Annex II

Research and monitoring needs as identified by international scientific and technical panels

This annex summarises research and monitoring needs concerning the human dimensions of global environmental change research as identified from a politically oriented perspective. It, thereby, relates global environmental change research to international policy needs as put forward in the context of the Rio Declaration 1992 and Agenda 21.

The annex will focus on research and monitoring as identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which puts an emphasis of response strategies regarding future climate change and by the International Conference on An Agenda of Science for Environment and Development into the 21st Century (ASCEND 21) which focuses its recommendation on environment and development.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

In its latest assessment, the panel identifies a number of research and monitoring needs of relevance to this report (IPCC 1996, Working Group III), including:

• increased research on the costs and benefits of mitigation and adaptation measures and how they might change in coming decades;
• analysis of economic and social issues related to climate change, especially in developing countries;
• integrated assessment and analysis of decision making related to climate change
• advancing the economic understanding of non-linearities and new theories of economic growth;
• research and development of energy efficiency technologies and non-fossil energy options;
• research on the development of sustainable consumption patterns;
• increased research aimed at better understanding the causes and impacts of, and adaptation to, climate change;
• technological research aimed at minimising emissions of greenhouse gases from continued use of fossil fuels and developing commercial non-fossil energy sources;
• research on the interrelations between the substantial differences in vulnerability, wealth, capacity, resource endowment of countries and questions of equity as the costs of the damages, adaptation, and mitigation might be borne inequitably;
• possible trade-offs between implementation of mitigation and adaptation measures are important to consider in future research. (a summary of sectoral options for adaptation is presented in the Second Assessment Report of IPCC Working Group II);
• development and application of models for use outside of developed countries (e.g. to represent more explicitly market imperfections, institutional barriers, and traditional and informal sectors);
• analysis concerning effects of response options on employment, inflation, trade, competitiveness, and other public issues;
• integrated assessment models which reflect the specific social and economic dynamics of the developing and transition economies well; e.g. market imperfections, institutional barriers, or the operation of the informal sector in these countries;
• address key uncertainties in current integrated assessments including the sensitivity of the climate system to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, the specification and assessment of impacts where there are no markets, changes in national and regional demographics, the choice of discount rates, and assumptions concerning the cost, availability and diffusion of technologies.

The IPCC stresses that it is important that both efficiency and equity concerns should be considered during the analysis of mitigation and adaptation measures. It may be, therefore, worthwhile to conduct analyses of the equity implications of particular measures to achieve efficiency, including social considerations and impacts.

In addition, there is a need for more comprehensive, systematic and sustained global observations of key socio-economic (such as occurrences of infectious diseases, characteristics and costs of extreme events) and other environmental variables. Networks in many countries throughout the world must be increased as the analysis of time-series observations requires common methodologies, improved classification schemes and standard measurement protocols.

Existing models must be improved, verified and linked to provide knowledge of impacts and to devise management strategies.

The IPCC also points out the need for more and better integrated impact assessments, which are capable of providing valuable multidisciplinary information to a range of end-users, and for new methods of risk assessment and risk management. Finally, the importance of capacity and awareness building across the entire spectrum of human society is stressed.

An Agenda of Science for Environment and Development into the 21st Century
(ASCEND 21)

The research and monitoring needs identified by ASCEND 21 include:

Resource Use, Technology, Employment

• data and monitoring on effective educational and cultural policies to change life styles towards sustainable populations patterns, consumption control, and redistribution;
• development of better global ecological and socio-economic modelling capabilities to allow to see the range of possible outcomes of our current human activities, especially the interrelated impacts of population, per capita resource use, and wealth distribution;
• special attention on research on employment, as the ageing of the population and technological trends require new strategies to create sustainable livelihoods and jobs;
• research should focus on technological and organisational strategies whereby more outputs can be produced with less inputs; blending of local knowledge and technology with new technologies should be especially important;
• local institutional forms of resource management must also be given priority in research, including the establishing of new institutions such as an Ombudsman for the Environment;
• methodologically, science should give attention to developing new forms of data collection that will allow for regional and national differences in the management of resources and population regulation to be better understood and monitored.

Population and Health

• research focusing on local factors affecting the interactions between basic health care, family planning and women's education programmes;
• studies on the influence of cultural norms and the role of political and religious leaders in transformation of family structures and implementation of family planning;
• research focusing on individual and local factors affecting the implementation of mother and child health care, family planning and women's education programmes, including the links of population growth leading to a new increase in infectious diseases which will require more health services, especially in developing countries;

Culture and Education

• local perceptions and assessments on environmental transformations especially in relation to the costs and benefits which people believe they will have to bear in changes of livelihood or life style; Also, their views on the relative advantages which other local, ethnic, national or international groups have in losing actual or potential benefits;
• the visions of major world religious and philosophical systems as to the relation between human beings and the Earth system;
• the way in which environmental or developmental proposals are filtered through cognitive, philosophical, theological or other values and which may be entirely different in diverse social and national contexts;
• priorities in the area of education include:
  • examining perceptions and attitudes transmitted in school curricula about the Earth system and desirable consumption patterns and life styles;
  • programmes that have successfully incorporated environmental and population questions into school and university curricula;
  • analysing gender differences in schooling which may lead to differential perceptions and attitudes between men and women towards population and resource use;
  • understanding the links between educational systems and social, ethnic, political and governmental groups with different perceptions and attitudes towards development and environment policies;
  • recovering useful traditional knowledge and technologies transmitted through informal education, especially in the fields of agronomy, botany, zoology and related subjects, and mechanisms to blend it with new technologies and give its widespread use.

Agriculture, Land Use and Degradation

• research on the socio-economic costs of competing land-use demands on a declining resource (land use planning is still in its infancy);
• research on the physical, biological and economic costs of land degradation;
• monitoring and data collection of actual land use (=geographically referenced data for which land is being used for what purpose), requiring improved geographical information systems which can bring together land use data with socio-economic information. (The networks need to be fully integrated with those for freshwater.);
• degradation processes and impacts
  • evaluation of the real value of natural resources;
  • minimum standards for ecologically sound production so that the land degradation costs of traded commodities can be reflected in export prices.

Industry and Waste

• objective assessment of "no regrets" and "low regrets" opportunities for re-deployment of investments;
• development of policies - both regulatory and economic - that will motivate industry to adapt to environmentally sound technologies;
• development of institutional mechanisms and frameworks for facilitating the sharing of new technological applications on a global bases particularly with the developing countries.

Energy

• research on the major institutional improvements in the management of the energy sector in developing countries (in the final analysis significant transfers of resources from North to South will also be required).

Quality of Life

• a sharing-perspective has to be added to the traditional wisdom of quality of life measures;
• more knowledge in general about nature and culture, physical flows of material and chemicals, allocation mechanisms on global (and other) scales, human values, and consumption patterns;
• research on the understanding how life styles emerge and change;
• research on how social values emerge and change;
• better understanding of how different life styles are more or less dependent on the use of material and energy;
• deliberate searches for alternative, less material-intensive satisfiers, as well as research into alternative social projects and socio-ecological configurations;
• new theories on development: What are the factors behind changing living conditions? Why can some countries during some decades develop in several dimensions while others do not?;
• theories on how to allocate scarce resources in the real world (a world of violence, crime and bribery, in which ethnic groups hate each other and nations are often unwilling to co-operate on trans-boundary phenomena)
• monitoring quality of life;
• development of scientific tools for synthesising and analysing reality in more detail (politicians need overviews and integrated knowledge);
• monitoring change and policy impacts on quality of life questions by scientific organisations (to get large investments right).

Capacity Building

• the international scientific community should launch a "capacity" audit to assess the present state of capacity for environmentally tolerant development in every country. This audit (different from preceding audits) should be more comprehensive, should include indigenous expertise, should extent to all the relevant sciences, and should cover people as well as institutions and organisations.

Policies for Technology

• introduction of policy measures which promote the creation and conservation of technological diversity;
• addressing policies and institutions that promote access to (public domain and proprietary) scientific and technological information necessary to develop environmentally friendly systems of production;
• measures aimed at enhancing the technological capacity of developing countries (training, redirection of development assistance, and national policies that promote creativity and innovativeness).

Institutional Arrangements

• research on the environmental impacts of institutional change;
• research on the scope for, and barriers to, a transition to sustainable development strategies;
• research on the institutions, policies and instruments required by a sustainable development strategy.