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A Framework for Climate Change-Related Research to Inform Environmental Protection
Citation:
Weaver, C. AND Andy Miller. A Framework for Climate Change-Related Research to Inform Environmental Protection. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 64:245-257, (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-019-01189-0
Impact/Purpose:
This summarizes the key messages of the ORD Cross-Cutting Climate Change Research Roadmap (published in 2017) and generalizes them to provide broader applicability across environmental protection organizations and efforts (not simply EPA). The aim is to provide an overview of the Roadmap for the research community, to raise awareness of the key science challenges at the intersection of climate and environmental protection missions and the research gaps that exist for addressing these challenges.
Description:
A critical charge for science to inform environmental protection is to characterize the risks associated with climate change, to support development of appropriate responses. The nature of climate change, however, presents significant challenges that must be overcome to do so, including the need for integration and synthesis across the many disciplines that contain knowledge relevant for achieving environmental protection goals. This paper describes an interdisciplinary research framework organized around three “Science Challenges” that directly respond to the needs of environmental protection organizations. Broadly, these Science Challenges refer to the research needed to: inform actions to enhance resilience across a broad range of environmental and social stresses to environmental management endpoints; actions to limit GHG emissions and slow the underlying rate of climate change; and the transition to sustainability across the full spectrum of climate change impacts and solutions; all as situated within an overarching risk management perspective. These Challenges span all media and systems critical to effective environmental protection, highlighting the cross-cutting nature of climate change and the need to address its impacts across systems and places. While this framework uses EPA’s programs as an illustrative example, the research directions articulated herein are broadly applicable across the spectrum of environmental protection organizations. Going forward, we recommend that climate-related research to inform environmental protection efforts should accelerate its evolution toward research that is inherently cross-media and cross-scale; explicitly considers the social dimensions of change; and focuses on designing solutions to the specific risks climate change poses to the environment and society.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: A Framework for Climate Change-Related Research to Inform Environmental Protection