# Presentation: 458586

## Planning for Human Dimensions Research4 December 2002

**Thomas Dietz**
**Environmental Science and Policy**
**George Mason University**
**tdietzvt@aol.com**

## Anticipated Climate Change

- High probability that 21st century climate will be substantially different from the climate of the 20th century.  Some of the change may be non-linear, abrupt.
- Changes will have substantial impact on things that people care about.  Good decision making will have to take account of these changes.
- Thus good decisions will require analysis of:
**Impacts, including costs, benefits and risks; **
**Sources of resilience and vulnerability;**
**How these will be distributed across regions, sectors, and groups**

## Anthropogenic Climate Change and Decision Making

- The preponderance of evidence suggests that:
-  much of anticipated climate change is anthropogenic.
- human activities strongly influence the C, N and H20 cycles.
- Good decisions will require
**Analysis of the human drivers of environmental change.**
- Good decisions will also require systematic scientific analysis of:
**Decision making under uncertainty;**
**Methods for making information useful;**
**Tools for effective public involvement**

## The Strategic Plan

- This is a major step forward in articulating the human dimensions component of the Global Change Research Program.
- It reflects, in large measure, the Pathways priorities.
- However, a few Pathways priorities are missing, and should be included:
**Understanding the social determinants of environmentally significant consumption **
**Assessing social and environmental surprises**
**Understanding institutions for managing global change**

## The Pathways Priorities

- Understanding the social determinants of environmentally significant consumption
- Understanding the sources and processes of technological change
- Making climate change assessments and predictions regionally relevant
- Assessing social and environmental surprises
- Understanding land use/cover dynamics and human migration

- Understanding institutions for managing global change
- Improving methods for decision making about global change
- Improving the integration of human dimensions research with other global change research
- Improving geographic links to existing social, economic and health data
- On the web at www.nap.edu

## Overall IssuesResearch Integration

- Chapter 8—Land Use/ Land Cover Change does the best integration.
- Chapter 7-Water Cycle notes the issues but shows a pattern that is worse in other chapters.
- In most chapters, human dimensions are noted in the beginning but are more or less absent from discussions of “State of Knowledge,” “Illustrative Research Questions,” “Research Needs,” and “Products and Payoffs.”
- Thus better integration is needed so these are not missed when resources are allocated.

## Overall IssuesObservational Priorities

- Chapter 12 lists no observational priorities related to human dimensions.
- Without an adequate database on socioeconomic and institutional variables it is impossible:
-  to develop credible models or
- to conduct the analyses required to provide decision support to policy
- Pathways priority:
- Improving geographic links to existing social, economic and health data
- Serious effort on socio-economic data is essential

## Overall IssuesDecision Support

- For the efforts described  in Chapters 4  and 12, to be effective, they must be grounded in the scientific understanding of:
- decision making under uncertainty and use of  information by:
-  individuals,
- households,
- firms,
- governments and
- other organizations,
- effective methods for stakeholder participation, etc.
- These research issues are discussed in
- National Academy of Science/ National Research Council. 1999. *Making Climate Forecasts Matter*. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

## Overall IssuesDecision Support

- For the efforts described  in Chapters 4  and 12, to be effective, must be grounded in the scientific understanding of
- decision making under uncertainty and use of  information by:
-  individuals,
- households,
- firms,
- governments and
- other organizations,
- effective methods for stakeholder participation, etc.
- These research issues are discussed in
- National Academy of Science/ National Research Council. 1999. *Making Climate Forecasts Matter*. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

## Chapter 11

- Is a major step forward in articulating the human dimensions component of the Global Change Research Program.
- Reflects, in large measure, the Pathways priorities.
- However, a few Pathways priorities are missing, and should be included:
- Understanding the social determinants of environmentally significant consumption
- Assessing social and environmental surprises
- Understanding institutions for managing global change
- There is also, in this draft, a disconnect between the Research Needs identified for Question 1 and the question itself and the Illustrative Research Questions
- Distributional issues need strong emphasis