Although it is difficult to obtain reliable numbers, because social-science research has many labels, it is doubtful that any federal mission agency devotes as much as 1% of its research budget to environmental social science. Indeed, creating incentives to develop better pollution-control technologies has received a low priority in the federal government for many years. The aggregate of small entrepreneurs (e.g., metal platers, dry-cleaners, and farmers) generates substantial environmental pollution, but such firms individually do not have the means to undertake cost-effective research. Several barriers to success in current monitoring programs are evident. Much of the mission-oriented engineering research of federal agencies appears to be overlapping; good interagency communication is lacking, there is little peer review by outside scientists and engineers, and results are not adequately diffused to the governments, firms, and citizens most likely to use them. Economics. Although anthropological theory has not yet had a large direct influence on environmental policy, anthropological and historical analyses of societies that declined because their economies were not sustainable over the long term have shaped contemporary thinking about the purpose of having environmental policies. Lack of attention to a national environmental research plan appears to be the result of an absence of clear incentives for individual agencies to engage in such activities and a lack of authority to implement or enforce any plans that might be developed. Thus, there is a risk that environmental scientists appropriately trained to address pressing needs will be lacking. But our knowledge is still sparse. Given the variety of human circumstances and histories, value commitments are inherently controversial. However, modern government is based on the premise that people do not have time to be involved in all public-policy decisions and therefore identify (elect, appoint, or otherwise choose) representatives or delegates to make and execute most decisions for them. Taxation policy needs to be examined for the feasibility of taxing not products and services, but the pollutants that need to be controlled or prevented. environments. Definition and detection of stress in natural and managed ecosystems. In addition, we need to consider different species, many of which are as yet undescribed and each of which has unique responses and its own relevant scales of space and time. The lack of an integrated national research plan weakens the ability of the United States to work creatively with governments of other nations to solve regional and global problems. View our suggested citation for this chapter. Measurements to determine existing conditions and to establish a database for planning and for comparison with future states of the system. The Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) is an unusual example of a program designed to investigate long-term processes (Callahan, 1984). Many factors have resulted in chronic underinvestment in environmental social science. Moreover, the utility of social-science research depends on informed communication between physical scientists and social scientists–an interchange that is all too rare on university campuses, let alone in federal agencies. For example, NSF has several programs that provide support for research equipment in response to specific proposals. (show kids, weaned kids, commercial breeding goats) 4. The infrastructure elements required by research on biodiversity include museums, specimen-based databases, and data synthesis. (1988) quote the assistant commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Doland Deleso: "Since the 1970s, I've watched a change. Because the costs of pollution control are projected to be. This chapter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the current federally supported environmental research effort and evaluates its success in responding to some of the needs identified in Chapter 2. Also critical are systematists and taxonomists qualified to identify and classify specimens, especially of the more difficult and special taxa. The components of a successful program of biodiversity research include. The United States lacks the tradition, common in other developed countries, of extensive cooperation between the two sectors. Thus, each agency has developed support services consistent with its mission and resources. Studies of community structure and social responses to rapid change have been widely used in environmental-impact analyses, for example, to illuminate human responses to the construction of large facilities in rural areas. Opportunities for broadly based interdisciplinary. As a result, the basic propositions of any social science are bound to express value commitments, either implicitly or explicitly. As a result, no coherent body of information is being generated that can lead to a comparison of predicted environmental effects of construction and operation with actual effects. Graduate students rarely can get a degree based on synthetic research. Baseline monitoring. in decision-making and policy-setting. Among the many themes of ecological research, five were identified as especially important by the Ecological Society of America (ESA) Sustainable Biosphere Initiative (ESA, 1991): Ecological causes and consequences of changes in climate, soil, water chemistry, and land-use patterns.