govt)

 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Putnam, Hayes and Bartlett, Inc., International Resources Group, The Brock Group, and DRI/McGraw Hill. 1991. Economic Effects of Alternative Climate Change Policies. Prepared for the Global Climate Coalition. Washington, DC: CSIS. (NGO)

 EPRI. 1991. Saving Energy and Reducing CO₂ with Electricity: Estimates of Potential. RP 2788. Palo Alto, CA: ERRI. (NGO)

 IPCC. 1992a. Climate Change 1992: The Supplementary Report to the IPCC Scientific Assessment. Cambridge; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. (II)

 IPCC. 1992b. Climate Change 1992: The Supplementary Report to the IPCC Impacts Assessment. Cambridge; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. (II)

 NRC. 1992. Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. (Sc) [* Patt]

 OTA. 1993. Preparing for an Uncertain Climate. Washington, DC: US GAO. (Govt)

 Rosenberg, Norman J. (ed.) 1993. Towards an Integrated Impact Assessment of Climate Change: The MINK Study. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Pub. (Sc)

 IPCC. 1994a. Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Cambridge; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. (II)

 IPCC. 1994b. IPCC Technical Guidelines for Assessing Climate Change Impacts and Adaptations. Cambridge; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. (II)

 IPCC. 1994c. Climate Change 1994 - Radiative Forcing of Climate Change and An Evaluation of the IPCC IS92 Emission Scenarios. Cambridge; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. (II)

IPCC. 1996a. Climate Change 1995 - The Science of Climate Change. Report of the IPCC Working Group I. Cambridge; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. (II)

 IPCC 1996b. Climate Change 1995 - Scientific-Technical Analyses of Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change. Report of the IPCC Working Group II. Cambridge; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. (II)

 IPCC 1996c. Climate Change 1995 - The Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change. Report of the IPCC Working Group III. Cambridge; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. (II)

 IPCC 1996d. The IPCC Second Assessment Synthesis of Scientific-Technical Information Relevant to Interpreting Article 2 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Cambridge; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. (II)

The Figure summarizes the rise and fall of public attention to three global environmental issues, measured in terms of their coverage by an elite newspaper (the New York Times) and Congressional hearings and is reproduced from Clark and Dickson (1998). The data show that the first surge of public attention to these issues in the United States occurred in the mid-1970s, focused on the risk of stratospheric ozone depletion. The late-1970s were marked by a return to relatively low levels of public attention to any of our global risks. By 1980, however, the debate on acid rain was shaping up. It rose to a peak in 1984, but continued to command substantial though declining attention through the rest of the decade. Ozone depletion came back on the agenda in 1986 and 1987, though its peak levels of media and Congressional attention at the time only matched those accorded acid rain during the same period. By 1989, the climate change problem for the first time dominated America's public debate on global atmospheric risks, a position it would continue to hold -- despite an absolute decline in attention from its 1989 peak -- through the end of our study period. The remainder of this section examines the ideas, actors, and institutions underlying these changing patterns of public attention for the climate change case.

 Other indicators are, of course, possible. With our focus on the evolution of attention among elites, however, this set seemed as good as any. The New York Times is the closest thing America has to a nationally read elite newspaper. Congressional hearings provide a public venue for members of Congress to show their interest in and position on issues they judge to be politically salient (Hurley and Wilson, 1989; Baumgartner and Jones, 1994). This note should probably be transferred to the figure caption.

 Methodology for figure "Attention to Global Atmospheric Risks in the USA":

Frequency of articles on stratospheric ozone, acid rain, and climate change in the New York Times and Congressional hearing days scaled as a proportion of the number of articles in the year of maximum citations, 1970-1993. Portrayal of issues to the public by the elite mass media is measured by counting the articles appearing in the New York Times. Articles were searched from 1960-1993. Dialog’s National Newspaper Index, which covers the New York Times for the period 1979-1993, was searched electronically and the New York Times Index was searched manually for the period 1960-1978. The search employed the following strategies, applied to titles and descriptors:

• global warming or climate? change or greenhouse effect or greenhouse gas? or carbon dioxide problem or CO₂ problem
• ozone and (shield or layer or uv or u v or ultraviolet of CFC? or chlor? or halo? or stratosphere? or aerosol or spray)
• acid rain or acid deposition or acid precipitation.

Frequency is scaled as a proportion of the number of articles in the year of maximum citations (1984=82 for the acid rain issue). The graph shows 1970-1993. For the period 1960-1969 we found relatively few articles: climate change (30), ozone (2), acid rain (0).

 Evolution of political interest is measured by counting congressional hearing days when the issue was discussed. Dialog’s Congressional Information Service was searched for the period 1970-1992. The search employed the following strategies, applied to titles, hearing and witness testimony abstracts:

• global warming or climate? change or greenhouse effect or greenhouse gas? or carbon dioxide problem or CO₂ problem
• ozone (The results were heavily edited to remove hearings where tropospheric ozone was discussed.)
• acid rain or acid deposition or acid precipitation.

Frequency is scaled as a proportion of the number of hearing days in the year of maximum citations (1989=37 for the climate change issue).

Source: Clark, William C. and Nancy M. Dickson. 1998. Civic Science: America’s Encounter with Global Environmental Risks, In Social Learning Group. 1998. Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks: A Comparative History of Social Responses to Climate Change, Ozone Depletion, and Acid Rain. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Abram Chayes is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at the Harvard Law School, where he teaches among other things, international environmental law and institutions. His main relevant research interest is the problem of compliance with international regulatory commitments. His most recent work on this is The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements, (Harvard University Press, 1995), (with Antonia H. Chayes).

William Clark is Sidney Harman Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is Vice Chairman of the University Committee on Environment and served as Director of the School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (1993-4). His current research focuses on the sources of long term social learning to cope with the policy issues arising through the interactions of environment, development and security concerns in international affairs. In particular, he has studies underway on the development of better assessment frameworks for use in the management of global environmental change and on the problems of monitoring and evaluating progress towards sustainable development. His previous research has included policy analysis for resource and environmental management, work on understanding societal risk taking behavior, evaluation of human development strategies being pursued in the Third World, and basic research and modeling studies on the stability and resilience of ecological systems.

Barbara Connolly is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tufts University. She teaches courses on international environmental politics, international relations and international cooperation. Her research has focused on cooperation between Eastern and Western Europe on regional environmental problems, including nuclear power safety and acid rain, and on environmental aid programs. She is particularly interested in the role of international institutions in fostering political cooperation. Her publications include three chapters in Keohane and Levy, eds., Institutions for Environmental Aid (MIT Press, 1996) and a June, 1996 article on environmental aid in Environment.

Nancy Dickson is Associate Director of the Global Environmental Assessment Project. She is responsible for project coordination and the Fellows research program. Her research traces the history of science and policy development in the areas of climate change, ozone depletion, and acid rain in the United States. She is particularly interested in studying assessment strategies that will create useful bridges between policy-makers and scientists at the sectoral and regional levels, as well as the roles of the press in the development of environmental issues. She joined Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in 1991 as a Research Associate and Project Manager working on the project Social Learning in the Management of Global Environmental Risks, a comparative study examining how societies in ten countries have managed global environmental change over the past thirty years. Her previous work includes periods as a Research Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health's Program on Risk Analysis and Environmental Health, and as a Teaching Fellow in the Division of

Applied Science. In these capacities, she has done work on toxic air pollutants, environmental law and economics, and risk-benefit analysis. Outside of the Harvard Community, she has worked at Boston's Tellus Institute and Cornell University's Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering. She holds bachelor’s and master's degrees in Government and Environmental Planning from Cornell University.

Robert A. Frosch is a theoretical physicist by education. (AB, Columbia College '47 and Ph.D., Columbia University, '52). He conducted research in ocean acoustics at Columbia and later served as Director for Nuclear Test Detection, and Deputy Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the Department of Defense, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research and Development (ASNR&D), Assistant Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Associate Director for Applied Oceanography of the Woods hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Administrator of NASA, President of the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES), and Vice President of General Motors Corporation (GM) in charge of Research Laboratories. He retired from GM in 1993 before joining the Kennedy School. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Foreign Member of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, and a fellow or member of a number of professional societies.

John Holdren is Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government, and Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, at Harvard University. Until Fall 1996 he was a professor in UC Berkeley's campus-wide interdisciplinary graduate program in Energy and Resources, which he helped establish in 1973 and co-directed for 23 years. Holdren is also Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, Chair of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Chair of the PCAST Panel on Energy R&D, and Chair of the Executive Committee of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. He received the S.B. and S.M. degrees in aeronautics and astronautics at M.I.T. and the Ph.D. in Aeronautics/Astronautics and Theoretical Plasma Physics at Stanford University. He has done research on plasma physics, fusion energy technology, risk analysis, technology assessment of energy and resource options for industrial and developing countries, global environmental problems, and international security and arms control; and he has co-authored and co-edited 13 books on these topics, together with about 300 other scholarly and popular publications.

Jill Jaeger joined the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria) in September 1994 as Deputy Director for Programs, where she is responsible for the implementation and coordination of the research program. She has been Deputy Director of IIASA since October 1996. In November 1991 she was Director of the Climate Policy Division of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Wuppertal, Germany. She received her B.Sc. degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of East Anglia (UK) in 1971. She was awarded her Ph.D. in Geography (Climatology) by the University of Colorado (USA) in 1974. She has worked as a consultant on energy, environment, and climate for numerous national and international organizations.. Her main field of interest is the development of policies in response to climate change. She is the author of numerous publications.

Sheila Jasanoff is Professor of Science Policy and Law and Chair of the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. She has written extensively on subjects of science and technology in American politics including, Controlling Chemicals: The Politics of Regulation in Europe and the U.S., Risk Management and Political Culture, The Fifth Branch: Science Advisers as Policymakers, and, most recently, Science at the Bar: Law, Science, and Technology in America. She is currently finishing a book on the comparative regulation of biotechnology in the U.S., Britain, and Germany and is principal investigator on the NSF-sponsored project, Sustainable Knowledge about the Global Environment.

Robert O. Keohane is James B. Duke Professor of Political Science at Duke University. He was formerly Stanfield Professor of International Peace at Harvard University, and has also taught at Swarthmore College, Stanford University, and Brandeis University. He received his B.A., from Shimer College (1961) and his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1966). He is the author of After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton University Press, 1984), for which he was awarded the second annual Grawemeyer Award in 1989 for Ideas Improving World Order. He is also the author of International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory (Westview, 1989), co-author (with Joseph S. Nye, Jr.) of Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Little, Brown, 1977, second edition, 1988), and co-author (with Gary King and Sidney Verba) of Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, 1994). He is editor or co-editor of, and contributor to, nine other books. Between 1974 and 1980 he was editor of the journal, International Organization. He was president of the International Studies Association, 1988-89. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Rockefeller Foundation center at Bellagio, Italy, and the National Humanities Center.

James J. McCarthy is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography and Director of Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. He holds faculty appointments in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and he is the Head Tutor for degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy. He received his undergraduate degree in biology from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, and his Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. His research interests relate to the regulation of plankton productivity in the sea, and in particular the cycling of nitrogen in planktonic ecosystems. He teaches courses on biological oceanography and plankton ecology. He has served and serves on many national and international committees relating to the study of global change.

Michael B. McElroy received his elementary and graduate education from Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1970, he was named Abbott Lawrence Rotch Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Harvard University, and in 1975 was appointed Director of the Center for Earth and Planetary Physics. Since 1986 he has been Chairman of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and since 1992 Chairman of the University Committee on Environment at Harvard where he leads an interdisciplinary study on the implications of China's rapid industrial development for the local, regional and global environment. In 1997, he was named the Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies. His research interests range from studies on the origin and evolution of the planets to, more recently, an emphasis on effects of human activity on the global environment of the Earth. He is the author of more than 200 technical papers contributing to our understanding of human induced changes in stratospheric ozone and to the potential for serious disruptions to global and regional climate due to anthropogenically related emissions of greenhouse gases. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Academy of Aeronautics, the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research interests include the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans, including interactions with the biosphere and evolution of planetary atmospheres.

Ronald Mitchell is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oregon. He earned his Ph.D. in Public Policy at Harvard University. His book, Intentional Oil Pollution at Sea: Environmental Policy and Treaty Compliance (MIT Press, 1994) received the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for 1995 from the International Studies Association for the best book on international environmental issues. He has published articles in International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, and Environment.

Tom Parris is Harvard University's Environmental Resources Librarian. His research focuses on environmental information policy and the role of information systems in supporting productive environmental science and public policy enterprises. Recent efforts include the creation of an Environmental Science and Public Policy Archive and the design of a Harvard Geospatial Data Infrastructure. Prior to this position, Tom worked as software engineer in support of large-scale satellite remote sensing and geographic information system applications for the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, and as an policy analyst for the Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network. Tom was trained in mathematics and computer science at the University of Michigan, and in science, technology and public policy at Harvard University. As a contributing editor to Environment magazine, Tom authors the monthly column "Bytes of Note" -- a thematic review of electronic environmental information resources.

Edward A. Parson is Associate Professor of Public Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Senior Research Associate in Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA). His research interests lie in two related fields: environmental policy, and negotiations. His environmental research stresses its international dimensions, including policy coordination, the development and management of international institutions, negotiation, and conflict resolution. Current projects include studies of scientific and technical assessment in international environmental policy making; the development of international cooperation to protect the ozone layer; and the development of a series of policy exercises to study alternative approaches to implementing and financing international cooperation on global climate change. At BCSIA, he co-directs the NSF-funded Global Environmental Assessment Project. In negotiations, his interests include the use of models and expert assessment bodies to support negotiations; processes of learning in bargaining under uncertainty; and how negotiations change as the number of parties increase. He has developed a series of simulated multi-party negotiation exercises that are used for policy research and executive training in ten countries. he holds degrees in Physics from the University of Toronto and in Management Science from the University of British Columbia, and a Doctorate in Public Policy from Harvard. He has worked and consulted for the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) of the US Congress, the United States EPA, the United Nations Environment Programme, the Commission of the European Communities, Environment Canada, and the Privy Council Office of the Government of Canada.

Robert N. Stavins is Professor of Public Policy, and Faculty Chair of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is a University Fellow of Resources for the Future, and a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board, the Board of Directors of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, and the editorial boards of several scholarly periodicals. He directed Project 88, a bi-partisan effort co-chaired by former Senator Timothy Wirth and the late Senator John Heinz, to develop innovative approaches to environmental and resource problems. He has been a consultant to the National Academy of Sciences, the President's Council on Sustainable Development, the Environmental Defense Fund, the U.S. Departments of Interior, Commerce, Defense, and State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and numerous state and national governments. Professor Stavins' research has focused on diverse areas of environmental economics and policy, including examinations of: policy instrument choice under uncertainty; competitiveness effects of regulation; design and implementation of market-based policy instruments; diffusion of pollution-control technologies; and depletion of forested wetlands. His current research includes analyses of: technology innovation; environmental benefit valuation; political economy of policy instrument choice; and econometric estimation of carbon sequestration costs. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from Northwestern University, an M.S. in agricultural economics from Cornell, and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.

Shardul Agrawala is a pre-doctoral fellow with the Global Environmental Assessment Project. He is a doctoral candidate in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. His doctoral research focuses on institutionalized assessment processes, their impact and shortcomings. He holds a masters degree in Economics and Public Policy, also from Princeton, and another masters and an undergraduate degree in Metallurgical Engineering. During 1994-95 he worked as a Sector Analyst at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group II where he was involved in the preparation of the IPCC Second Assessment Report. He organized expert and government reviews of Working Group II draft chapters and also served as a Lead Author on one of them.

David Cash is a pre-doctoral fellow with the Global Environmental Assessment Project. He is a doctoral candidate in Public Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The impetus for returning to graduate school, after several years as a high school biology and chemistry teacher, was his growing interest in the role which science plays in the process of environmental policy development. This interest was sparked, in part, by high school students he taught who often seemed perplexed by a disconnect between what natural science research seemed to suggest as appropriate responses to problems and what outcomes resulted from the political process. Since arriving at the Kennedy School, this interest has taken three different but complementary paths. One focus of his research has been on the role of science and politics in domestic environmental decision making, analyzing primarily the Endangered Species Act. The second focus has explored the role of scientific assessments in the negotiation and development of international environmental treaties, such as the climate change and biodiversity conventions. Finally, he has been focusing on how scientific assessment of global environmental risks are linked to local decision making and local environmental risk management with specific interest in how scientific and technical information transfers across different levels of scale.

Karen Fisher-Vanden is a pre-doctoral fellow with the Global Environmental Assessment Project. She is a third-year doctoral student in Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Her focus of research is on capital formation in transitional economies and the implications for technological diffusion. She holds a master of science degree in Management Science from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, and a bachelor of science degree in Mathematics and a bachelor of arts degree in Economics, both from UC Davis. Prior to entering the doctoral. program at the Kennedy School, she was a senior research scientist at Battelle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in Washington, D.C. where she was involved in the development of economic models of greenhouse gas emissions for various regions that are to be incorporated into an integrated assessment model of climate change.

Wendy E. Franz is a pre-doctoral fellow with the Global Environmental Assessment Project. She is a doctoral candidate in Political Science in the Department of Government at Harvard University. Her dissertation concerns the role of non-governmental organizations in the international politics of the environment. She holds bachelors degrees in Political Science and International Studies from the University of Washington. She was an intern in the Technology and Environment Branch at the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya in the spring of 1991.

 Alastair Iles is a pre-doctoral fellow with the Global Environmental Assessment Project. He is a first-year doctoral student at Harvard University, working in the field of environmental policy and science. Formerly, he was an environmental lawyer at Australia's largest law firm, before completing a Master of Law degree at Harvard University. In the past year, he has participated in the Global Environmental Assessment Project, as well as in other science-policy-politics research projects. Currently, he is beginning an investigation into "policy learning" and adaptive strategies in complex environmental management regimes, exploring three case studies in Australia, the European Union, and the United States. He also is working on integrating bottom-up inputs into environmental decision-making via decision analysis and support perspectives, and on analyzing the development and practice of institutions for environmental decision-making. He was awarded a Mitchell Young Scholar Prize for sustainable development research last March. At present, he is a Young Scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

Milind Kandlikar is a post-doctoral fellow with the Global Environmental Assessment Project. He was jointly appointed at Harvard and Carnegie Mellon Universities for the academic year, 1996-97. At Carnegie Mellon, he was a researcher at the National Center for the Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change. He received a Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, a masters in Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech, and a bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Marybeth Long is a pre-doctoral fellow with the Global Environmental Assessment Project. She is a doctoral candidate at M.I.T., where she earned a masters degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research interests include hydroclimatology and the role of experts in global environmental policy-making. Before entering graduate school, she earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering and a B.A. in English, and worked as an environmental consultant.

Clark Miller is a post-doctoral fellow with the Global Environmental Assessment Project. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1996 from Cornell University. Next year, he will be a post-doctoral associate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at Cornell University. His current research examines the changing roles of experts and expertise in the international politics of the environment. He is currently writing a book on the measurement of greenhouse gas emissions and the monitoring of the climate convention and is editing a volume (with Paul Edwards, Stanford University) entitled Changing the Atmosphere: Science and the Politics of Global Warming. The latter is a collection of historical, sociological, and philosophical essays by STS researchers aimed at informing current debates in climate politics.

Anthony Patt is a pre-doctoral fellow with the Global Environmental Assessment Project. He is a third-year doctoral student in Public Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has prior experience in environmental planning and law. His research interests include the treatment of risk and uncertainty in the communication of scientific knowledge and the formation of environmental policy. He received a masters in Public Policy from Harvard University, a J.D. from Duke University School of Law, and a B.A. in Architecture from Yale University. At present, he is a Young Scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

Ambuj Sagar is a post-doctoral fellow with the Global Environmental Assessment Project, as well as a research fellow for the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program (STPP) in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is carrying out research on national energy research and development policies. He spent last year as a fellow in the Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP) on the Industrial Ecology Project, working with William Clark and Robert Frosch. He came to the Kennedy School after a brief hiatus in India which followed his graduate studies at MIT in Material Science and Technology and Policy. His interests lie in science policy and environment policy, especially in terms of how these play out and interact in the context of developing countries as well as in a broader international context.

Assessments in the Management of Global Environmental Risk: Results from the Social Learning Project

 Participant’s-Eye View of an Assessment and Policy Dynamic

John Holdren, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

 What Can Political Scientists Contribute to Understanding of Environmental Policy?

Robert Keohane, Dept. of Political Science, Duke University

 From Rio to Reality: Interactive Dialogue with Decision Makers

Eileen Shea, Center for the Application of Research on the Environment

Integrated Assessment

Sir Crispin Tickell, Oxford University

Knowledge - Action Linkages in Global Environmental Management

Jill Jaeger, Deputy Director, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

Credibility and Persuasion

Sheila Jasanoff, Dept. of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University

Uncertainty and Intersubjectivity in Integrated Assessment: Applications of the TARGETS

Model

Implementation and Effectiveness of International Environmental Commitments

David Victor, Project Leader, IIASA

 Environmentally Compatible Energy Strategies

Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Project Leader, IIASA

 Assessment Issues in Transboundary Air Pollution

Markus Amann, Project Leader, IIASA

 Modeling Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes in Europe and Northern Asia

Cynthia Rosenzweig, Research Scientist, NASA

 The Framework Convention on Climate Change

John Lanchbery, Verification Technologies Information Center, UK

 Uncertainty in Assessments of Global Environmental Issues

 Getting Prepared for Kyoto: The Government’s Demand for Science and Policy Analysis in

Designing the Post-2000 Climate Change Response

Learning from Energy Assessments

 The Positive Political Economy of Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy

Robert Stavins, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

 Technology and Economics Assessment in the Montreal Protocol: Successes, Lessons, and

Possibilities for Improvement

Scales of Climate and Crop Models: Will Ever the ‘twain they Meet?

Assessing the IPCC Assessment: Applying what We’ve Learned about Climate Assessment to

the IPCC Third Assessment Report

Economic Impacts of CO₂ Abatement: A Meta Analysis of Modeling Studies

(Reproduced from: Clark, William C. and Nancy M. Dickson. 1998. Civic Science: America’s Encounter with Global Environmental Risks, In Social Learning Group. 1998. Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks: A Comparative History of Social Responses to Climate Change, Ozone Depletion, and Acid Rain. Cambridge: MIT Press.)

 American scientists had written on the possible relationship between industrial CO₂ emissions and climate change since the 19th century and were generally aware of European work. The modern debate, however, was largely initiated in a 1957 publication by Roger Revelle and Hans Suess. They argued that the oceans would not, as generally expected at the time, rapidly absorb human emissions of CO₂. With scientific rather than environmentalist fervor, the authors noted that through the resulting increase in atmospheric CO₂, "Human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geo-physical experiment [that...] if adequately documented, may yield a far-reaching insight into the processes of determining weather and climate."

 As America's efforts in the IGY got underway, Revelle's "experiment" was drawn into an ongoing policy debate on problems of weather and, later, climate modification. Despite several entrepreneurial attempts to highlight the CO₂ issue per se, however, it attracted little attention, little new funding and changed few research agendas through the 1960s. The rising tide of America's environmental movement in 1970 nonetheless carried the overall topic of inadvertent climate change along with it. Scientific attention to the question of how human activities might warm, cool, or otherwise affect the climate was significantly broadened and intensified through preparation of the SCEP and SMIC reports as background documents for the Stockholm Conference. In America, such questions were given particular impetus by the SST controversy, framed at the time largely as a climate problem. Public and political attention to climate were further enhanced by a series of world-wide weather anomalies beginning in 1972. These raised concerns over food production and international security sufficiently that Secretary of State Kissinger was moved to address the UN General Assembly on the topic. The Congress debated at length and finally, in 1978, created a National Climate Program (NCP). Administratively based in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) -- home of America's Weather Bureau -- this Program held a broad mandate to enhance the ability of the nation to respond to climate variability in general, stressing better forecasting, international cooperation, research and assessment. Change induced by CO₂ emissions was only one of many climate issues entrained by the NCP, however, and a minor one at that. It would take the arrival on the American scene of another problem area to provide Revelle's "experiment" -- now almost 20 years further along -- with a significantly expanded audience in the science and policy communities.

 That problem was energy. The renewal of a "limits to growth" debate in the early 1970s and the arrival of the energy "crisis" in the winter of 1973-4 brought energy issues to occupy a central position on the American policy agenda. The global geopolitical context of the accompanying debate provided a perfect stage for the further evolution of concerns about the possible effects of CO₂ emissions on the world's climate. This was especially true as the Carter Administration's response to the energy crisis focused on expanding the use of domestic coal and synfuels. Advocates of alternative energy sources -- from solar to nuclear -- found themselves in unaccustomed agreement regarding the potential seriousness of CO₂ emissions from Carter's preferred fuels, even as they promoted their radically different solutions to the problem. From 1977 through the end of the decade therefore Congress increasingly heard about what was becoming referred to as "the CO₂ problem" in the context of energy debates rather than the climate concerns of previous years. Executive Branch thinking in the Carter Administration shifted in the same direction, producing a number of reports exploring the CO₂ - energy connection under the auspices of the CEQ. The last of these reports -- issued in January 1981 during Carter's final weeks in office -- made an overt attempt to push the carbon dioxide issue onto the national political agenda, stressing the possibility of "substantial economic, social and environmental disruptions" and recommending that the country promote energy policies that would prevent a doubling of atmospheric CO₂.

 Narrowly framed as a CO₂/energy/climate problem, however, the issue again failed to take hold in America outside of certain core research and advocacy communities. The most important reason for this was political: the Reagan Administration that came to office in 1981 had no interest in imposing further regulations on the energy sector, especially at a time when the energy crisis seemed to be receding. As in the case of acid rain, it called for more understanding as a prerequisite to action and invested generously in the support of relevant basic research programs initiated under Carter. This search for knowledge, however, actively avoided asking the questions of climate impact and policy for which the Reagan Administration did not want the answers. Such political biases were institutionally reinforced by the decision -- initially made under Carter, but retained under Reagan -- to place leadership for the government's research program with the Department of Energy (DoE). This cast in bureaucratic concrete for America the prevailing view of the late 1970s that climate change was essentially a problem of CO₂ pollution resulting from energy use, even as other nations were beginning to explore broader framings of the issue. Moreover, with responsibility for understanding the "CO₂ problem" placed in an institution whose primary responsibility was promoting energy use, the politicization of the research and assessment program became almost inevitable. Finally, however, it must be said that while American politics of the early 1980s provided lots of "push" to keep CO₂ and climate off the policy agenda, the American science establishment provided little "pull" to get it on. Despite strong positions taken by individual researchers, formal reviews of the issue by the National Academy of Sciences and other domestic scientific institutions all took as given a CO₂/energy focus for their assessments, and none went further than to confirm the plausibility of the CO₂/climate connection and to stress the need for further study. A wider national debate on the greenhouse effect would begin to take shape only when America's narrow energy/CO₂/climate framing of the issue was broken open in the mid-1980s -- principally in response to developments in the international arena.

 For America, as for many other nations, the catalytic event was the international assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and of Other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variations and Associated Impacts completed at Villach, Austria in October of 1985. This assessment was essentially an independent effort by the international scientific community, largely shaped by scholars and officials from outside the United States. The assessment -- as its awkward title suggests -- reframed the issue at hand as one involving greenhouse gases generally and their climate-mediated impacts on people and ecosystems. It concluded that combined greenhouse gas emissions could cause unprecedented climate change within the first half of the next century, that governments needed to appreciate the linkages among policies for dealing with the greenhouse effect and those addressing other problems such as acid rain and ozone depletion, and that UNEP, WMO and ICSU should "establish a small task force on greenhouse gases" that would, among other things, "initiate, if deemed necessary, consideration of a global convention."

 In America, Villach's reframing of the climate issue allowed it to be amplified through independently increasing concerns over stratospheric ozone depletion. Within months, NGOs had worked with Congress to schedule hearings exploring the connections between the two issues. The hearing's conveners -- following a pattern laid down almost a decade earlier for the ozone problem -- echoed the Villach charge to the international organizations to move towards a global convention, called on the Department of State to promote abroad a greater awareness of the need for action, and requested EPA to initiate research on the effects of climate change and on policy options for dealing with greenhouse gases and ozone depletors. EPA rose to the challenge, building on its prior record of international collaborative work with UNEP and eclipsing DOE as the substantive lead agency on the issue.

 By mid-1988, however, the greenhouse issue was ready to solo. The occasion for its debut in America and elsewhere was the Toronto Conference on "The changing atmosphere: Implications for global security." As described from other perspectives elsewhere in this volume, the meeting had been originally conceived in 1986 as an unofficial forum for bringing together experts and policy makers to address a range of atmospheric hazards including acid rain, ozone depletion and the greenhouse issue. As the conference date drew near, however, its agenda was increasingly steered by an international -- and not particularly American -- group of entrepreneurial scientists, NGO representatives and government officials to focus on the climate issue. The conference ultimately featured calls by two heads of state (Norway's and Canada's) for a global greenhouse convention and by the conference as a whole for a 20% reduction in CO₂ emissions by the year 2005. During the summer of 1988 the Toronto declarations resonated strongly with a United States suffering under severe droughts and heat waves. These externally imposed events were amplified through a series of legislative hearings and initiatives that focused increasingly on "the greenhouse effect and global warming" -- a far cry from the "carbon dioxide, energy and climate" framing of earlier years. Public and Congressional attention soared to a peak in 1989 and remained relatively high throughout the remainder of our study period. Interest was sustained by the connection with the ozone issue and the emergence of an unprecedented volume of science and policy assessments, most of which had been initiated in the immediate wake of Villach and Toronto. Even more important, however, was that after 30 years of technical debate and minor roles in support of other agendas, Revelle's geophysical experiment had finally come into its own as a hot topic of high American politics.

 The US government, while not overly concerned about global warming per se, had responded with alarm to the spiraling international policy response to the issue -- a process it saw as having been driven by a somewhat anarchic combination of entrepreneurial scientists, NGOs, individual governments, and international organizations. Its first step was to push in 1988 for replacement of the informal "Villach" process with an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- an explicitly governmental initiative to which delegates would be appointed by their national executives. Moreover, the US worked to structure the IPCC so that an American would chair the working group responsible for analysis of policy options (see Haas and McCabe, elsewhere in this volume). This determination to shape the pace and content of international developments carried through in America's support for an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on climate change, set up by the UN General Assembly in December of 1990 and charged with preparing a convention to be signed at UNCED in 1992.

 On the domestic front, the climate issue was pulled to the highest level of American politics by Presidential candidate George Bush in 1988. Bush moved to enhance his environmental bona fides by assuring Americans that he would bring a "White House effect" to bear in the battle against global warming. As President, he raised the stakes further throughout 1989 by calling in bi- and multi-lateral summit meetings for "common efforts to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases" and a "framework or umbrella convention on climate change." Combined with a growing flow of Congressional proposals, the Presidentially sanctioned prospect of real action to limit greenhouse gas emissions finally awakened America's industrial and other business interests to an issue that they had generally ignored. Between 1989 and 1991 several major groups of companies and trade associations formed to keep members informed on developments, prevent "uneconomic climate legislation," and publicize criticisms of the scientific basis of greenhouse gas induced climate change.

 These concerns found receptive ears in the White House. In the aftermath of its disconcertingly reactive experience in formulating a negotiating position for the Montreal Protocol, the Reagan White House had moved to assert control over Executive Branch policy development on global environmental issues -- a process it saw as having been driven by overly aggressive proponents of regulation in the Department of State and the EPA. A series of unsatisfactory experiments in interagency coordination begun under Reagan and continued under Bush indeed curtailed the entrepreneurship of State and EPA, but failed to establish effective replacements (Nitze, 1991). As the INC process took shape, disagreements among US agencies and interests were not resolved at home but spilled over into ongoing international conferences and negotiating sessions in the form of large, uncoordinated and disputatious American delegations. Emerging from this disorder was a comparably inchoate national policy on climate change in which environmental voices were overborne by domestic economic arguments about what America would not do. In particular, the fixed point for American negotiators became a domestically dictated refusal to commit to specific targets or timetables for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

 The Framework Climate Convention ultimately tabled at Rio in 1992 took a watered down form that was acceptable to the United States, which signed it. In part, this was because domestic American interests had in fact succeeded in shaping the Convention to fit their views. In addition, however, it was because other powerful nations had softened their initial positions as their own business interests and energy ministries had belatedly asserted similar pressures to those experienced from the outset by American negotiators. American advocates of a stronger Convention took heart as presidential candidate William Clinton and his environmentalist running mate Albert Gore campaigned on a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. Clinton and Gore emerged victorious from the November 1992 elections. But the elections had not been about the environment and -- as subsequent events would show unambiguously -- a generation of geophysical experimentation had still not prepared America to incur real costs for mitigating what is still saw as a worrisome but still hypothetical and distant greenhouse problem.

The contemporary environmental science and public policy movement was launched with Earth Day in 1970 and the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. Many of the defining historical documents, reports and correspondence of this movement have escaped the notice of formal libraries and archives. Instead, these important materials are stored in the private offices of key actors -- many of whom are now in the late stages of their professional careers or in retirement. These widely scattered collections are inaccessible to the growing scholarly community that seeks to understand the origins and trajectories of the movement. There is also a growing danger that these unique and irreplaceable collections will be discarded. In response to this situation, Harvard University is establishing a formal Environmental Science and Public Policy Archive to collect, organize, preserve, and provide intellectual access to these materials. The Archive will create a locus for scholarship and will open the history of environmental science and public policy to analysis. Just as importantly, it will naturally become a forum in which the lessons from history will be sharpened and applied to policy.

 The plans for the Archive build upon a recently completed pilot project that confirmed the intellectual value of these materials, verified that they do not duplicate existing library collections, and estimated the resources required to provide a quality service to the community. This project cataloged and now provides service to a donated collection of national and international assessments of climate change. Two thirds of the documents processed were not previously available in Harvard libraries. They are now accessible to researchers around the world via the Harvard On-Line Library Information System and inter-library loan. Unique titles include fundamental works such as national communications to the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 1994 update to the scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This collection is now used intensively by researchers in both the United States and Europe.

 Now that a formal archive is being established, much larger collections will receive similar treatment. For example, Peter Thacher -- a principal figure in international environmental science and policy -- recently donated his personal library to Harvard. This collection contains significant bodies of scarce literature and correspondence describing the creation and evolution of the United Nations Environment Programme, its Regional Seas Programme, the Convention on Desertification, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. In response to strongly expressed interest from the research community, the Archive will catalog and provide service to these valuable materials. Additional collections are now being evaluated for acquisition by the Archive. Further information on the Archive is available from Mr. Thomas Parris, Harvard College Library. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 or via e-mail at tparris@husc.harvard.edu.