CONTEXT AND FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY
The junction between present and future societies lies in the global commons: the shared
physical, biological, and intellectual resources of the planet. The environmentspecifically
intact, functioning ecological systemsis essential to opportunities for individual development,
the health and well-being of citizens and communities, and the generation of new
wealth. Environmental science and technology are therefore a vital component of productive
knowledge and thus a high priority for the Nation.
As connections between humans and the goods and services provided by the ecosystems of
Earth become better understood, the scale and rate of modifications to these ecosystems are
increasing. Environmental challenges are often exceedingly complex, requiring strengthened
disciplinary inquiry as well as broadly interdisciplinary approaches that draw upon, integrate,
and invigorate virtually all fields of science and engineering. Within the broad portfolio of
science and engineering for the new century, the environment is emerging as a vigorous,
essential, and central focus.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is one of the largest supporters of environmental
research in the Federal Government and the major supporter of environmental research
conducted by the academic community. Consistent with NSF's mission, the agency primarily
supports awards based on external, peer-reviewed national competition, and these
investments drive advances in fundamental understanding of environmental systems.
Therefore, because of its mission and record of accomplishment, NSF is primed to provide
dynamic leadership in advancing the new insights and fundamental knowledge essential to
addressing a range of emerging environmental issues.
NSF activities must complement and enhance, not duplicate or replace, the extant portfolio
of other Federal activities in this area. The Foundation and other Federal agencies and
interagency coordinating bodies, such as the National Science and Technology Council
(NSTC), have responded to the need for research, education, and scientific assessment
activities in many environmental areas. However, the scope and significance of the emerging
environmental issues in our Nation and around the world suggest a need to evaluate the
challenges and opportunities that these critical issues raise for NSF. Therefore, the National
Science Board established a Task Force on the Environment, whose findings and recommendations
are detailed in this report. The recommendations set the stage for a more vigorous
NSF role in environmental research, education, and scientific assessment in the 21st century.
STRATEGY FOR THE CONDUCT OF THE STUDY
The Board, through its Task Force on the Environment, conducted hearings and town
meetings; solicited input from scientists, government agencies, and the private sector;
reviewed hundreds of reports and documents related to environmental research, education,
and assessments; and sought suggestions through a public web site. Hundreds of suggestions
and recommendations were received and considered. Scholars in every scientific discipline
participated. Comments were received from community groups, local and Federal agency
officials, professional scientific and engineering societies, nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), the private sector, and concerned citizens. In addition, the Board examined a
variety of programs at NSF to determine the factors most likely to result in effective research,
education, and scientific assessment activities. The Board focused on the overall level, scope,
robustness, balance, funding, and organization of the Foundation's environmental activities.
A number of themes emerged from this diverse input. Foremost among them was a strong
endorsement of the fundamental operating principles of NSF. At the same time, the Board
heard many ideas that framed ways in which NSF could and should expand its environmental
portfolio. The majority of these suggestions focus on enhancing both the disciplinary and
interdisciplinary understanding of environmental systems and problems; improving the
systematic acquisition, analysis, and synthesis of data; and improving the interpretation and
dissemination of this information into understandable formats for multiple uses and users.
Throughout the public input process, it was clear that citizens, government officials, other
Federal agencies, professional scientific and engineering societies, and individual scientists
look to NSF for leadership in environmental research, education, and scientific assessment.
The strong message running through the input process was that NSF is poised and is
expected to respond vigorously to the new challenges of providing and communicating the
fundamental knowledge base and educating and training the workforce to meet the environmental
challenges of the next century. A parallel message underscored the necessity of
significant new resources to accomplish these goals and an effective organizational structure
to implement NSF's total environmental portfolio.
NSF is supporting significantly more environmental research and education than is generally
appreciated. However, the Nation's need for fundamental environmental knowledge and
understanding requires further attention. To expand and strengthen the Foundation's
environmental portfolio, the Board developed 12 recommendations: 2 overarching keystone
recommendations addressing critical funding and organizational issues; 5 recommendations
on research, education, and scientific assessment; 4 crosscutting recommendations focusing
on the requisite physical, technological, and information infrastructure; and 1 recommendation
emphasizing the importance of partnerships, coordination, and collaborations to NSF's
programs and activities in research, education, and scientific assessment.
Resources and Funding
Environmental research, education, and scientific assessment should be one of NSF's
highest priorities. The current environmental portfolio represents an expenditure of
approximately $600 million per year. In view of the overwhelming importance of, and
exciting opportunities for, progress in the environmental arena, and because existing
resources are fully and appropriately utilized, new funding will be required. We recommend
that support for environmental research, education, and scientific assessment at
NSF be increased by an additional $1 billion, phased in over the next 5 years, to reach an
annual expenditure of approximately $1.6 billion.
The Board expects NSF management and staff to develop budget requests and funding
priorities for the coming years that are consistent with this and the following recommendations.
It further expects that, consistent with its normal way of operating, NSF will involve
the scientific community in identifying specific priority programmatic areas and in elaborating
the specific recommendations below.
NSF management should develop an effective organizational approach that meets all of
the criteria required to ensure a well-integrated, high-priority, high-visibility, cohesive, and
sustained environmental portfolio within the Foundation. These criteria include:
A high-visibility, NSF-wide organizational focal point with:
principal responsibility for identifying gaps, opportunities, and priorities, particularly in interdisciplinary areas;
budgetary authority for enabling integration across research, education, and scientific assessment, and across areas of inquiry;
responsibility for assembling and publicizing, within the context of the Foundation's normal reporting, a clear statement of NSF's environmental activities; and
a formal advisory process specifically for environmental activities.
Continuity of funding opportunities, in particular in interdisciplinary areas.
Integration, cooperation, and collaboration with and across established programmatic areas, within NSF and between NSF and other Federal agencies.
The Board recognizes that it is a challenging task to satisfy all of the criteria specified in the
organizational recommendation. Nonetheless, we are confident that it can and should be
done. The Board further acknowledges the attention and priority that the Foundation
recently has placed on identifying possible new organizational structures. The unprecedented
emphasis on integrative, sustained, interdisciplinary activities called for in this report requires
the establishment of a policy-driven strategy as well as a mechanistic approach to ensure
As the fields of environmental research have matured intellectually, their requirements for
knowledge across all scientific, engineering, and mathematics disciplines have increased. The
Board finds that meeting this challenge will require increasing disciplinary research efforts
across all environmental fields. Information and understanding from certain disciplines that
are especially relevant to environmental problems are often lacking. Most environmental
issues are interdisciplinary, and their drivers, indicators, and effects propagate across extended
spatial and temporal scales. Increased resources are needed for interdisciplinary, long-term,
large-scale, problem-based research and monitoring efforts. In addition, special mechanisms
will be required to facilitate successful interdisciplinary programs.
Environmental research within all relevant disciplines should be enhanced, with significant new investments in research critical to understanding biocomplexity, including the biological/ecological and social sciences and environmental technology.
Interdisciplinary research requires significantly greater investment, more effective support mechanisms, and strengthened capabilities for identifying research needs, prioritizing across disciplines, and providing for their long-term support.
The Foundation should significantly increase its investments in existing long-term programs and establish new support mechanisms for additional long-term research.
NSF's role is to create educational and training opportunities that enhance scientific and technological capacity associated with the environment, across both formal and informal educational enterprises. Environmental education and training should be science based, but should be given a renewed focus on preparing students for broad career horizons and should integrate new technologies, especially information technologies, as much as possible. The twin goals of learning are to gain knowledge and to acquire skills such as problem solving, consensus building, information management, communication, and critical and creative thinking.
The Foundation should encourage proposals that capitalize on student interest in environmental areas while supporting significantly more environmental education efforts through informal vehicles. All Foundation-supported education activities should at their core recognize potential and develop the capacity for excellence in all segments of society, regardless of whether they have been part of the scientific and engineering traditions.
Scientific Assessment Recommendation
Scientific assessment, as used here, is defined as inquiry-based synthesis, evaluation, and
communication of understanding of relevant biological, socioeconomic, and physical
environmental scientific information to provide an informed basis for (1) prioritizing
scientific investments and (2) addressing environmental issues. Research on how to do
effective, credible, and helpful scientific assessments is timely. Approaches to scientific
assessment need to be refined, and made more transferable between environmental issues. In
addition, the Board finds that there is an identified need for a credible, unbiased approach to
defining the status and trends, or trajectory, of environmental patterns and processes. The
Board acknowledges the ongoing scientific assessment activities of other agencies and urges
that additional scientific assessment efforts by NSF complement present efforts.
The Foundation should significantly increase its research on the methods and models used in scientific assessment. In addition, NSF should, with due cognizance of the activities of other agencies, enable an increased portfolio of scientific assessments for the purpose of prioritizing research investments and for synthesizing scientific knowledge in a fashion useful for policy- and decision-making.
Environmental research depends heavily on effective physical infrastructure. These include
environmental observatories complemented by high-speed communications links, powerful
computers, well-constructed databases, natural history collections that provide a baseline
against which to measure environmental change, and both traditional and virtual centers.
The Board finds that an important NSF role is to facilitate the development of instrumentation,
facilities, and other infrastructure that enables discovery, including the study of processes
and interactions that occur over long time scales.
NSF should give high priority to enhancing infrastructure for environmental observations
and collections as well as new information networking capacity. The agency should create
a suite of environmental research and education hubs, on the scale of present Science and
Technology Centers and Engineering Research Centers, that might include physical and/or
virtual centers, site-focused and/or problem-focused collaboratories, and additional
environmental information synthesis and forecasting centers.
The Board finds that a critical NSF role is to foster research that seeks to develop innovative technologies and approaches that assist the Nation in conserving its environmental assets and services. NSF should facilitate an effort to identify technologies that represent order-of-magnitude improvements over existing environmental technologies, andin communication with other Federal agencies, the academic community, and the private sectordefine the scientific and engineering research needed to underpin these technologies.
The Foundation should vigorously support research on environmental technologies,
including those that can help both the public and private sectors avoid environmental
harm and permit wise utilization of natural resources.
The Board further finds that technological advances are often keystone enabling elements that profoundly advance scientific research. The future of scientific research, education, and assessment will increasingly depend on new and advanced technological developments in instrumentation, information technologies, facilities, observational platforms, and innovative tools for science and engineering.
The Foundation should enable and encourage the use of new and appropriate technologies in environmental research and education.
The Board finds that the role of NSF, in partnership with other Federal agencies, is to stimulate the development of mechanisms and infrastructure to synthesize and aggregate scientific environmental information and to make it more accessible to the public.
The Foundation should take the lead in enabling a coordinated, digital, environmental information network. In addition, NSF should catalyze a study to frame a central source that compiles comparable, quality-controlled time-series measurements of the state of the environment.
Partnerships, Coordination, and Collaborations Recommendation
The Board finds that collaborations and partnerships are essential to important and high-priority
environmental research, education, and scientific assessment efforts. Furthermore,
collaborations are most effective when they are based on intellectual needs. Partnerships
among Federal agencies, with nongovernmental bodies (e.g., private sector entities, NGOs,
and others), and with international organizations can provide the intellectual and financial
leveraging to address environmental questions at the local, regional, and international levels.
There are thus many opportunities to partner in bilateral/multilateral agreements or via
NSTC science and engineering initiatives. The Board endorses strong NSF participation in
the coordinating mechanism provided through NSTC.
The most effective partnerships involve the evolution of trust among participants, strategic
thinking processes to identify and evaluate common interests and objectives, and relatively
simple, flexible administrative arrangements. They also require sufficient staff, resources, and
time to mature.
NSF should actively seek and provide stable support for research, education, and assessment
partnerships that correspond to the location, scale, and nature of the environmental
issues. Such partnerships and interagency coordination should include both domestic and
international collaborations that foster joint implementation including joint financing
when appropriate. This report clearly establishes the need for an expanded national
portfolio of environmental R&D. Therefore, the Board suggests that NSTC, with advice
from the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, reevaluate the
national environmental R&D portfolio, including identification of research gaps and
setting of priorities, and the respective roles of different Federal agencies in fundamental
environmental research, education, and scientific assessment.