The Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government was created in April 1988 by Carnegie Corporation of New York. It is committed to helping government institutions respond to the unprecedented advances in science and technology that are transforming the world. The Commission analyzes and assesses the factors that shape the relationship between science and technology (S&T) and government and is seeking ways to make this relationship more effective. The Commission sponsors studies, conducts seminars, and establishes task forces to focus on specific issues. Through its reports, the Commission works to see that ideas for better use of science and technology in government are presented in a timely and intelligible manner. Additional copies of this report may be obtained from the Commission's headquarters.

The Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government issued its report on environmental research and development in December 1992. Although there has been progress in a number of areas since then, the points made in the foreword to that report are still applicable:

Few would disagree that environmental protection and sustainable development will be among the highest priorities on the national agenda in the decades ahead. Since research and development programs will generate much of the intellectual basis for the environmental policies and actions of the future, it is essential that these programs be well organized, adequately funded, and closely linked with the policymaking process. . . .

More than three decades ago, President John F. Kennedy spoke eloquently of the challenge facing the nation and the world: "It is our task in our time and our generation to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty that is ours."

While some of the recommendations of our report have been implemented, there remains much to do to make the program coherent. Accordingly, the Commission convened a group of distinguished scientists to review what had happened in this area over the past four years and to see if a consensus could be reached on next steps. The result is this memorandum, which was adopted by the Commission after some minor modifications.

We are deeply grateful to the individuals who took part in the discussion, and particularly to Dan Sarewitz, who wrote the consensus memorandum.
William T. Golden, Co-Chair
Joshua Lederberg, Co-Chair

The Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government was established by Carnegie Corporation of New York in April 1988 to assess the process by which government at all levels brings scientific and technological knowledge to bear in setting policy and making decisions. The Commission is an independent bipartisan body of experienced individuals with technical and government experience. The Commission also established a distinguished Advisory Council.

The Commission met twice a year from April 1988 until April 1993, producing 19 reports with the help of task forces of highly qualified experts: more than two hundred individuals served on these task forces. In addition, the Commission produced a number of consultant reports, six of which were published, and sponsored six books and reports published by other publishers. After 1993, Commission staff continued to work to follow up on the reports, and task force chairs discussed many of the recommendations with government officials.

In July 1996, the Commission convened a group of experts in the organization of environmental research and development. The group included individuals who had been involved in three major reports by the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government; the National Research Council; and the Committee for the National Institute for the Environment that recommended improvements in the organization of federal environmental research and development in the early nineties. The purpose of the meeting was to review what had happened since the reports were published and to see whether new or modified recommendations might be helpful to the new administration. The meeting participants were

Dan Sarewitz acted as secretary at the meeting and wrote a memorandum that represented, as nearly as possible, the consensus of the views presented. While some individuals present would wish to take more far-reaching steps, they all agreed that the recommendations in the memorandum, if implemented, would be extremely valuable.

On October 11, 1996, the Commission came together for a final meeting. (Two Commissioners, William Perry and Sheila Widnall, had resigned in 1993 when they accepted positions in the Clinton administration.) The memorandum was presented for Commission approval. After discussion and slight modification, the Commission approved it for publication.

Scientific perspectives on the environmental challenges facing humanity have evolved profoundly since the late 1960s and early 1970s, when many of the nation's environmental laws were passed. What were once perceived as disparate and perhaps independent problems are now seen by scientists and by much of the public as parts of a much larger series of questions involving the Earth's capacity to support the continually expanding activities of industrial and postindustrial society. Such issues as global climate patterns, energy and material consumption, agricultural production, biodiversity, economic behavior, and technological innovation are part of an inextricable matrix that determines the present and future state of the environment. Moreover, fundamental issues of governance, from national security and public health to social justice and economic opportunity, are now understood to be dependent in part on the state of the environment. As global population tops six billion near the end of this century, the challenge of protecting and preserving the environment and its life-sustaining resources will become ever more daunting.

In this nation, concern about the environment and about changes that will affect the health and well-being of our citizens has increased in recent years. Programs to restore, protect and manage the environment are ever more dependent on the availability of high-quality, timely, policy-relevant scientific information. Much of this information is the outcome of our federal environmental research and development (R&D) programs.

The framework of federal environmental laws, regulations, and R&D programs established in the United States over the past three decades is in need of comprehensive reform.¹ This framework came about in an ad hoc manner, as individual laws were passed to address specific issues deemed urgent at a particular time, such as air and water quality, toxic waste disposal, and the protection of enda ngered species. Many, perhaps most, of these laws have had measurably positive impacts on the nation's environment, yet the weakness of the existing framework has become increasingly apparent. This weakness can be traced to numerous sources, including a lack of strategic coordination among diverse programs, an inconsistent and overly rigid regulatory structure, an excessive focus on remediation rather than prevention, and a neglect of basic environmental monitoring.

At the core of any effort to reform the nation's system of environmental protection is the need to provide the high-quality technical information upon which the design and implementation of sound policies depend. The federal government's environmental R&D system is generally seen to be unequal to the task. The reasons for this weakness are varied and include continuing difficulties in coordinating environmental R&D, a research agenda that is not well matched to the scale and scope of the environmental challenges facing the nation, and the need for more effective environmental assessment.

This memorandum summarizes the policy context for environmental research in the federal government and recommends several actions that can be taken within this context and that begin to address basic weaknesses in the system. At the same time, these actions may help to bring about the major changes that are necessary over the long term.

In an effort to provide guidance to the federal government on the reform of the environmental research system, the National Research Council (NRC) and the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government issued comprehensive reports in the early 1990s that arrived at remarkably similar diagnoses of the problems facing the environmental R&D system and remarkably similar recommendations for actions to redress these problems.² While some of the steps advocated in these reports have been taken, several of the major recommendations have not been implemented. These recommendations remain valid and no less urgent than when they were first offered.

In contrast to most other industrialized countries, the United States has a highly fragmented environmental R&D system. This fragmentation - an artifact of the piecemeal creation of the system - is the main obstacle to strengthening the science that underpins environmental protection. As the Carnegie Commission observed:

Structural fragmentation of environmental R&D hampers the strategic planning and policy coordination needed to establish and attain environmental goals. . . . Without a central coordinating mechanism, it is also difficult to establish budget priorities, conduct research efficiently and effectively, and then communicate the resulting data to those who can assess it and mold it into policy.³

Numerous mechanisms have been suggested for creating greater coordination and unity in the system, including formation of a single, umbrella Department of the Environment, creation of a strong environmental leadership function at the White House, strengthening of linkages between research policy-making and budgetary activities in the White House, and development of an integrated plan for federal environmental research activities.⁶ Thus far, little progress has been made toward implementation of such proposals. Indeed, continuing fragmentation of the system leads to competing political, budgetary, and scientific interests.

Congressional jurisdiction over federal environmental programs is complexly divided among many committees. While this is a major obstacle to reducing fragmentation, progress can be made through administrative action and strategic budgeting in the executive branch. Efforts to coordinate environmental research policy through formal mechanisms of interagency cooperation have been attempted by the White House, first as part of the Federal Coordinating Council on Science, Engineering, and Technology under the Bush administration, and, in recent years, with the National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Environment and Natural Resources under President Clinton. These efforts have been only modestly successful because they have not included effective mechanisms for coordinating budgetary decisions with policy priorities and because they have not created adequate incentives for cooperation among departments and agencies with jurisdiction over environmental R&D.

Stronger executive branch actions are necessary to ensure effective coordination and direction of the nation's environmental science effort. Presidential leadership has generated a productive focusing of resources on specific high-priority environmental issues, such as the recovery of the South Florida ecosystem. Similarly, such assertive leadership can forge the linkages among policy planning, budgetary prioritization, and research that are necessary to overcome the effects of fragmentation in the overall environmental R&D system.

The administrative structure of the current system prevents coordinated, cost-effective R&D program planning and implementation aimed at the nation's highest environmental priorities. Not surprisingly, information generated by the numerous environmental R&D agencies much of which is of high scientific quality is as fragmented as the system itself. Mechanisms for integrating information from diverse sources, and for assessing this information in the context of political, economic, and societal needs, are complex, time-consuming, and difficult to implement. Thus, both the Carnegie Commission and the NRC reports recommended the creation of a unified assessment organization to help bridge the gap between science and policy. Such an organization would be "dedicated to the evaluation of global and national environmental problems, the achievement of sustainable development, the assessment of research and monitoring data, the evaluation of emerging environmental technologies, the development of economic, legal, and social analyses of mechanisms to address environmental problems, and the development and assessment of integrated strategies to address environmental problems."⁷ In recent years, as evidence of the seriousness of global-scale environmental problems has continued to mount,⁸ the value of an effective assessment capability linking environmental research to political decision making has become even more apparent. Better assessment mechanisms will produce information that can help policymakers set scientifically rational environmental priorities and allocate resources as efficiently as possible.

The policy context for environmental R&D includes several sources of intrinsic tension that may not be easily resolvable:

Some preliminary action aimed at reducing fragmentation of the environmental R&D system has been taken by the Clinton administration. For example, the twelve laboratories of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been administratively consolidated into three national laboratories, and the focus of the mission of individual laboratories has been sharpened. Ironically, however, the most dramatic act to reduce fragmentation within the environmental R&D system in the past several years was motivated largely by partisan politics the consolidation of the National Biological Service (NBS) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). A consequence of political battles between Congress and the Department of Interior over the fate of NBS, this consolidation brings together a significant body of life scientists and earth scientists in the same environmental research organization, and thus creates the potential for generating the types of interdisciplinary knowledge and assessment that have often been lacking in the environmental research system.

Another significant recent change in the environmental policy arena has been the rise of local and regional citizens' organizations that seek to strengthen the voice of stakeholders in environmental decision making. This trend reflects many factors, including stakeholder frustration with inflexibility in the regulatory structure and with the high economic and social costs of endless litigation and confrontation, as well as the demonstrated effectiveness of involving local stakeholders in the resolution of those environmental problems that directly affect them. The rise of citizen-based environmental decision-making processes has, in some cases, been accompanied by parallel federal research efforts, as in the Columbia River Basin and the Everglades. While political and natural boundaries are rarely coincident, many stakeholder groups are organized at the watershed scale, which is also an appropriate scale for the conduct of environmental research. Thus, the rise of stakeholder participation in environmental problem solving has led, in some cases, to more effective coordination between federal environmental science activities and information needs at the local level.

Fragmentation of the nation's environmental R&D system is unlikely to be overcome without comprehensive structural reform; such reform would probably require substantial legislative action an unlikely prospect. Over the short term, however, the adverse effects of fragmentation could be partly redressed through a number of coordinated efforts. The serendipitous effects of USGS/NBS consolidation and the rise of stakeholder environmental groups point to opposite sides of the same problem: the need to break down or bridge administrative and disciplinary boundaries in the research system, and the need for effective linkages between the research system and potential consumers of scientific information. Four low-cost, relatively uncontroversial measures would help reduce the effect of fragmentation of the research system, remove some of the barriers created by fragmentation of information, and make it easier to resolve or live with the inherent tensions in the system.

The Commission recommends that substantial effort be spent on developing credible environmental indicators.

The nation needs quantitative indicators of the state of the nation's environment that are analogous to widely used economic indicators such as gross domestic product, unemployment rates, and balance of payments. Just as it took years to develop and test many of the economic indicators now in use, so it will take substantial time and intellectual effort to develop reliable environmental indicators. Indeed, the President's Council on Sustainable Development has taken preliminary steps in this direction. To ensure that adequate attention and resources are focused on the delineation of credible indicators, the White House, through its Council on Environmental Quality and Office of Science and Technology Policy, should authorize and support the establishment of study groups, composed of environmental policy experts and leading environmental scientists from outside and within the government; their goal would be to develop a suite of scientifically credible and policy-relevant environmental indicators. Such indicators might include measures of atmospheric and oceanic conditions (for example, urban and stratospheric ozone levels, changes in coastal nutrient levels); ecological trends (for example, indicator species population and ecosystem productivity); earth-surface processes (for example, erosion rates of arable soil); public health (for example, incidence of waterborne infection); land-use patterns (for example, rates of wetland loss); and water quality (for example, levels of toxic substances in drinking water supplies, recently established as an indicator by EPA⁹).

Study groups would be administered by a prestigious nonpartisan organization such as the National Research Council. Indicators would be tested and refined each year by the study groups, and the White House would issue an annual Environmental Indicators Report. Indicators would aid in the setting of priorities for environmental research and protection activities by creating a unified, policy-relevant vision of the state of the environment and the effectiveness of environmental protection measures over time. New integrative information management technologies will facilitate recognition and analysis of possible indicators.

The Commission recommends the creation of an integrated National Environmental Database.

Technological tools now exist for unifying and integrating data generated by disparate programs at numerous agencies. For example, geographic information system (GIS) technologies permit the creation of geospatial digital databases encompassing geological, hydrological, biological, and cultural information and thus allow for analysis of multidisciplinary data sets that were previously incompatible. It is now possible to begin to overcome fragmentation of information and create a "virtual unity" in the technical knowledge base, perhaps centered around the environmental indicators developed as part of the first recommendation. This unified database does not require centralized management of all environmental databases at one agency; indeed, such centralization would be undesirable. However, a single agency could design and establish linkages among decentralized databases at many agencies, perhaps with policy guidance from the President's National Science and Technology Council. One possible organization to take on this task is the newly consolidated USGS and NBS, especially in light of the USGS's role in the development of a National Spatial Data Infrastructure¹⁰ and its expertise in GIS applications. GIS creates the further possibility of developing real-time "decision support systems" for policymakers at the national, state, and local levels.

The Commission recommends creation of an on-line National Library of Natural Resources.

Continued advances in information technologies have now made possible the creation of an on-line library that would provide access to nonpartisan and quality-controlled scientific information on the environment. An on-line National Library of Natural Resources would provide access to numerous sources of environmental data, information, and assessment, but these sources would be subject to quality control that does not now exist on the World Wide Web. The library would contain environmental information generated by the many components of the federal environmental R&D system and would thus be a mechanism for creating a more unified view of the nation's environmental research effort and knowledge base. This on-line library could be structured so that it is appropriate for a variety of users, ranging from the general public to policy makers to the scientific community. The National Library of Natural Resources should start out simply as a gateway to existing on-line information sources of known high quality. The library could be managed by a single agency with relevant capabilities, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the USGS, while linking such independent data sources as NOAA's National Data Centers, the USGS's portion of the National Spatial Data Clearinghouse, and, in the future, the National Environmental Database recommended above.

The cost of such an initiative would be small and would primarily involve the development and implementation of common protocols for structuring information presentation, as well as the creation of linkages among existing information sources.

The Commission recommends the creation of Regional Natural Resource Science Forums.

Across the country numerous community and issue-specific grassroots efforts are under way to manage lands and resources. However, too often groups striving to resolve issues and manage their lands and natural resources find informed decision making impossible: inadequate, or even nonexistent, monitoring and research mean that key scientific data and information are lacking. Natural resources information that could be of use to local and regional land and resource managers is developed and stored by federal, state, tribal, and local governments, universities, nongovernmental organizations, and industry. Regional Natural Resource Science Forums would bring together representatives of these sectors to provide a mechanism for all stakeholders, public and private, to identify what is known, what needs to be understood, and how these needs can be satisfied as they relate to the management of a region's lands and natural resources. These Forums could facilitate communication, identification of science capabilities and needs, coordination among stakeholders, and the efficient allocation of resources to address highest-priority issues identified by scientists, land and resource managers, and policymakers at the regional level. Science Forum activities would be supported and enhanced by implementation of the three previous recommendations.

The Regional Natural Resource Science Forums will succeed only if diverse institutions share responsibility for their establishment and operation. Federal agencies, particularly the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, should, in partnership with the National Governors' Association, the Western Governors' Association, the National Association of Counties, and academic institutions, establish Regional Natural Resource Science Forums. Where possible, existing mechanisms and forums should be used to engage regional stakeholders in a dialogue to identify issues and the science needed to adequately support sound decision making. For example, Science Forums could be organized to broaden the geographic scope of existing efforts, perhaps by facilitating linkages among conjugate watersheds. Science Forums could also be designed to complement and provide technical support to the Regional Councils on Sustainable Development established by the President's Council on Sustainable Development. In the short term, a feasibility study should be carried out with stakeholder groups by establishing a small number of Science Forums at various geographic scales.

The short-term value of implementing these or similar recommendations lies in the creation of a multiagency, multidisciplinary research and information infrastructure that overcomes some of the problems created by a fragmented federal environmental R&D system, while facilitating more effective linkages between scientific information and environmental policymaking at the national, regional, and local levels. Such initiatives cannot eliminate the fragmentation itself, but they may help to create a more unified perspective on both national environmental priorities and the value of high-quality scientific information on the environment. Over the longer term, this unified perspective can help cultivate a policy environment within which more comprehensive approaches to systemic reform become politically viable. The ultimate goal of such reform should be strong White House leadership and coordinated planning in environmental R&D. Achieving this goal will lay a firm foundation for effective environmental protection in the future.

1. See for example, the reports of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government: Environmental Research and Development: Strengthening the Federal Infrastructure, December 1992; and Risk and the Environment, June 1993.

2. National Research Council, Committee on Environmental Research, Research to Protect, Restore, and Manage the Environment, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1993; Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, Environmental Research and Development: Strengthening the Federal Infrastructure, New York, December 1992.

3. Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, Environmental Research and Development, pp. 13, 48*-49.

4. National Research Council, Research to Protect, Restore, and Manage the Environment, pp. 2, 7.

5. Ibid, pp. 2*-3.

6. See, for example, National Research Council, Research to Protect, Restore, and Manage the Environment; Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, Environmental Research and Development; National Commission on the Environment, Choosing a Sustainable Future, Island Press, Washington, D.C., 1993.

7. Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, Environmental Research and Development, pp. 59*-60.

8. See, for example, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 1995: Impacts, Adaptations, and Mitigation, 1995.

9. See, for example, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Indicators of Water Quality in the United States, EPA 841-F-96-002, Washington, D.C., June 1996.

10. Executive Order 12906, Federal Register, April 13, 1994, v. 59, n.71, pp. 17671*-17674

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