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UPDATE

N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L H U M A N D I M E N S I O N S P R O G R A M M E O N G LO B A L E N V I R O N M E N TA L C H A N G E

02/2002 FO CUS:

CONFLICTING DEMANDS

MONITORING

Photo: Barbara Summey, NASA GSFC

Confidentiality Promises and Data Availability | BY R ONALD R. R INDFUSS

C

O N T E N T S

1

Conflicting Demands: Confidentiality Promises and Data Availability | R. R. Rindfuss

2

Editorial

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Monitoring Coral Reefs: Ecosystems in Crisis | A. L. Dahl

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Integrated Environmental Monitoring of the Asia-Pacific Region | M. Watanabe, Jiyuan Liu, S. Murakami, Qinxue Wang, S. Hayashi

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Sustainable Development Indicators for Taiwan | Jiunn-ong Yeh, Ling-Ling Lee

9

Masthead

10 GeoScope-GeoMind-GeoAction | Interview with C.C. Jaeger 11 Taking the Pulse of the Carbon Cycle | P. Ciais 13 Observation – A Challenge to Sustainability Science | W. Lucht

Simulated view of a satellite flying above the Earth ➤ As the human dimensions research community moves towards fine-grain, spatially-explicit studies, we face a confidentiality conflict which arises from the need to serve three quite different goals: a) link people and the environments they affect, b) protect the confidentiality of respondents, and c) make data available to the entire scientific community. Linking data on people and their environments is at the very core of IHDP. Protecting the confidentiality of respondents is a moral imperative of those involved in collecting data from humans. Making data available to the entire scientific community is a goal increasingly shared by those in the IHDP community. All three are reasonable, indeed laudable, goals, yet their commingling produces a fundamental conflict that we need to solve, otherwise the quantity and quality of research will be impeded. As a research community, we need to completely understand the underpinnings of this conflict across reasonable scientific goals prior to building the momentum for solutions. This is a discussion begun in People and Pixels (Liverman, Moran, Rindfuss, and Stern, 1998). To simplify, I write from the perspective of land use change research, but extension to other research areas using geographically explicit data is straightforward. ➤

continued on page 2

14 Environmental Sustainability Indicators | T. Srebotnjak 15 Core Projects: Carbon Flows between Eastern and Western Europe | N. Poussenkova, A.J. Wieczorek National Committees 16 Strong Need for Social Sciences in Climate Research in Switzerland | K. Pieren, D. Meyer Wefering 17 Mauritian Human Dimensions Research Programme | T. Ramjeawon 18 Austrian Prize for Dissertation Concepts in HDGEC | K.W. Steininger, M. Payer 18 In Brief 19 Publications, Meeting Calendar 20 Contact Addresses

W W W. I H D P. O R G I H D P U p d a t e i s p u b l i s h e d b y t h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l H u m a n D i m e n s i o n s P r o g r a m m e o n G l o b a l E n v i r o m e n t a l C h a n g e ( I H D P ) , Wa l t e r - F l e x - S t r. 3 , 5 3 1 1 3 B o n n , G e r m a n y, V. i . S . d. P. : E l i s a b e t h D y c k

monitoring

CONFLICTING DEMANDS LINKING PEOPLE AND ENVIRONMENT

Understanding land use change involves linking data on human behaviour/intentions to data on land cover. This linkage can occur at a variety of scales ranging from individuals to households, to political or administrative units, to business, religious or other social institutions. Perhaps the most common example in the current research literature is linkage at the level of political or administrative units, using census data that has been aggregated from the household level to the district, county, or municipality level, along with information showing the boundaries of these administrative units. Such administrative boundaries can be overlaid on land coverage, producing the link between land cover and population data.

EDITORIAL In February 2002, researchers from the global environmental change programmes (IHDP, IGBP, WCRP and DIVERSITAS), ICSU and several scientific unions met in Paris for a workshop on »Sustainable Development – The Role of International Science«. The primary objective of this workshop was to make a contribution to the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), to be made available to PrepCom4 of the WSSD in Bali, Indonesia (27 May – 7 June 2002). A summary document, resulting from the discussions, addressed several important questions including commitments of the scientific community to support sustainable development. It was agreed that, amongst others, »…collaboration with those responsible for the design and implementation of observation systems was needed to develop an integrated observing strategy for monitoring the health of planet Earth«.

Thus our choice of focus for this issue of UPDATE, IHDP’s quarterly newsletter, is a timely one: Monitoring.

Observation and monitoring help to discover trends and changes over time and are valuable means for the study of the Earth system. Monitoring is becoming increasingly important for the Human Dimensions community, particularly as the collection of social science data needed in HD research is still fragmented. Here the idea of a GeoScope, addressed by Carlo Jaeger in his interview, may be a way forward, because a systematic observation of the interactions between humans and the global environment will be required to understand global environmental change.

A number of key scientists in their fields have agreed to write contributions for this UPDATE issue. They illustrate new challenges raised by monitoring, such as confidentiality of data, and report about their research highlighting the important role that observation and monitoring can play in a sustainable development. We hope you will enjoy reading this UPDATE issue. ➤

J ILL J ÄGER IHDP Executive Director

2 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002

Increasingly we see studies that link specific households to the land that they own or use. These fine-grain studies are designed to examine how the characteristics of households, and their individual members, might impact land use. They are typically based on the supposition that households are a critical land use decision making unit, and an understanding that making inferences about household level behaviour from more aggregated data runs the risk of suffering from the well-known ecological correlation fallacy (Robinson, 1950). While these studies vary enormously in detail, a common feature is that they contain geographically explicit information on the location of the household's residence, as well as land that they own/use. Fig. 1 shows, for a hypothetical household, ID# 7421, the location of its residence in Bangkok on a coverage derived from IKONOS data.

PROTECTING CONFIDENTIALITY

Data on human behaviour can come from a variety of sources. Typically, the researcher-respondent exchange begins with establishing the ground rules for the collection and use of the data. A face-to-face or a telephone interview will begin with the interviewer explaining the purpose of the study and how the data will be used. If it is a mail-out, mailback or web-based interview, there will be a printed description. With few exceptions, the researcher is promising the respondent that under no circumstances will the information be released to a third party in such a manner that the third party could know about the information, identity or location of the respondent.

Why protect the confidentiality of respondents? It is a general ethical principle that researchers should do everything in their power to avoid that respondents will be harmed as a result of participating in the study. Since a third party might misuse the data provided, the best protection for the respondent is to discard (or protect, in the case of a longitudinal study) the link between the respondent's identity and the information provided. Increasingly universities and funding agencies are setting up review boards to compel ethical adherence. The ability to collect data rests on the respondents' expectation that providing the information is needed for some important scientific or administrative purpose, and that the information will not be used to harm the respondent in any way. If these expectations are not met, respondents will not provide the data, creating a serious crisis for the research community. Finally, with the increasingly easy use of computers, publicly released data is available outside the scientific community, hence increasing the risk of a confidentiality breech.

SHARING DATA

Although there is variance across disciplines, data collected by researchers should be shared with other scientists.

Collecting data has become so expensive that we need to obtain maximum payoff by allowing and encouraging the entire scientific community to analyse the data. Another rationale is that if we are troubling respondents for their time and information, then this information should be put to the greatest scientific good. Sharing data facilitates com-

monitoring

Photo: Ikonos

CONFLICTING DEMANDS

parative studies. Some journals are requiring authors to make their data available to allow for replication and verification of findings. For some researchers, their own academic reputation is influenced by the quality of the data they provide to the research community.

THE CONFLICT

The conflict is most intense with fine-grain, geographically explicit data. Reconsider Fig. 1: here, a household survey is linked to IKONOS data having one-meter resolution.

We can literally ÂťseeÂŤ the household's dwelling unit; even if the names of household members were suppressed, it would be very easy to determine who lived there. The link to IKONOS data provides a road map to the dwelling unit.

What are the risks to respondents if such data were put in the public domain? Clearly, it depends on what was included in the survey, but even if it were seemingly innocuous data, there are several ways that it could place household members

at risk. An estranged spouse could use the information in a manner detrimental to one or more household members.

The military could use the information to coerce household members into the army. Unscrupulous merchants could use the information for their own advantage. The exact nature of the risk depends on the characteristics of the household, the nature of the data collected, and social, political and legal conditions. However, it is difficult to imagine any situation where the risk would be zero.

POTENTIAL RESOLUTIONS

The risk is greatest when some third party can identify with certainty a specific household. Doing so in the Fig. 1 example is child's play. But even if the spatial data were coarser resolution, such linkage would make it relatively easy to find a specific household. There are several directions in which the confidentiality conflict can be resolved, but all have drawbacks.

IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002 | 3

monitoring

CONFLICTING DEMANDS / MONITORING CORAL REEFS

Finally, a solution that has been discussed, but to the best of my knowledge, never implemented, is to keep the data at an institution that will protect the confidentiality of respondents, allow interested researchers to have access to finegrain, geographically explicit data on the host institution's computer system, and then have a system that screens output to insure that individual respondents cannot be identified from the totality of output generated by the outside researcher. For example, an outside researcher might create new variables based on the available data, use these variables in a statistical model, and have the results returned to the researcher. Such a solution is untested and is likely to be expensive. Considerable effort would be needed to implement and test such a system, but if available, it would serve to reduce the conflict among the three reasonable goals enunciated at the beginning of this article. ➤

R EFERENCES to this article are included in the electronic version of Update 02/02 on the IHDP website at www.ihdp.org/update0202/references.htm ➤

The simplest solution is not collecting geographically explicit survey data. This, however, would profoundly inhibit the analysis of land use decision-making. The alternative of collecting fine-grained linked data but not releasing it to the broader scientific community also would inhibit scientific progress. Introducing a substantial amount of random error or spatial transformations in a public data set would reduce the ability to identify specific households with certainty, but it also would diminish the scientific value of the data.

The classic solution, favoured by census agencies around the globe, is to aggregate up to geographic units that contain a sufficiently large number of households so that no single household can be identified. The drawback is that using such aggregated data to make inferences at the household level runs aground the ecological correlation fallacy. An alternative solution, now used for data sets with contextual data, is to release the linked data only after a researcher has assured that the confidentiality of respondents will be protected.

One problem with this solution for fine-grain, spatially linked data is that the ease with which a researcher could find a respondent is considerably simpler than with the usual contextual variables. The alternative of inviting interested researchers to spend time at the institution that collected the data allows the original investigators some measure of insuring that confidentiality is protected, but not a failsafe assurance.

R ONALD R. R INDFUSS is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the IHDP/IGBP Project on LandUse and Land-Cover Change (LUCC); he is a researcher at the University of North Carolina, Department of Sociology, Chapel Hill, NC, USA; ron_rindfuss@unc.edu; www.unc.edu

MONITORING CORAL REEFS: ECOSYSTEMS IN CRISIS An invitation to collaboration between social and natural scientists and resource managers BY

A RTHUR L. DAHL

Coral reefs are complex, dynamic and highly productive ecosystems of great importance to tropical coastal populations as a subsistence and commercial food source, as a tourism and recreation resource, and as a builder of coastlines and islands. Recent estimates put the total area of shallow coral reefs at 284,300 square kilometres along the coasts of 80 countries (1).

Despite their biological complexity and the difficulties of access in the coastal zone, there are now several decades of experience in monitoring coral reefs that have demonstrated both stability and change in coral reef ecosystems. The monitoring methodologies used range from complex scientific approaches (2) to simple methods practical for widespread use by non-specialists (3, 4). The results have documented increasing human impacts, extreme population variations, and the extensive decline of many coral reef areas.

Over the last five years, the rate of decline in coral reefs has reached crisis proportions. Coral reefs appear to be the first major ecosystem to show large-scale impacts from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and global climate change. The widespread bleaching of corals during the 1998 El Nino resulted in up to 90% mortality of living corals on some reefs in all the oceans, even in such remote areas as the Maldives and Belize (5), and not all areas have shown significant

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4 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002

recovery. Further bleaching events have been reported, including one early in 2002 on the Australian Great Barrier Reef. In response, international and non-governmental organizations have joined together in the International Coral Reef Action Network (ICRAN), a collaborative effort to reverse the decline in coral reefs through practical action in the field in the Caribbean, the East Asian Seas, Eastern Africa and the South Pacific, and hopefully later in all coral reef regions.

One element of ICRAN is monitoring and assessing the state of coral reefs, both globally through the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, and at the specific sites where improved protection and management are being put in place. Managers need to know if their actions are having an effect on the reefs. Local fishers and other users will be more apt to adopt and respect fisheries regulations if they see the results in larger fish stocks and better catches. The tourist industry needs to know if the beautiful reefs that attract tourists from around the world are being degraded by visitor impact. Monitoring can contribute to meeting all these needs.

For coral reefs, a multi-level approach to monitoring is applied. The Reef Check programme has developed simple monitoring protocols that can be implemented by amateurs

monitoring

who depend on them. Such coastal communities could also serve as an excellent example of human impacts from global change. The bleaching of corals and their subsequent frequent mortality provides a clear local indicator of global change impacts on essential resources that can then be correlated with human consequences. The present efforts to map the risks of coral bleaching, to provide early warning of bleaching events and to monitor the consequences for local coral reef ecosystems provide an excellent starting point for work on the human dimensions of the problem.

Such research would support the approach that ICRAN and other coral reef programmes are taking to respond to the crisis in coral reefs. While there may be little that can be done in the short term to protect corals from the effects of rising carbon dioxide, global warming and climate change, much can be done to reduce other stresses on coral reefs with local causes. ICRAN is selecting reef sites that demonstrate good local reef management practices and using them as training sites for reef users and managers from other areas that need similar improved management. This would hopefully replicate these good examples of resource management at more and more sites. The emphasis is on using community-based approaches wherever appropriate. Maintaining as much as possible of the natural resilience of reef ecosystems should give these reefs a better chance to recover from and/or adapt to the unavoidable effects of global change. Otherwise the predictions of the pessimists that coral reefs may no longer exist as reef-building ecosystems in 50 years may be realised.

A strong monitoring programme that documents trends in both reef health and human well-being can help to build support for the action necessary to save coral reefs. ➤

R EFERENCES to this article are included in the electronic version of Update 02/02 on the IHDP website at www.ihdp.org/update0202/references.htm ➤

like diving clubs and local fishing communities. These can provide general measures of reef status in many locations that could never be reached by scientific surveys. The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network is implemented largely through coral reef scientists in marine laboratories, academic institutions and governments, often as an extension of their research and management activities. It does not apply a single standard protocol, although standard methods are available (2), but synthesizes the results from various monitoring programmes into periodic assessments of the Status of the Coral Reefs of the World (5). In addition, satellite remote sensing now generates regular data on oceanographic and meteorological conditions affecting coral reefs, such as the near-real-time NOAA Coral Reef Watch for hotspots associated with coral bleaching.

At a fourth level, there are now plans for a GEF/World Bank led targeted research programme on coral reefs that will include some sites intensively monitored over several years to develop a better understanding of coral reef ecosystem dynamics at various temporal scales.

All of these monitoring programmes emphasize the biological and physical characteristics of coral reefs. While the ICRAN approach includes managing the socio-economic aspects of community-resource interactions (6), what is still largely lacking is comparable monitoring of the socio-economic status of the people that use, and communities that depend on, coral reef resources. Many of the impacts presently degrading coral reefs result from human actions at the local level, such as over-fishing, destructive fishing with dynamite or cyanide, urban pollution, run-off from agricultural areas, deforestation and erosion, siltation from coastal construction, changes in freshwater run-off, etc. The consequences are often disastrous for local people who rely on reefs for their subsistence or livelihood, but these human impacts are not being measured. Similarly, efforts to establish marine protected areas, to enforce fishing regulations, or to manage tourism impacts may produce improvements in local well-being. If these were better documented through socio-economic monitoring programmes, the political pressure to implement sustainable reef resource management would increase.

Other dimensions of ICRAN may also be of wider research interest. Studies have been initiated to determine the economic valuation of coral reef resources and services, but these need to be expanded to meet widespread demand.

The relationship between improved natural resource management and poverty alleviation might be studied more easily in the framework of ICRAN field activities involving poor local communities. There is also potential to study the dynamics of community involvement in the management of their own environmental resources. We have anecdotal evidence of benefits, but appropriate research and monitoring programmes could provide more concrete documentation.

The ICRAN programme would therefore like to encourage researchers in the social sciences to consider establishing monitoring programmes in the coastal populations and communities adjacent to ICRAN demonstration and target sites, where it might be possible to develop correlations between resource management actions on the coral reefs and the health, economic development and welfare of people

Photos: A.L. Dahl

MONITORING CORAL REEFS

A RTHUR LYON DAHL is Director of the Coral Reef Unit at the United Nations Environment Programme, Geneva, Switzerland. He is also Acting Director of the International Coral Reef Action Network; dahla@unep.ch; www.unep.ch/choral.html IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002 | 5

monitoring

ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING

INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING OF THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION Asia-Pacific Environmental Innovation Strategy (APEIS) – building scientific infrastructure for innovative policies for sustainable development | BY M ASATAKA WATANABE , J IYUAN L IU, S HOGO M URAKAMI , Q INXUE WANG

AND

S EIJI H AYASHI

Vigor Autonomous Region, Taoyuan in Hunan Province, Rapid economic development in the Asia and Pacific Haibei in Qinghai Province and Qianyanzhou in Jiangxi region has caused serious environmental degradation, such Province, China. The Data Analysis Center has stored a dataas decrease in forest area, desertification, salinisation, water base including satellite data (MODIS, LANDSAT, ASTER, resource depletion and soil loss. They become a serious conTRMM, etc.), GIS data, and measurements of ground-truth straint for a balanced and sustainable economic developecological stations. ment in the region. In this situation, it is necessary to examThe receiving station in Beijing was set up in February ine the present condition and changes in natural resources in 2001; another station in Urumqi was completed in April order to take countermeasures against depletion and degra2002. The two stations can receive data twice a day covering dation. a vast area including Japan, China, Mongolia, Korea and The project »Asia-Pacific Environmental Innovation Western Asia. Data (about 3GB/per day) received by Urumqi Strategy (APEIS)«, launched in 2001 by the Ministry of the station are transported daily via a network cable to the Data Environment, Japan, aims at building the necessary scientifAnalysis Center in IGSNRR, China, where the data of two ic infrastructure to develop innovative policies for sustainstations are referenced and corrected geometrically and then able development, promote environmental co-operation and merged. The merged data (about 6GB/per day) is stored and capacity building in the Asia-Pacific region, and propose an sent to the Data Analysis Center in NIES, Japan. The data »Asia-Pacific model« for sustainable development. The provide a possibility for up-to-date monitoring of landNational Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) in cover changes and developing an integrated model for enviJapan and the Institute for Geographical Sciences and ronmental assessment in the Asia-Pacific Region.

Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) of the Chinese Academy of Science have joined forces and set up collaborative research to develop a scientific environmental monitoring system, which will cover the whole AsiaPacific region by using MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) sensors mounted on a satellite (EOS-Terra) and include co-operative research with Asian and Oceania countries.

The monitoring system includes setting-up satellite data receiving stations, ground-truth observation sites for various ecosystems, and a data-analysing network; integrated monitoring of environmental degradation and disasters; and integrated modelling of land-atmospheric processes and ecological functions at watershed scale. Implementing this integrated moniFig. 1. APEIS Integrated Monitoring System toring system will allow monitoring of the state of ground cover over time, soil erosion, water resources, environmental disasters and agriculMODIS is the key instrument aboard the Terra satellite tural production. that is viewing the entire Earth’s surface every 1 to 2 days, acquiring data in 36 spectral bands between 0.405 and APEIS INTEGRATED MONITORING SYSTEM 14.385 µm, and at three spatial resolutions – 250m (Bands 12), 500m (Bands 3-7), and 1,000m (Bands 8-36). The The system is composed of three satellite data-receiving MODIS Science Team, NASA, has already developed 44 stations of Terra-MODIS in Beijing, Urumqi and Singapore products (MOD01-MOD44), but most of them have not yet (National University of Singapore), which cover the entire been completely calibrated or validated by ground-truth Asia-Pacific region, two data-analysing centres in IGSNRR data in various ecological systems. Developing the next-genand NIES, and five ground-truth monitoring stations at eration of high quality data sets for the study of regional Yucheng in Shandong Province, Fukang in the Xinjiang 6 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002

Photo: M. Watanabe

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monitoring

ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING

environmental change and ecological system assessment is our next challenge. The concrete tasks include the following aspects: validation of (1) Land Surface Temperature; (2) Land Surface Reflectance and Albedo; (3) Snow Cover; (4) Leaf Area Index – LAI/FPAR; (5) Vegetation Indices with Surface Flux Applications; (6) Terrestrial Carbon Cycle; (7) Net Primary Productivity.

Long-term measurements of water vapour, energy exchange, and carbon dioxide from a variety of ecosystems in Haibei (grass land), Yucheng (dry field), Taoyuan (paddy field), Qianyanzhou (forest) and Fukang (semi-arid) are integrated into a consistent, quality-assured and documented dataset. The dataset includes micrometeorological factors, eddy covariance fluxes, vegetation characteristics, and soil physical and chemical properties.

INTEGRATED MODELLING OF ECOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS AND SUSTAINABILITY

Photo: M. Watanabe

There is an emerging need to support policy formulation and decision-making in environmental management at very large geographic scales. Typical issues include global change impact assessment and formulation of mitigating measures, water resource allocation in a river basin at sub-continental scale, and environmental impact assessment of agriculture activities in large river basins. In order to develop a decision support system, biophysical processes and human interactions have to be modelled. For example, the model should simulate how environmental changes, such as climate change and soil erosion, may influence crop yield, and how the changes in cropping pattern, cultivation intensity and management practices may affect the environment over time. For sound management and decision making for sustainable INTEGRATED MONITORING OF DISASTERS AND development of the Changjiang river catchment in China, ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION the catchment-based ecosystem assessment, emphasising the hydro-biogeochemical processes and ecosystem function, In eastern Asia, serious disasters occur frequently on large has been accepted in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment regional scales due to environmental degradation. For exam(MEA). Its objective focuses mainly ple, dust storms have occurred on answering the following quesevery year in spring and their tions in the MEA framework: 1) number has increased in the past what are the major pressures on the decades. The scale of dust storms ecosystem function? 2) What are has become wider and the damage the major impacts on the ecosystem they cause has increased each function, goods and services, such year. Meanwhile, desertification as water, food, biodiversity, carbon and grassland degradation in sequestration and flood protection? these areas are becoming more 3) What kind of policy can be severe due to human-driven facimplemented in order to achieve tors, such as over-cultivation, sustainability in the Changjiang over-grazing, over-exploitation, river catchment? and misuse of water resources.

To answer the above questions, Satellite observation provides a it is necessary to develop a catchpossibility to monitor these phement-based integrated model to nomena in time. estimate the spatial and temporal Another example is soil moisdistributions of the water cycle, ture, which plays the most imporcarbon cycle, heat fluxes, elements tant role in the soil-vegetationand nutrient cycles, sediment atmosphere continuum. However, transport as well as land productivit is one of the factors that are ity on regional and watershed most difficult to estimate at a scales. An integrated methodology regional scale because of the hetFig. 2. Dust storms in China to predict land use/cover changes erogeneity of land surface characdue to both natural factors and teristics. As most studies detersocio-economic driving forces will be included. By using the mining soil moisture address observational data analysis and integrated model, the future impacts on the ecosystem funcbiophysical mechanism modelling at a point or a microtion will be predicted based on scenarios, such as 1) the scale, an upscaling to a regional or a macro-scale is very difdecrease in crop production due to water cycle change, and ficult. Satellite data provide a great potential for solving this 2) the increase in soil erosion, desertification, dust storms problem. and flood events due to the land use/cover changes.

The APEIS Integrated Monitoring System will be used to monitor both natural and human-driven disasters, such as M ASATAKA WATANABE , S HOGO M URAKAMI , Q INXUE WANG , dust storms, air pollution, floods, marine pollution, fires, oil spills, earthquake damage, algal blooms and damage from and S EIJI H AYASHI are researchers at the National Institute insects. At the same time, environmental degradation can be for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan; monitored by a set of indices, such as (1) Aerosol Index masawata@nies.go.jp; www.nies.go.jp (ASI), (2) Snow Cover Area Index (SCAI); (3) Desertified J IYUAN L IU is with the Institute for Geographical Sciences Area Index (DAI); (4) Land Use/Cover Change (LUCC); (5) and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Water Deficit Index (WDI), and (6) Vegetation Index (VI).

Science, China. ➤

IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002 | 7

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SDI FOR TAIWAN

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS FOR TAIWAN A research team sponsored by the Taiwan National Science Council is reviewing, assessing and forecasting sustainable development in Taiwan | BY J IUNN -R ONG Y EH Taiwan has gone a long way in its transformation from a rural to an industrial economy and from an authoritarian regime to a liberal democracy. Taiwan’s experience has been analysed academically from economic as well as political perspectives. Recently, considerable interest has emerged and various attempts have been made to put Taiwan on a path towards becoming an »island of sustainable development«.

This has called for the development of a set of indicators directed towards an assessment of Taiwan’s sustainability within the dynamics of its national development.

Therefore, in 1998 the National Science Council initiated and sponsored an integrated research project to establish sustainable development indicators (SDI) for Taiwan.

A team of researchers from various disciplines including environmental engineering, ecology, sociology, economics, law and urban planning was established, led by Jiunn-Rong Yeh, Professor at the Department of Law at the National Taiwan University and a member of the National Sustainable Development Committee, to take on the task of developing such indicators. The purpose was to review, assess and forecast sustainable development in the country.

The SDI for Taiwan, which were selected based on an extended Pressure-State-Response (PSR) model and the salient features of Taiwan, highlight the linkage between the impact of social and economic pressures on the state of the environment and resources and related institutional responses.

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RATIONALE FOR CONSTRUCTING THE SDI SYSTEM

The development of the SDI for Taiwan was based on the following rationale:

S TAT E Environment & Resources PRESSURE Social Structure & Economic Activities

RESPONSE Institutional Environment & Implementation Mechanism

Fig. 1. Dynamics of an Extended PSR System 8 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002

AND

L ING -L ING L EE

Extended PSR System – An extended Pressure-StateResponse (PSR) system was adopted as the basis of the indicator system (Fig. 1). Water resources are used here as an example to explain this approach. We assume that water supply and water quality indicators (state indicators) show deterioration due to an increase in the number of high waterdependent industries (a pressure indicator). Thus we can predict that the situation of water quantity and quality will become even worse in the future, if government policies (response indicators) do not help mitigate the pressure from industries with a high dependence on water.

Reference to Other Frameworks – Indicators that have been used at a national and international level by other countries and international organizations were reviewed and considered in the selection of the SDI for Taiwan.

Incorporating Taiwan’s Salient Features – Taiwan’s salient features, i.e. its insularity, scarce natural resources, catastrophe-prone ecosystems, colonial legacy, dense population, trade-dependent economy, constantly changing society and struggle for identity were also considered in the selection of the SDI for Taiwan.

Other Criteria – Representation and data feasibility of indicators were examined.

In addition, taking into account the large number of people living in the metropolitan areas of Taiwan and the differences in the environmental, social and economic conditions between cities and other parts of the island, a set of indicators for »Urban Taiwan« was developed to provide information concerning the sustainability of Taiwanese cities. This set of indicators can be applied when assessing Taiwan’s sustainability through urban development.

SDI FOR TAIWAN

Following consultations with experts and scholars from different disciplines and an assessment of available data for each selected indicator, a final version of the SDI for Taiwan was prepared. The SDI for Taiwan consist of a set of »Island Taiwan« indicators, which includes five dimensions (environmental pollution, ecological resources, social, economic and institutional response), 18 categories, and a total of 83 indicators, as well as a set of »Urban Taiwan« indicators containing 28 indicators (Fig. 2).

A preliminary assessment, based on data collected between 1988 and 1997, was conducted with respect to main indicators, categories and dimensions. The results of this preliminary assessment of the trends in sustainable development for Island Taiwan and Urban Taiwan show that the overall sustainability of Taiwan is not improving.

However, due to large public expenditures for developing the infrastructure in urban areas during the past decades, the sustainability of urban areas in Taiwan has improved.

Since the process of urbanization is likely to continue,

monitoring

SDI FOR TAIWAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS FOR TAIWAN

Island Taiwan

State

Environmental pollution

Urban Taiwan

Pressure

Ecological resources

Social

Economic

Response

S-P-R

Institutional response

Production

Living A. Environmental alienation

A. Type of consumption

A. Allocation of Government Exp.

B. Biological resources

B. Friction of space

B. Structure of industries

B. Organization and Policies

C. Biodiversity

C. Social anomie

D. Soil & Water

D. Time compression

A. Air

A. Land use

B. Water

C. Land

Environment

C. Environment and Energy Consumption

Life C. Specific Policies D. Information and Participation

Fig. 2. Sustainable development indicators for Taiwan – simplified diagram more effort should be devoted to changing urban policy and management with a view to sustainable development, both from a long-term perspective and within the national context.

RESEARCH ACHIEVEMENTS

PROSPECTS

During the process of developing the SDI for Taiwan, the research team identified four areas for future work: ➤ 1. Internationalisation This includes design of indicators pertaining to relevant international sustainable development issues and exchanging experience with other countries in developing sustainability indicators. ➤ 2. Localisation Establishing a set of guidelines for local authorities in developing local SD indicators and enhancing the linkage

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The project on SDI for Taiwan has achieved a number of goals. These include: ➤ developing sustainability indicators in compliance with the United Nations Mandate (Agenda 21, Chapter 40 on Information for Decision-making); ➤ describing the sustainable development process in Taiwan; ➤ forming a basis for a National Initiative to establish national sustainable development indicators for Taiwan by the National Council of Sustainable Development; ➤ contributing to the formulation of public policies; policy makers responsible for national development in many areas may find this indicator system useful in locating causes that prevent a sustainable development, and identifying alternative solutions; ➤ enhancing academic research and international collaboration on the issue of sustainable development; ➤ promoting concepts of sustainable development as such.

between indicators at national and the local levels is foreseen. ➤ 3. Institutionalisation Developing a review mechanism for indicator status, including principles for adding, removing and modifying indicators, and improving access to data for government, the public, etc., are considered. ➤ 4. Policy Inputs Further strengthening the SDI system in order to provide »policy warning forecasts«, »policy review«, and »policy guidance« and promote the practice of sustainable development in Taiwan is another area to be addressed.

J IUNN -R ONG Y EH is Professor at the Department of Law, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, and a member of the Taiwanese National Sustainable Development Committee; keryeh@ms5.hinet.net; L ING -L ING L EE is a researcher at the Department of Zoology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; leell@ccms.ntu.edu.tw; www.ntu.edu.tw/english/ ➤ The IHDP UPDATE newsletter features the activities of the

International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change and its research community.

UPDATE is prepared by the IHDP Secretariat • Walter-Flex-Strasse 3 • 53113 Bonn • Germany.

EDITOR: Elisabeth Dyck, IHDP; elisabeth.dyck@chello.at DESIGN & LAYOUT: Serap Çifter, Bonn, Germany; info@scifter.de PRINTED BY: DCM, Meckenheim, Germany UPDATE is published four times per year. Sections of UPDATE may be reproduced with acknowledgement to IHDP. Please send a copy of any reproduced material to the IHDP Secretariat.

The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent the position of IHDP or its sponsoring organisations.

IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002 | 9

interview

CARLO C. JAEGER

GEOSCOPE-GEOMIND-GEOACTION The transition to sustainable development is a unique historical challenge. On this path, »touching the Earth lightly«, as the aborigines in Australia say, is more important than ever. To develop a responsible Earth System management, humankind needs to perceive and analyse successes and failures in the sustainability transition. This need calls for a new capacity of global observation: a Sustainability GeoScope.

Q: Dr. Jaeger, what exactly is a GeoScope?

The Sustainability GeoScope is an idea.

It is an idea for an observation instrument to study the emergent anthropocene. We are entering an epoch in which the natural and human dimensions of the Earth System are increasingly interlinked. Several global observing systems have been developed in the natural sciences. The Global Atmospheric Watch, for example, is an early warning system for changes in the atmosphere based on a global network of measurement stations. So far, nothing of the kind exists for observing the interlinkages between natural and human dimensions of the Earth System. The GeoScope idea addresses this blind spot in our observation capability.

Rather than implementing a detailed master plan set out at the beginning, a GeoScope might better be constructed step by step in a process of learning-by-doing. The GeoScope idea aims at a growing sample of spatial units investigated over a long period of time by combining remote sensing and on-the-ground data, integrating socio-economic and natural science variables. It aims at a short list of variables to be tracked in these spatial units in a standardized way. And it aims at an accumulation of knowledge via regional case studies that are comparable, not across the board – this would miss the point of the case study method – but between heterogeneous subsets of regions.

A GeoScope will be a key instrument for meeting the challenge of global sustainable development through appropriate action, and it will be key to the triad of elements: GeoScope-GeoMind-GeoAction.

Q: Could you explain the meaning of GeoMind and GeoAction?

10 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002

Q: Why does science need a GeoScope?

Science needs a GeoScope, because if we do not systematically observe the interactions between humankind and our global environment, we will not be able to understand global environmental change.

Q: How far has the building of this instrument progressed and what plans do you have for the future?

The idea originated at a meeting of the Scientific Committee of IHDP two years ago. Since then, an open network of researchers has begun to work on the idea. Linkages to similar initiatives have been established. The German National Committee for Global Change Research has made the GeoScope idea a priority issue. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has dedicated one of its core research projects to it. The idea has been refined at several national and international workshops, including workshops dedicated to broader issues of Sustainability Science. Related documents are available from the GeoScope website.

The next steps include, first, GeoScope research on selected issues, such as global interactions between the dynamics of human lifestyles, meat consumption, and agricultural water use; second, the submission of selected project and program proposals to several funding agencies, for example about the use of the GeoScope idea to strengthen sentinel-sites for the study of health issues in developing countries; and third, an international competition for papers and projects related to the GeoScope idea.

More information can be found on the website: www.sustainability-GeoScope.net. ➤

Two examples of GeoAction are the production of plutonium and the Montreal protocol. The former introduced an extremely toxic man-made element in the global environment, an element absent from the Earth System in which

humankind evolved. The latter protected a key feature of the atmosphere by correcting former action on the basis of scientific observation. GeoAction, then, is human action consciously affecting the Earth System as a whole.

Some cognitive scientists think that the stream of consciousness flows between the two shores of observation and action. In the discussions about the GeoScope, we call GeoMind the merging consciousness of how human life is embedded in the Earth System.

GeoScope is meant to foster such consciousness and appropriate action.

Photo: P. Pommerening

Carlo C. Jaeger is one of the researchers working on the idea of a GeoScope. An economist and sociologist by training, he leads the Global Change and Social Systems Department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany; he is Professor of Modelling Social Systems at Potsdam University and a member of the Scientific Committee of IHDP, which guides IHDP’s work.

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I NTERVIEW

BY

E LISABETH DYCK

monitoring

PULSE OF THE CARBON CYLE

TAKING THE PULSE OF THE CARBON CYCLE Bottom-up and top-down approaches to resolve carbon fluxes | BY P HILIPPE C IAIS ➤ The inexorable increase of atmospheric CO2 during the past 200 years is the main source of future climate change.

Carbon dioxide is responsible for 60% of the additional radiative forcing. Unlike aerosols or chemically active species, which have a short life time compared to human life, an excess of CO2 of anthropogenic origin will not decay for at least several centuries. In fact, a fraction of the accumulated fossil CO2 emissions will stay in the carbon cycle system (atmosphere, ocean and biosphere) long after fossil emissions will have stopped in the future. Nowadays, a fraction of about half of the human-induced CO2 emissions by fossil fuel burning and land use/land cover change is absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. In the future, increasing CO2 acting to change the climate can generate positive feedbacks. The terrestrial and marine carbon reservoirs could leak out additional CO2 to the atmosphere if they are adversely affected by changes in temperature, precipitation and ocean circulation, fostering an extra greenhouse effect on which we will have no direct control.

For better predictions of future CO2 levels, we need to know better the present state of the anthropogenic perturbation of the carbon cycle. Thus, we must be able to accurately measure the carbon fluxes and their temporal evolution. Accurate budgeting of carbon must be carried out not only globally but also at the regional level. By »region« we refer to biomes or ocean basins, typically 1000Fig. 1. The global carbon 5000 km large. However, in

Eventually, efforts to reduce emissions or to create sinks will have to be verified by changes in the atmospheric trends.

BOTTOM-UP AND TOP-DOWN APPROACHES TO RESOLVE CARBON FLUXES

The bottom-up approach to estimate regional carbon fluxes is based on the underlying hypothesis that there are general laws to extrapolate local information to a wider region. It requires basic understanding and quantification of the various biogeochemical processes through which carbon is absorbed from the atmosphere, cycled within various pools, and eventually released back into the air. The determination of processes and the direct measurement of fluxes are generally accurate only at small spatial scales. The use of a carbon model is consequently needed to upscale fluxes. A large variety of carbon cycle models exists both for the ocean and for terrestrial ecosystems. It should be noted that due to limited computing power, gaps in input data and sometimes

cycle and its perturbation order to be to be relevant for policy verification, a finer spatial resolution (100-500 km) should be attained. a poor knowledge of processes, no model currently extends After more than three decades of carbon cycle research, spatially across scales from the level where processes and the latest IPCC report indicates that at present we can only fluxes are measured up to the regional level. When upscaling apportion the global uptake of excess fossil CO2 between fluxes, extrapolating variables of homogeneous and repetitive coverage are required, often coming from space-borne ocean and land with an uncertainty of ± 1 GtC y-1. Further instruments such as sea surface temperatures, land cover disdelivery of regional carbon fluxes is still very uncertain. tribution and vegetation reflectance.

Regional carbon budgets are necessary for understanding The top-down approach to estimate the carbon fluxes the carbon cycle and its perturbation in the context of globrelies on downscaling integrated observations such as the al change research, i.e. for uncovering processes by which concentrations of CO2. The atmosphere is a readily accessiland ecosystems and ocean gyres currently accumulate or lose carbon. ble and well-mixed reservoir, and small gradients in CO2 Regional carbon budgets are also necessary to provide concentration measured at a network of 100 sites around the »verifiable and transparent«policies aiming to reduce atmosworld can presently be related to the patterns of surface fluxpheric CO2 levels. The Kyoto Protocol has raised consideres. This process is known as inverse modelling. Inversions of the atmospheric transport revealed the existence of a large able discussions, in particular on the issue of carbon sinks carbon sink north of the Equator, with a significant fraction that can be created in terrestrial ecosystems by planting located over land. A more detailed apportionment of that trees, or by adopting agricultural and forestry practices.

IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002 | 11

monitoring

PULSE OF THE CARBON CYLE

mark test of models aiming to predict the future evolution of the carbon cycle in response to climate change. It also has implications for Kyoto-type verifications over rather short periods during which the carbon fluxes could be very different from their long-term mean value.

WHAT CAN BE DONE TO REDUCE UNCERTAINTIES?

Fig. 2. Example of a carbon cycle data assimilation system to

determine regional budgets

sink in longitude, between North America and Eurasia, is still very uncertain. Besides, growing evidence for a tropical land sink is consistently emerging from those studies.

The bottom-up and top-down approaches complement each other. Eventually, results from the top-down approach would independently serve to »verify« bottom-up predictions, but we are not yet there, because both approaches presently include large uncertainties. On the one hand, the bottom-up approach is subject to systematic errors, e.g., if one process is ill-constrained in a model. On the other hand, the top-down approach is not able to downscale the integrated atmospheric information to a level of precision that is adequate for policy verification and understanding of the process. This is largely due to poor coverage in atmospheric observations.

STATE-OF-THE-ART FOR QUANTIFYING CARBON FLUXES

12 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002

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The global budget of CO2 and the pertaining estimates of the oceans and land sinks are now constrained within ca.

30%. However, regional fluxes are yet poorly known.

Regional ocean fluxes are on average better constrained than their terrestrial counterparts. On the one hand, many ∆p CO2 data (sea minus air partial pressure difference) have been collected, and on the other hand, the atmospheric network has a more dense coverage over the oceans. Yet large gaps of knowledge remain, e.g., concerning the southern gyres, which comprise 30% of the world’s oceans and 30% of marine productivity. Over the continents, the uncertainties on carbon fluxes are simply huge, due to strong spatial heterogeneity in ecosystem structure and to variability in carbon fluxes from diurnal to multi-annual time-scales. There is indeed a substantial amount of inter-annual variability in the carbon fluxes, on the order of 100% of the mean longterm values that are driven by climate variability. It is a key issue to understand the inter-annual variability as a bench-

As part of ongoing national and international efforts, the strategy for reducing uncertainties on carbon fluxes includes: ➤ Implementing new observations in poorly observed regions such as the Amazon, Africa, Siberia, and the southern oceans; reducing uncertainties over those regions will also help to reduce uncertainties elsewhere in the top-down approach, where the sum of all sources is deemed to match the global budget. ➤ Implementing systematic carbon observations over the interior of continents; there one needs to design carbon observing systems that minimize the »noise« implied by the fluxes’ heterogeneity and variability, compared to the »signal« of mean fluxes. A promising top-down strategy to reduce uncertainties on continental fluxes is to measure vertical profiles of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. In the bottom-up approach, a better quantification of continental fluxes relies on biomass inventories, eddy-covariance flux measurements and remotely sensed data using new spaceborne instruments and a re-analysis of »old« datasets. ➤ Designing an integrated modelling framework to monitor carbon fluxes where bottom-up data are interpreted in synergy with top-down information; data assimilation and data fusion procedures will be required to achieve this goal, based on the success story of operational weather forecasting. ➤ Developing upscaling and downscaling methods in order to determine the »emerging« processes, which control the fluxes; close interactions between CO2 fluxes and the cycling of nutrients and water will have to be taken into account.

This can be tackled during intensive observation periods, such as those planned in regional-scale carbon experiments in Europe or North America, involving a hierarchy of measurements across scales. ➤ Developing new technologies for systematic measurements of the vegetation and soil properties and of the ocean fluxes, including cheaper in-situ sensors and new satellite measurements; measuring atmospheric CO2 from space, even with a relatively low precision, would be invaluable in filling gaps in the present atmospheric network.

The road towards those objectives is ‘paved’ with patience, as it will take long-term time series to cast light on the evolving carbon balance of the world. It is also ‘paved’ with international collaboration, since no single country can afford to maintain and develop a multi-regional observing system. In the not-so-distant future, this effort should provide an unprecedented diagnosis and understanding of carbon budgets at the regional level.

P HILIPPE C IAIS is a researcher at the Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment (LSCE), Joint Unit of CEA-CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France; ciais@lsce.saclay.cea.fr; www-lsce.cea.fr/

young scientist research

O B S E R VAT I O N – S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y S C I E N C E

OBSERVATION – A CHALLENGE TO SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE Three reasons why observation is essential in an uncertain future | BY WOLFGANG LUCHT Third, observation has the power to shape our identity.

The future is and remains unpredictable in many of its By providing us with images of the world, it can be an influaspects. This is true despite our best efforts in analysis and ential factor in co-determining who we are, who we want to modelling. It is true despite the near-certainty that a good be, and what the world we are shaping should or could be number of the trends we currently extrapolate into the future like. Since we cannot observe will actually materialise and everything everywhere, to some challenge us in the next decades. extent we pre-select what we will It is especially true with respect get. Observation, as is theory, is to the human dimension of partial and situated. It is one eleglobal change, so closely interment in the inseparable interplay connected with political ideas, between data, theory and identity. persons, views and lifestyles.

Its partiality and situatedness is a This has some very interesting consequence of the selective consequences for observation. nature of observation and its There are three reasons why interpretation, and the intrinsic observation is essential when the uncertainties involved in an future is uncertain. ongoing process of referencing.

First, an uncertain future But we should not underestimate demands that we be prepared. the power of observation, which We are best prepared if we try can surprise us even when we our best to analyse and underselect intentionally what to stand what is currently happenacquire. In shaping our identity, ing and what may happen next, the uncertainty about the potenbased on our current knowltial content of observations meets edge. Observation is an indiswith the uncertainty inherent to pensable part of this process.

Observation of social structures by satellite: many aspects of the future. Such On the one hand, we have menMexicali-Calexico, El Centro and surrounduncertainty is also a chance; it tal, mathematical and numerical ings on the Mexico-US border as seen by the means that not everything is fixed theories and models for the and determined. We have options, analysis, and on the other hand ASTER satellite sensor in 2000, showing we can develop influence, and we need the data streams from vegetation in red. maybe we can choose between observation without which such alternatives. In constructing the theories and models cannot be world between theory and data, and models and observaformulated, validated or operated. The interactions between tions, a third indispensable element consists of the resulting the particularities of data and the generalisations of theory perceptions, worldviews and identities without which the require a constant underpinning in observation that ties partial construction of place and future, in which we are thought to process. It is this mode in which the observation engaged, could not be explained. systems of the natural sciences have operated so successfully.

These three aspects of observation may be worth considSecond, the future is constantly shaped by our actions. ering in the current debate on a science for sustainability.

Uncertainty about the future is partly a result of our limited There are a number of important questions: What should ability to predict the effects of our actions, the patterns that and could be the empirical basis of a science for sustainabilemerge from complicated systems of actions, and complex ity? Do we need observational channels in addition to the interactions between the social and the physical aspects of observation systems of the natural sciences and the current the world. Nevertheless, we act constantly. In such a situation systems of classical economic reporting? How do we observe it is essential to maintain a constant observational feedback life styles, causes and structures of biosphere-society interacon the results of actions as a means of checking, correcting tions, their trends and departure points, the impacts of views or altering them. As the structure of our world in the anthroand perceptions on the state of the world? To the extent that pocene increasingly becomes a conglomerate of the self-contransitions to sustainability are not just optimisations of structed and of abstract and real aspects, we are challenged existing systems, observation of these transitions is and will to design and implement a sensory apparatus of observation remain a challenge. and monitoring relevant to this world. ‘Learning by doing’ works only when the results of ‘doing’ are observed. It is this WOLFGANG LUCHT is a researcher at the Potsdam Institute mode in which much of the economy acts, although on a very limited time and topical horizon, and in which politics for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Potsdam, Germany; should ideally act.

Wolfgang.Lucht@pik-potsdam.de; www.pik-potsdam.de Photo: NASA

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IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002 | 13

young scientist research ESI

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS Developing measures for quantitative analysis of environmental sustainability | BY TANJA S REBOTNJAK The need for integrating environmental concerns into all levels of human development has emerged from international debate (1) and advances in scientific research over the past decades. The three-pillar concept of sustainable development (social, economic and environmental) evolved as a result, while Agenda 21 emphasizes the demand for relevant data (2) to monitor the state of environmental and human systems, to formulate effective policies, and to assess progress towards a more sustainable form of development.

The process of developing measures for the quantitative analysis of the multifaceted concept of environmental sustainability is exemplified through the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) developed by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University, the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP), Yale University, and the World Economic Forum’s Environment Task Force.

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Environmental Sustainability Index 2002 ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS

The ESI is an attempt to quantify progress towards environmental sustainability in all its complexity through a single meaningful index. Environmental sustainability is defined through five dimensions, described by 68 variables, which are synthesized into 20 indicators. The environmental stresses dimension reflects how much pressure is currently exerted on the environment; the environmental systems, social and institutional capacity, and human vulnerability dimensions capture the status of ecosystems and a societal notion of carrying capacity, while the global stewardship dimension extends the sustainability concept by adding a social responsibility function.

The resulting indices for 142 countries (3) reflect commonly shared opinions on the performance of some countries with respect to their progress towards environmental sustainability but also disclose surprising trends for developed and developing countries. We can argue that this is partly due to inherent conceptual and methodological weaknesses in the ESI, but the results also reveal existing gaps in our understanding of environmental sustainability and call for further research to improve the models from which environmental sustainability indicators are derived.

A particular area of focus is the improvement of the statistical methodology of the ESI. The validity of the index is reduced by insufficient data, discontinued time series, lack of harmonization as well as inadequate data quality. To alleviate this problem, we apply multiple imputation techniques, such as Sequential Regression Multiple Imputation (4) and Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulations, to substitute missing observations with plausible simulations, while at the same time accounting for the uncertainty inherent in the missing value.

Concluding, environmental sustainability indicators and composite indices such as the ESI contribute to improving our conception of the intricate relationships between ecosystem health and human socio-economic development and provide measures of the effectiveness of environmental policies. While acknowledging the current limitations caused, inter alia, by lack of adequate data, the continued effort to further develop the statistical properties of the ESI will strengthen its value as an information tool to policy-makers, scientists and the public.

R EFERENCES to this article are included in the electronic version of Update 02/02 on the IHDP website at www.ihdp.org/update0202/references.htm ➤

14 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002

THE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY INDEX (ESI)

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Two fundamental notions of sustainability, rooted in neo-classical economic theory, tackle the issue of how much change is acceptable: weak sustainability allows the substitution of natural capital by manufactured capital of equal value; the more conservative approach of strong sustainability requires that the existing stock of natural capital be maintained and enhanced, assuming that its functions cannot be fully duplicated by manufactured capital. Although differing in their implications, both theories are linked to the notion of the carrying capacity of our planet, generically defined as the population that can be supported indefinitely by an ecosystem without destroying it.

The progress of, or divergence from, environmental sustainability can hence be assessed through a set of indicators measuring the extent and rate at which we are changing our environment, and how close we are to the earth’s carrying capacity. An indicator is a one-dimensional model of reality influenced by socio-economic and cultural beliefs. Thus indicators should be selected according to additional prop-

erties such as specificity, consistency, robustness, sensitivity, and technical feasibility and transparency.

TANJA S REBOTNJAK is an Associate Statistician in the United Nations Statistics Division1, New York, USA; srebotnjak@un.org; www.un.org The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the author and should not be attributed to the UN, to its affiliated organizations, or the countries they represent.

1

core projects

CARBON FLOWS

CARBON FLOWS BETWEEN EASTERN AND WESTERN EUROPE BY

N INA P OUSSENKOVA

AND

A NNA J. W IECZOREK

Prologue. Countries and corporations are seriously concerned about the impact of climate change policy on their strategic positions. One of the uncertainties is how the climate regime and related national and EU policies will affect the flows of energy and carbon between Western and Eastern Europe. Compared to Western European countries, Eastern Europe possesses enormous natural gas reserves and vast forests. Over the next 50 years Eastern Europe will become an important source of fossil fuel carbon and biomass carbon for Western Europe. This is the premise for the EUfunded project on Carbon Flows between Eastern and Western Europe (CFEWE) initiated by the International Project Office of the IHDP Project on Industrial Transformation (IT IPO) in February 2001.

Cast and Plot. The proposal was developed by the IPO within the Industrial Transformation framework, in cooperation with researchers from the Czech Republic, England, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Russia. CFEWE focuses on tangible (carbon in fuels) and intangible (transfer of emission rights) flows of carbon between the EU and the Former Soviet Union (FSU, i.e. mainly Russia) up to 2030, as illustrated in Fig. 1.

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Fossil fuels (gas) Biomass

EU-25

Carbon credits

FSU

Environmental services (JI) Technology Investments

Fig. 1. Tangible and intangible carbon flows between

EU and FSU: 2030

Assuming a 30% reduction of carbon emissions in the EU by 2030 (1990 baseline), the CFEWE project investigates how carbon flows can assist the EU in radically reducing its carbon-intensity by replacing high-carbon by low-carbon energy (coal by gas and biomass) and by trading emission rights.

It also studies how maximising the EU-FSU carbon flows can run counter to the EU energy security and restructuring of the energy economy.

Heads or Tails. Maximising the EU-FSU tangible and intangible carbon flows may be a cheaper and easier way of achieving carbon reduction targets in the EU. However, this could result in greater dependency on the FSU and limits on restructuring and innovation within the EU. It may also conflict with the current EU »concrete ceiling policy« (i.e. not more than 50% of the reductions should be achieved through trading and Joint Implementation).

Crystal-Gazing. The project creates two alternative scenarios of carbon flows up to 2030 for policy development and investigates the impact of these policy measures on carbon flows and relevant investments: ➤ Independence: as an element of the EU energy strategy, carbon flows are limited to lessen dependency on outside sources, and to support a climate policy emphasising adjustments and innovation within the EU. ➤ Interdependence: carbon flows are maximised in line with free trade and liberalisation, and to help lower costs of carbon reduction.

Energy Thriller. CFEWE is evolving into a very challenging undertaking, both technically and substantively.

Technical obstacles are mainly related to availability, reliability and consistency of energy data, especially in Russia; substantive research findings raise complex and controversial questions that deserve separate, detailed study. Many seemingly indisputable facts show some unexpected twists. For instance, it is well known that Russia owns 42% of the world’s natural gas resources and 34% of all gas reserves, but what is happening in this »gas Eldorado«? Due to developments in the 90s, mainly non-payment for domestic gas deliveries, Russia is facing a gas deficit and has to buy gas from Turkmenistan to fulfil its export obligations to Europe.

The Plot Thickens. CFEWE was started at the right place and at the right time, given the profound changes in the energy sector in Europe and Russia that will have a long-lasting impact on carbon flows. Europe is liberalising its gas market, and Russia is envisaging a shift from gas to coal in its energy balance and a greater orientation to the Pacific Rim countries in hydrocarbon exports to reduce its dependency on Europe.

New EU-FSU relations in the energy market are illustrated by the Prodi-Putin concept of »energy for investments«.

Tip of the Iceberg. CFEWE preliminary findings and new realities set the stage for a follow-up, in-depth research of carbon flows within the context of several fundamental questions. How will the three political concepts of liberalisation, energy security and climate policy interact? Will climate change be high on the international agenda for the next 30 years? How will Russia integrate into the international community, including in energy and climate policy areas?

Will governments continue to exercise a strong influence on liberalised energy markets? What will be the costs of enhancing energy security of nations?

IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002 | 15

national committees SWITZERLAND

Epilogue. As CFEWE seeks to identify policies of mutual benefit for Eastern and Western Europe, its results are expected to make a useful contribution to the worldwide search for cost-effective, country-specific methods of CO 2 emission reductions. ➤

F OR MORE INFORMATION on this project visit the project website at: http://www.vu.nl/ivm/research/ihdp-it/ implementation/index.htm

NINA POUSSENKOVA is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the IHDP Project on Industrial Transformation (IT); npoussenkova@mtu-net.ru A NNA J. W IECZOREK is Executive Officer, International Project Office of the IHDP-IT Project; anna.j.wieczorek@ivm.vu.nl; www.vu.nl/ivm/research/ihdp-it/

STRONG NEED FOR SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CLIMATE RESEARCH IN SWITZERLAND BY

K ATHRIN P IEREN

AND

D EBRA M EYER W EFERING

➤In April 2002 two scientific meetings took place in Berne

where actual climate research in Switzerland was discussed.

The need to develop and promote human dimensions research was clearly shown.

THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION IN SCIENCE

TRANSFORMATION KNOWLEDGE LACKING

Switzerland is not yet conducting a sufficient amount of socio-economic research on essential requirements for an effective, sustainable climate policy. This motivated the Network for Transdisciplinary Research, established by the 16 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002

➤

On 4 April, the »Swiss Global Change Day«, organised by the Swiss Forum for Climate and Global Change of the Swiss Academy of Sciences, brought together global change researchers from Switzerland and experts from abroad to share and discuss research results. This year’s meeting was a success in terms of number and high calibre participants and discussions. Two speakers from each field of global change research presented the state-of-the-art of ongoing research, according to the aims of the Global Environmental Change Programmes, i.e. IHDP, IGBP, WCRP and DIVERSITAS. Topics included evidence of global warming and progress in climate prediction; potential of storing carbon on land; possibilities of dendrochronology; the response of biodiversity to global change; uncertainties in environmental markets; and the promotion of national identity by natural disasters.

One of the leading issues discussed was the problem of communicating global change. The difficulties seem not only to be a consequence of the often insufficient dissemination of information by researchers, but also a characteristic of the topic itself. Scientific uncertainty (or the lack of scientific proof) is difficult to communicate without diminishing the imminent risks and dangers; but global change is an abstract and long-term issue in which consequences for the individuals in the present are not easy to perceive. The communication problem is an important aspect that must be considered when trying to define means to mitigate global change. This calls for more social scientific research.

Swiss Academic Society for Environmental Research and Ecology (sagufnet), ProClim and the Swiss National IHDP Committee to organise a workshop on »Research for an Effective Climate Policy« held on 5 April.

Four different approaches from a wide range of social science research theories were presented. These included the application of the institutional dimensions approach for a sustainable resource use in forestry; the method of social marketing for the regulation of local traffic; the combination of natural and social sciences in integrated assessment modelling; and a critical approach to classical economics.

Participants defined imminent research issues within three fields (forestry, energy and traffic) in relation to different methodological approaches. The final summary discussion indicated some parallels in all three fields concerning missing structures within the actual research questions. One of the crucial problems to be tackled is the gap in social scientific knowledge. Since most of the research in the traffic sector focuses on technology, there is a lack of data on the driving forces for human mobility, which needs to be researched further. An additional problem is the lack in structure for transdisciplinary research. Transdisciplinarity has already become a common petition; however, Swiss academic institutions are not responding enough to this demand by changing their curricula and rigid disciplinary structures. The participants regarded the diffusion and acceptance of new technologies as a relevant topic for further research in all three fields. Based on the results of this meeting, the organisers are planning to establish a research agenda for socio-economic issues for an effective climate policy. More information on the two meetings can be found at http://www.proclim.ch.

K ATHRIN P IEREN is the Scientific Secretary for the Swiss National IHDP Committee in Berne, Switzerland; kathrin.pieren@sagw.unibe.ch D EBRA M EYER W EFERING is an International Science Project Co-ordinator, IHDP Secretariat, and liaison to the Swiss National IHDP Committee; wefering.ihdp@unibonn.de

national committees MAURITIUS

A MAURITIAN HUMAN DIMENSIONS RESEARCH PROGRAMME BY

T. R AMJEAWON

Photo: T. Ramjeawon

holder and property rights analyses; a sustainable livelihood ➤ In March 2002 a National Human Dimensions Research approach and participatory research tools (PRA). Working Programme was established in Mauritius. Thirty-five groups on PRA identified research themes for a Human researchers from 19 national research, academic and governDimensions Research Programme in Mauritius. Each group ment departments and NGOs came together for a national included both natural and social scientists. workshop of the Human Dimensions Programme on Global In a session on the politics of policy-relevant scientific Environmental Change in Mauritius. A Working Committee, research, the poor communication between policy makers chaired by Prof. I. Fagoonee, Pro-Vice Chancellor of the and researchers was highlighted as well as their differing University of Mauritius, had initiated the workshop and timeframes and worldviews. How to overcome these barriers invited colleagues from all over Mauritius interested in was a topic of intensive discussion. The Mauritius EnvironHuman Dimensions of Global Environmental Change mental Research Manage(HDGEC) to identify priority ment and Industrial Deveareas and future research related lopment (MERMAID) to HDGEC issues. The meeting project was presented as an was held at the University of example of an interdisciMauritius (UoM) from 25-27 plinary project involving March 2002 and sponsored by a natural and social sciengrant from IHDP and the tists. The project has Mauritius Research Council recently received endorse(MRC). ment from the IHDP The workshop aimed at estabIndustrial Transformation lishing a framework for a nationProject (IT). al human dimensions research In order to sustain programme; encouraging capaciFrom left: Prof. G. Mohamedbhai, Vice Chancellor, interest and collaboration ty-building for young UoM, Prof. I. Fagoonee, Pro-Vice Chancellor, UoM in the future activities of researchers; setting up a National and Chairman of the Working Committee, the the National Committee, a Committee with representatives Honourable S. Khushiram, Minister of Economic basis for project proposals from key stakeholders; and estabDevelopment, Dr. A. Suddhoo, Director, Mauritius was developed, using a parlishing and strengthening coResearch Council ticipatory approach. Seveoperation between the particiral research proposals were pants, especially between natural developed, focusing on a) establishing links between poverand social scientists. During the official opening, representaty and sustainable development; b) health-hazard issues tives from the UoM and the MRC highlighted the imporassociated with global environmental change; c) waste mantance of research on HDGEC for a small island such as agement in a transition economy; d) water security in an Mauritius, invited natural and social scientists to work island context; e) understanding and addressing trade-offs together, and pointed out the importance of capacity buildbetween industrialisation, economic growths and environing for young researchers. The Minister of Economic mental protection.

Development confirmed the support of the government for All institutions represented at the workshop expressed this new endeavour and expressed interest in policy-orientinterest in joining the National Human Dimensions ed research in the field of HDGEC. Committee and will formalise their participation within the Work presented by participants illustrated the broad next month. The participants unanimously elected Dr. T. scope and complexity of the research themes and the need Ramjeawon from the University of Mauritius as Chairman for interdisciplinary approaches, showing the different of the National Committee. The University of Mauritius will methodological approaches of the different disciplines. host the Secretariat. The workshop was a significant mileResearchers were saying similar things but in very different stone for global change research in Mauritius. The National ways. This is the main problem in including the human Committee looks forward to informing the international dimensions into research on environmental change. human dimensions community about progress in the variDr Cecilia Luttrell from the Center for Social and ous research initiatives.

Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE), UK, and Dr. Peter Balint from the School of Public Affairs of T. R AMJEAWON is Chairman of the National Committee of the University of Maryland, USA, held the capacity-building sessions, introducing a variety of research methods such as the Human Dimensions Research Programme in Mauritius; different philosophical approaches to social research; choice he is also with the Faculty of Engineering, University of of qualitative versus quantitative methods; interview techMauritius, Réduit, Mauritius; ramjawon@uom.ac.mu; niques and design of questionnaires; institutional, stakewww.uom.ac.mu ➤

IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002 | 17

national committees / in brief AUSTRIA / NEWS

AUSTRIAN PRIZE FOR DISSERTATION CONCEPTS IN HDGEC BY

K ARL W. S TEININGER

AND

M ARTIN PAYER international jury with expertise in the various disciplines of HDGEC research, including IHDP Executive Director Jill Jäger and IHDP-SC member Carlo Jaeger, will review the dissertation outlines. Three prizes will be awarded, each at EURO 2,002. Further information on the prize can be found at http://www.hdp-a.at. Please note that this prize is only available for research carried out in, or in collaboration with, Austrian institutions.

Deadline for applications is 30 June 2002. ➤

»Meeting the challenge of Global Environmental Change requires the participation of the brightest young researchers from all disciplines.« – The Austrian Human Dimensions Programme (HDP-A) announces the »Prize for Dissertation Concepts in Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (HDGEC)« on behalf of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture. The Prize will be awarded for outstanding ideas for dissertation projects or dissertation projects in their initial stage. The aim of this Prize is to increase awareness for the HDGEC and direct young researchers in the field of HDGEC by stimulating their creative research in, e.g. research questions included in the IHDP science plans. An

➤

K ARL W. S TEININGER and M ARTIN PAYER are with the Austrian Human Dimensions Programme (HDP-A); hdp-a@uni-graz.at; www.hdp-a.at

IN BRIEF ➤➤➤ FUNDING. The German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) has accepted a proposal for funding from IHDP; this will secure funding of the IHDP Secretariat for a period of 3 years, starting November 2002.

In addition the Ministry of Schools, Education, Science, and Research of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia has provided funding for two staff positions in the Secretariat for the year 2002. The German Research Association (DFG), the Asia Pacific Network and the US National Science Foundation/ InterAmerican Institute have approved funding for the International Human Dimensions Workshop that will be held in Bonn in June 2002.

ELECTED. William C. Clark, Harvey Brooks professor of international science, public policy, and human development at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, USA, and a member of the IHDP Scientific Committee, has been elected a new member of the US National Academy of Sciences. The selection honours Clark’s research on the linkages between global environmental change and economic development and his ongoing work on resource management policy analysis. In announcing Clark’s election, the Academy cited him as »the premier analyst of the nexus of global environmental science and policy. His pathbreaking research on sustainability, human dimensions of global change, and social learning in the management of acid rain, ozone depletion, and climate change are key to understanding the role of science and the evolution of policy«.

Photo: P. Pommerening

➤➤➤

➤➤➤ NEW VERSION OF PRED. The UN Population Division has released version 3.0 of the Population,

18 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002

Resources, Environment and Development Databank (PRED) on CD-ROM. PRED brings together 131 variables at the regional, sub-regional and national level for 228 countries and regions on various aspects of population, labour force, education, economic and social development, land, water and energy use. It also provides the texts of selected international treaties and conventions related to major environment and development issues. PRED is available for sale for US$ 75. The UN Population Division, as part of its technical cooperation programme, will provide one copy of the CD-ROM free of charge to interested institutions in developing countries, upon request on the institution’s letterhead paper. Contact: Mr. Joseph Chamie, Director, Population Division, Room DC2-1950, United Nations, New York, New York 10017, USA, or faxed to +1-212-963.2147.

SCHOLARSHIPS. The Western Hemisphere Fulbright Program, under the auspices of the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the Organization of American States announce the availability of scholarships for graduate study in the United States in fields related to ecology and the environment. The program encompasses all fields of study in the natural and social sciences related to the ecology and sustainable development of Latin America and the Caribbean. The announcement can be downloaded from the IAI homepage at http://www.iai.int. Access Opportunities-Other Institutions-Training and Education and select the file.

➤➤➤

JIM ELLIS † Jim Ellis from the National Resource Ecology Laboratory of Colorado State University, USA, died in an avalanche accident near Aspen, Colorado, in March 2002. The global change community has lost a key scientist and good friend.

Our sympathies go to his family.

publications / calendar NEW BOOKS / MEETINGS

MEETING CALENDAR 4 June – Bali, Indonesia Science Roundtable for the Media during PrepCom4 of the WSSD Organised by IHDP, IGBP, WCRP, DIVERSITAS, START; sponsored by ICSU; Contact: elisabeth.dyck@chello.at or clare.bradshaw@igbp.kva.se, www.igbp.kva.se/prepcom4/ 23 – 25 June – Lesvos, Greece 2002 World Congress on Natural Resource Modelling: »Modelling Natural and Biotic Resources in a Changing Planet« Contact: http://resourcemodelling.org/conferences/2002lesvos.htm 22-26 June – Dresden, Germany Third International Conference on Water Resources and Environment Research (ICWRER) Contact: icwrer2002@mailbox.tu-dresden.de, www.tu-dresden.de/fghhihm/hydrologie.html

World Water Week Contact: http://www.siwi.org 12-15 August – Stockholm, Sweden 2002 Stockholm Water Symposium: Balancing Competing Water Uses – Present Status and New Prospects Contact: http://www.siwi.org/sws2002/ 12 – 15 August – Shenzhen, China Fifth International Eco-city Conference Organised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Contact:: wangrs@mail.rcees.ac.cn or huying@mail.rcees.ac.cn 29 September – 3 October – Bogor, Indonesia.

31 October – 2 November – Leipzig, Germany International Conference on Regional Cycles: Regional Economy towards Sustainability Conference in the framework of the EUREGIA Exhibition; co-sponsored by IHDP; Contact: euregia-conference@iclei-europe.org 20 – 22 November – Seoul, Korea International Conference on Impacts of Population, Consumption and International Trade on Sustainability of Marine and Coastal Resources in the Pacific Rim Contact: Prof. Vlad M. Kaczynski, vkaczynski@msn.com or vkaczyn@u.washington.edu.

The Drama of the Commons Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, Elinor Ostrom, Thomas Dietz, Nives Dolsak, Paul C. Stern, Susan Stonich, and Elke U. Weber, Editors, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.; National Academy Press, 2002; paper ISBN 0-309-08250-1; $ 25.00 The »tragedy of the commons« is a central concept in human ecology and the study of the environment. This volume, co-authored by IHDP-SC member Elinor Ostrom, discusses all crucial aspects of the »drama« in 4 major parts and 13 chapters: I. Resource Users, Resource Systems, and Behavior in the Drama of the Commons; II. Privatization and its Limitations; III. Cross-scale Linkages and Dynamic Interactions; and IV. Emerging Issues. For more information go to www.nap.edu/. ➤

International Symposium on Land Use, Nature Conservation, and the Stability of Rainforest Margins in Southeast Asia Contact: symp2002@gwdg.de, http://www.storma.de/en/newsandevents/index.htm

The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interplay, and Scale

By Oran R. Young, MIT Press, Cambridge, May 2002; 237 pp. cloth ISBN 0-262-24043-2; $55.00//£37.95 paper ISBN 0-262-74024-9; $21.95/£14.95 Researchers studying the role institutions play in causing and confronting environmental change use a variety of concepts and methods that make it difficult to compare their findings. Seeking to remedy this problem, Oran Young, Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee of the IHDP-IDGEC Project, takes the analytic themes identified in the IDGEC Science Plan as cutting-edge research concerns and develops them into a common structure for conducting research. The book also addresses the IDGEC-identified problems of institutional fit, interplay, and scale. More information at http://mitpress.mit.edu/ ➤

11 – 17 August – Stockholm, Sweden

P U B L I C AT I O N | N E W B O O K S

New NASA Global Change Master Directory Available NASA’s Global Change Master On-line Directory (GCMD) 2002 provides descriptions of Earth science data sets and services relevant to global change research.

This directory will help scientists and students find a wealth of data from NASA’s Earth science program and other organizations. The directory is organized by topics: Agriculture, Atmosphere, Biosphere, Human Dimensions, Hydrosphere, Land Surface, Oceans, Paleoclimate, Radiance/Imagery, Solid Earth, Snow and Ice and Sun-Earth Interactions. Selected portions of the directory can be placed on a CD for users without Internet connections. Access to the directory is available through http://globalchange.nasa.gov or http://gcmd.nasa.gov.

IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002 | 19

addresses

CONTACT ADDRESSES IHDP SECRETARIAT • IHDP Secretariat: Jill Jäger, Executive Director Walter-Flex-Str. 3 53113 Bonn, Germany Phone: +49-228-739050 Fax: +49-228-739054 ihdp@uni-bonn.de www.ihdp.org

IHDP CORE PROJECTS GECHS • Global Environmental Change and Human Security ➤

c/o Ann Zurbrigg, Project Manager GECHS International Project Office University of Victoria P.O. Box 1700 Victoria, B.C. V8W 2Y2, Canada azurbrigg@gechs.org www.gechs.org

IDGEC • Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change ➤

c/o Syma Ebbin, Executive Officer IDGEC International Project Office 6214 Fairchild, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA syma.ebbin@dartmouth.edu www.dartmouth.edu/~idgec

IT • Industrial Transformation ➤

c/o Anna J. Wieczorek, Executive Officer IT International Project Office Institute of Environmental Studies De Boelelaan 1087 1081 HV Amsterdam The Netherlands Anna.J.Wieczorek@ivm.vu.nl www.vu.nl/ivm/research/ihdp-it/

LUCC • Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

JOINT PROJECTS ➤ GECAFS • Global Environmental Change and Food Systems

c/o John Ingram, Executive Officer GECAFS International Project Office, NERC-Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Wallingford, OX 10 8BB, UK jsii@ceh.ac.uk www.gecafs.org

GCP • Global Carbon Project ➤

c/o Kathy A. Hibbard, Interim Executive Officer University of New Hampshire Morse Hall, Durham, NH 03824 USA kathyh@eos.sr.unh.edu http://gaim.sr.unh.edu/cjp/

Water • Water Joint Project ➤

c/o Sylvia Karlsson IHDP Liaison Officer IHDP Secretariat, Bonn, Germany karlsson.ihdp@uni-bonn.de

IHDP SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE (SC) ➤ Chair • Arild Underdal

Rector, University of Oslo P.O. Box 1097 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway arild.underdal@stv.uio.no

Vice Chair • Anne V. Whyte ➤

Mestor Associates Ltd. 751 Hamilton Road, Russell Ontario, K4R 1E5 Canada mestor@sympatico.ca

➤

c/o Helmut Geist, Executive Officer LUCC International Project Office University of Louvain Place L. Pasteur 3 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium lucc.ipo@geog.ucl.ac.be www.geo.ucl.ac.be/LUCC

SUBSCRIPTION

Printed on recycled paper

➤ For a free subscription to

this newsletter, write to the IHDP Secretariat at the above address; or send an e-mail to: staff.ihdp@uni-bonn.de or subscribe online: www.ihdp.org

➤ Treasurer • to be nominated

Past-Chair • Eckart Ehlers ➤

Institutes of Geography University of Bonn Meckenheimer Allee 166 53113 Bonn, Germany ehlers@joyce.giub.uni-bonn.de ➤ Members • William C. Clark

John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University 79 Kennedy Street Cambridge, MA 02138, USA william_clark@harvard.edu

20 | IHDP NEWSLETTER 2/2002

• Carl Folke Centre for Research on Natural Resources and the Environment (CNM) Stockholm University 10690 Stockholm, Sweden calle@system.ecology.su.se

DIVERSITAS • Michel Loreau

➤

Ecole Normale Superieure Laboratoire d'Ecologie Paris, France loreau@ens.fr

IGBP • Guy Brasseur

➤

• Gilberto C. Gallopin Regional Adviser on Environmental Policies, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Casilla 179 D, Santiago, Chile ggallopin@eclac.cl

Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology Hamburg, Germany brasseur@dkrz.de

• Carlo C. Jaeger

Indian Institute of Science & Oceanic Sciences Bangalore, India sulo@caos.iisc.ernet.in

Global Change and Social Systems Department, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, (PIK) P.O. Box 60 12 03 14412 Potsdam, Germany carlo.jaeger@pik-potsdam.de

• Elinor Ostrom Center for the Study of Institutions, Population and Environmental Change, Indiana University 408 N. Indiana Ave. Bloomington, IN 47408-3895, USA ostrom@indiana.edu

• Xizhe Peng Institute of Population Research Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200433, P. R. China xzpeng@fudan.edu.cn

• P. S. Ramakrishnan School of Environmental Sciences Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi 110067, India psrama2001@yahoo.com

• M.A. Mohamed Salih Institute of Social Studies P.O. Box 29776 2502 LT The Hague The Netherlands salih@iss.nl

EX-OFFICO MEMBERS IHDP SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE ICSU • Gordon McBean

➤

Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada gmcbean@fes.engga.uwo.ca ➤

ISSC

• Kurt Pawlik Institute for Psychology I University of Hamburg, Germany pe6a017@uni-hamburg.de

START (alternating) • Sulochana Gadgil ➤

• Graeme I. Pearman CSIRO Atmospheric Research Aspendale, Australia graeme.pearman@dar.csiro.au

WCRP • Peter Lemke

➤

Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research Bremerhaven, Germany plemke@awi-bremerhaven.de

GECHS • Michael Brklacich

➤

Carleton University Ottawa, Canada mbrklac@ccs.carleton.ca

IDGEC • Oran R. Young

➤

Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA oran.r.young@dartmouth.edu

IT • Pier Vellinga

➤

Dean, Faculty of Life and Earth Sciences Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The Netherlands vell@geo.vu.nl

LUCC • Eric Lambin

➤

Dept. of Geography University of Louvain Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium lambin@geog.ucl.ac.be

SOCIAL SCIENCE LIAISON OFFICER • João M. Morais IGBP Secretariat The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 50 005 10405 Stockholm, Sweden morais@igbp.kva.se