Review of the U.S. Global Change Research Program's Draft Decadal Strategic Plan, 2022-2031 (2022)
Chapter: 2 Cross-Cutting Themes and Issues to Strengthen the Draft Decadal Strategic Plan for 2022-2031
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Cross-Cutting Themes and Issues to Strengthen the Draft Decadal Strategic Plan for 2022-2031
A Strategic Plan to Enable Transformation
The Committee recognizes that the Program has catalyzed for the United States and the world transformative research that forms the foundation of our understanding of the global change systems and the extent of the associated challenges facing the nation and the globe. For the past three decades, climate change research was the primary focus of the federal agencies comprising the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). This research played a critical role in advancing understanding of how human activities have altered the climate system and how these changes have increased impacts on human and natural systems.
The draft Decadal Strategic Plan (DSP) for 2022-2031 reflects an important transition for the global change research enterprise, recognizing that priority knowledge gaps shifted over the past decade as decision makers moved from questioning the extent to which recent climate change was caused by human activities to seeking evidence-based approaches to manage the increasingly severe impacts of climate change on multiple sectors and communities. There are urgent needs for useful, more accessible, and inclusive data and information that will ensure effective and efficient decision making and implementation to increase resilience in a rapidly changing environment. There are also urgent needs for continued research to identify processes and discoveries to enhance our understanding of global change in support of human and natural systems.
In this context, the draft DSP for 2022-2031 includes important advances in:
- Accelerating systems-based research that integrates natural and social sciences to understand climate and global change risks, responses, and societal needs at scales relevant to decision-makers;
- Expanding participation in the federal research enterprise, both within and across an expanded set of federal agencies, and with stakeholder communities;
- Strengthening efforts to engage decision-makers and users in targeting the Program’s research and science products to meet the needs of different decision-making processes and contexts;
- Increasing emphasis on community engagement (particularly of marginalized populations), and situating diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice at the core of approaches and priorities;
- Emphasizing new research on unknowns including extreme events, attribution, and tipping points;
- Incorporating monitoring and evaluation, including of institutional structures; and
- Increasing cooperation with international organizations, initiatives, and research networks to further enhance the ability of the Nation and world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to global change.
Noting these advances, the Committee makes recommendations to further strengthen the DSP while recognizing the constraints within which USGCRP operates.
TERMINOLOGY
Global change: In the Committee’s review of the Decadal Strategic Plan, consistent with prior reports (e.g., NASEM, 2021), we have adopted the GCRA’s broad definition of “global change”; that is, “changes in the global environment that may alter the capacity of the Earth to sustain life.” The GCRA provided examples of global change that included “alterations in climate, land productivity, oceans or other water resources, atmospheric chemistry, and ecological systems.” Over the three decades since the GCRA became law, the list of global changes has grown to include changes in key ecological system attributes such as biodiversity. Biodiversity loss can affect the Earth’s capacity to sustain life. While important research on a number of these and other global change phenomena has been the focus of individual USGCRP agencies (e.g., changes in land productivity by USDA), the Committee encourages the USGCRP to continue to pursue coordinated initiatives to understand the nature of and interactions among physical, chemical, biological, and social processes related to global change. These coordinated efforts on the interactions among global change phenomena have the potential for being important for understanding thresholds and tipping points in physical and social systems.
Human and Natural Systems: The Committee recognizes that there are multiple, overlapping phrases used to convey the interactions between human and natural systems. To simplify the discussion in this report and increase consistency with the language used by USGCRP, the phrase “human and natural systems” is used throughout this document. The Committee reinforces that these coupled systems encompass the entire biosphere and not just humans. Global change is affecting tightly connected human and natural systems where society is both affected by and driving global change. The Nation, through private and public institutions, determines rates of carbon emissions, the extent of protected lands, and rates of deforestation in the U.S. and abroad. Americans experience the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and biodiversity loss in the form of hurricanes, asthma epidemics, dust storms, reduced worker productivity, wildfires, destruction of property, and loss of lives, among others.
INCORPORATE A STRONGER SENSE OF URGENCY
The USGCRP was established because of a growing recognition that global changes such as climate change, as well as pollution, degradation of habitats, and biodiversity loss, were becoming widespread, and there was a need for more research into interventions to mitigate these problems (GCRA, 1990). Given the scale and scope of global change challenges, the “Fulfilling the Vision” section of the DSP3 appropriately begins: “The urgent, transformative nature of global change requires a federal research enterprise equipped to meet the challenge.”
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The Committee agrees with this assessment of the urgency of risks associated with global change and the need for the USGCRP to pursue an ambitious agenda to identify research priorities and ultimately research outputs that, if achieved, would effectively and substantially reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, guide effective and timely strategies for greater adaptation and resilience to climate change, and address other global change challenges. The Committee further agrees with the critical importance of incorporating diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice challenges into global change research, including specific attention to low-wealth, minority, and marginalized communities, to ensure investments focus on promoting resilience, sustainability, and equity.
The draft DSP is uneven in identifying key global change challenges. While a sense of urgency is conveyed for climate change, the sense of urgency should also be well articulated for other global changes affecting the resilience of human and natural systems. Opportunities to better convey urgency throughout the DSP follow.
- The Committee urges the USGCRP to convey the urgency of the full spectrum of global change challenges in the Executive Summary and Introduction of the document, as well as in the concluding section.
- The discussion of urgency at the start of the “Fulfilling the Vision” section of the draft DSP includes clear and direct language that would strengthen the initial sections of the final DSP. Examples include:
- Adding language from the “Fulfilling the Vision” section early in the Executive Summary.4
- Editing the discussion of global change risks in the Introduction5 to convey the same sense of urgency as expressed in the “Fulfilling the Vision” section. While the discussion mentions “increasingly disrupting Americans’ lives and imposing high economic costs”, that language does not convey the same sense of urgency.
- Should the USGCRP retain the current structure of the Executive Summary and Introduction in the final DSP, the Committee suggests that the existing IPCC and NASEM 2021 pull quotes6 be placed prominently at the top of those sections to reinforce the urgency of these issues.
As the decade covered by the 2022-2031 DSP evolves, monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of investments in research and implementation with respect to urgency can help ensure funding is targeted to the greatest challenges. As discussed below, this monitoring and evaluation will be more useful and effective if advances in research and implementation are measured against a clear set of outputs from the DSP.
Recommendation: Maintain a strong sense of urgency throughout the DSP for meeting the challenges of global change for human and natural systems, including climate change, changes in land use and oceans, biodiversity loss, and the safety and security of food and water, among others.
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STRENGTHEN INTERCONNECTIONS AND INTEGRATION ACROSS THE PLAN
The Committee recognizes the value of the four pillars as an organizing framework for the DSP. However, pillars may act as silos hampering interactions amongst the elements of the DSP. For example, the Committee appreciates the value of the “Collaborating Internationally” pillar and recognizes that it must play a key role in the other three pillars, from generating new knowledge to communicating to a global audience. Similarly, assisting with decision making and generating new knowledge can be seen as part of a tight loop of supply and demand of global change knowledge. Highlighting cross-cutting themes and interactions among these themes may lead to a stronger strategic plan and more impactful research. Illustrations of interconnections and synergies across pillars are provided below as examples for consideration in strengthening cross-pillar integration in the final DSP.
Coordination among National Assessments
USGCRP is required under the GCRA to produce periodic assessments of the current state and trends for global change issues, known as the National Climate Assessment (NCA) (GCRA, 1990). The most recent of these, the Fourth National Climate Assessment, was released in 2018. In 2022, USGCRP was also charged with producing an “assessment of the condition of nature within the United States” (the “National Nature Assessment” [NNA]) (White House, 2022). Clear coordination between the NCA and NNA efforts would strengthen understanding of interconnections across nature and people and their joint impacts. Ensuring the assessments contain explicit points of contact where output from one assessment is designed as input to the other would increase the robustness of both assessments by highlighting the synergies and tradeoffs across human and natural systems. The four-year periodicity of the reports could be complemented by special reports (in the spirit of the sustained assessment concept) responding to rapid changes in the state of the science and the environment as well as changes in societal perceptions and needs, similar to the special reports under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Integration of Social Science and Systems-based Research
The Committee welcomes the effort in the draft DSP to explicitly reference interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary research between social and natural systems. However, the broad range of social, behavioral, and economic sciences are not fully acknowledged and integrated into the draft DSP. Examples of approaches to emphasize the centrality of social sciences to global change research include:
- Framing global change research around risks to people and nature, including through advancing research on implementation of adaptation and mitigation policies and programs, stocktaking of current efforts, increasing understanding of the process of adaptation, resilience stress testing, and integrated scenarios of global change and development pathways.7
- Discussing how climate change interacts with other aspects of global change in complex ways, creating multi-hazard compounding and cascading risks that change over spatial and temporal scales, as discussed in the “Advancing Science” pillar of the draft DSP.
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7 See, for example, Nielson 2020 for a discussion of approaches for evaluating mitigation strategies for technical potential as well as likelihood of application by appropriate actors.
- These risks can amplify impacts and alter constraints and barriers to effective interventions.
- Including additional references to the use of scenarios across the pillars to strengthen research into their use for engaging decision makers and a general audience in planning for a range of plausible futures. Scenarios are an important tool for exploring the interactions of human and natural systems over temporal and spatial scales, yet their value is not captured in detail. They also are a tool for evaluating and communicating consequences of alternative actions. Scenario and story-telling approaches, co-developed with interested and impacted communities, can be especially effective in engaging people from a variety of communities, including those previously marginalized and/or excluded from most global change conversations.
- Discussing how human responses and adaptations to global changes can both mitigate and exacerbate risks and vulnerabilities. These responses happen across different spatial, temporal, and organizational (e.g., from individuals to communities to institutions) scales, and are generated through interactions between human and natural systems.
To further strengthen the emphasis on systems-based research, the Committee suggests that the final DSP integrate insights from the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, as well as from disciplines that include the study of human culture, values, and ethics throughout, drawing on existing language from the “Social Sciences” section of the draft DSP.8
Recommendation: Stress interconnections and integration among pillars, including key themes and issues common to multiple pillars, and among global change issues, with enhanced integration of social sciences and systems-based research.
STRENGTHEN COORDINATION ACROSS AGENCIES
The Committee notes the draft DSP uses the concept of engagement in two senses. The first is engagement of federal agencies (and departments of agencies) in USGCRP. As noted in the 2016 report from the Committee on Enhancing Participation (NASEM, 2016), it “has become clear that the current group of member agencies is not adequate for addressing the breadth of the challenges that the United States faces” with respect to global change, and that “additional partnerships are needed to address all of the goals and objectives” described in the Program’s strategic plan; that is more true of the 2022-2031 DSP than of the 2012 Strategic Plan.
The second type is broad engagement with researchers, practitioners, decision-makers, and affected communities through a process termed co-production, where appropriate. There are basic science questions for which co-production is neither appropriate nor informative. However, achieving the Program’s goal of increasing the resilience of human systems to global change requires research to generate insights to inform decision-making. Co-production acknowledges that engaging with those most affected by decisions in the design and conduct of research will enhance uptake and effectiveness of possible solutions.
The Committee suggests strengthening the final DSP by clarifying these different types of engagement and what they mean for the Program over the next decade.
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8 e.g., incorporate the text on page 15, lines 29-33 into the introduction and move the bullet points of research topics (lines 36-45) across the other sections of the “Advancing Science” pillar.
The Committee commends USGCRP for elevating international collaboration to a pillar and for providing specific examples where research collaboration can yield near-term benefits (see discussion of the international pillar). The Committee notes less specificity with respect to coordination in the DSP’s other pillars. Given the USGCRP’s mission to foster coordination across federal agencies, the DSP could do more to describe how the Program will improve cooperation within the USGCRP and across other federal agencies to facilitate accomplishments under the final DSP. One commendable exception is the commitment to coordinating an interagency effort to make data from USGCRP research available, findable, usable, and customizable.9 More examples like this would strengthen the final plan.
Additional opportunities for enhancing the DSP’s discussion of coordination include the following four examples:
- Within the USGCRP itself. The Interagency Working Groups (IWGs) are mentioned in Box 2 of the DSP as part of the definition of the USGCRP, but the role of the IWGs in coordinating research across agencies on cross-cutting topics is not described, nor are the IWGs themselves called out in the Pillars, although they are alluded to in Box 5’s discussion of health, food security, and carbon cycle assessment reports.10 The Committee recognizes that it may not be feasible to focus on all the IWGs given space (and the fact that the IWGs change over time), but their role as USGCRP research-coordinating entities merits further mention. One approach might be to provide an example of the role played by an IWG in one of the Advancing Science areas (e.g., the Coasts Interagency Group as an example of cross-cutting, transdisciplinary research coordination related to the “Understand dynamics affecting the vulnerability of human–natural systems to global change impacts” section11).
- Within the agencies that constitute the USGCRP. In past National Academies reports (NASEM, 2016, 2021), the Committee encouraged the USGCRP to engage with federal departments and agencies that are not members of the Program. The Committee commends the USGCRP for incorporating engagement with these departments and agencies in the DSP. These reports also identified opportunities for USGCRP to enhance coordination between research and operating or regulatory sub-agencies within individual departments who can use USGCRP research products to help fulfill their missions (e.g., engaging the National Ocean Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service within NOAA with USGCRP research). The “Engaging the Nation” pillar discusses engagement with “non-USGCRP federal agencies and departments that need global change information to serve their constituencies.”12 The Committee suggests that the “Federal Agencies and Departments” section of this pillar also describe broader engagement within federal agencies and departments that have sub-agencies that “need global change information to serve their constituencies” but have not traditionally coordinated with the global change research community (NASEM, 2016; NASEM, 2021).
- Coordination with other interagency efforts. The USGCRP is not the only federal interagency group tasked with coordinating global change-related research. The NSTC Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology (SOST), the Fast Track Action
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- Committee on Earth System Predictability Research and Development (ESP), the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC), and the U.S. Group on Earth Observations Subcommittee (USGEO) have produced interagency research plans on topics that intersect with the mission of the USGCRP (SOST, 2018; ESP, 2020; IARPC, 2021; USGEO, 2019). Mentioning and discussing coordination with these other interagency groups can help clarify that USGCRP and its member agencies are involved with other critical entities coordinating global change research (e.g., SOST described ocean research priorities that USGCRP is leveraging as part of its coordinated global change research activities; USGEO is responsible for recommending the observation architecture upon which USGCRP agencies rely). Other potential coordination across interagency bodies can be a source of rich examples for a call-out box or in text. The SOST plan, for example, has a section titled “Understand a Changing Arctic” that calls out interactions with USGCRP and IARPC on Earth system models that integrate Arctic ice and atmospheric data more effectively (SOST, 2018). The Committee suggests a possible shift of the discussion of tipping points in the “Advancing Science”13 pillar from the Antarctic to the Arctic, referring to coordinated research that spans the missions of USGCRP and IARPC.
- With Federal boundary partners. The previous USGCRP decadal strategic plan called for the creation of a set of “hubs” to engage in regional coordination activities (USGCRP, 2012). The inclusion of the RISAs, CASCs, and Climate Hubs in the “Engaging the Nation” pillar of the draft DSP reflects the creation and maturation of these organizations. The Committee suggests shifts in how these federal boundary partners are discussed in the final DSP. In previous reports (NASEM, 2021), these partners were identified as engaging in co-production activities and in working with stakeholders to design research in addition to their engagement efforts. These organizations could be referenced specifically, for example, in the “Enhance user engagement in the research design process” paragraph under the “Informing Decisions” pillar.14 Given the importance of engagement, co-production, and user-focused research across all four pillars, the Committee suggests that these federal regional science organizations (and the sub-agencies that sponsor them) be actively integrated into the final DSP to improve the likelihood of realizing its objectives.
The Committee suggests that the discussions of engagement with external organizations and frontline communities as part of the “Engaging the Nation” pillar15 and of co-production and user participation in the research design process in “Advancing Science” and “Informing Decisions”16 also include research coordination efforts. The Committee welcomes the DSP’s explicit involvement of users and other external stakeholder groups in research and research coordination processes, recognizing that doing so increases the research’s usability and uptake into decision-making processes (Stern et al., 2021). However, the language used in these paragraphs of the DSP tends to assign USGCRP and its member agencies the primary role of reaching out to (and not engagement with) external stakeholders17.
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17 e.g., page 19, lines 32-33
Recommendation: Describe how USGCRP plans to strengthen coordination within, across, and beyond federal agencies within the “Advancing Science”, “Engaging the Nation”, and “Informing Decisions” Pillars, comparable to the level of specificity provided in the “Collaborating Internationally” Pillar.
SPECIFY KEY RESEARCH OUTPUTS WHERE ADDITIONAL UNDERSTANDING OVER 2022-2031 COULD ADVANCE RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY
The draft DSP includes statements about goals and research objectives that indicate a direction of change (e.g., “USGCRP agencies will continue to advance understanding of potential tipping points in the Earth system, emphasizing the complex interactions between physical and social systems that could cross thresholds and lead to tipping points.”18). However, there is often little or no indication of what will be learned or developed and by when. The 2022-2031 DSP would be improved by providing examples of key research outputs.
The final DSP would be strengthened by identifying ambitious but achievable research outputs (e.g., essential improvements in science, in contrast to outcomes that identify how society will use these research outputs to improve human welfare and the environment) that can be accomplished within the decadal time frame of the final DSP, recognizing that budgets are uncertain. The Committee recognizes that it would be challenging to identify appropriate research outputs for all strategic plan research objectives, but instead welcomes identification of illustrative research outputs to strengthen the DSP. The Committee suggests that identification of any research outputs clearly states they assume at least level funding.
This suggestion is consistent with Dr. Jane Lubchenco’s letter to Dr. J. Michael Kuperberg of May 18, 2021 (Lubchenco, 2021) that challenged the Program to address specific research objectives that would lead to a better understanding of tipping points, such as the loss of pollinating insects or changes in Atlantic circulation; identifying factors that limit natural sequestration of carbon; or global oceans and interactions between oceans, land, and air. The identification of outputs to address important national issues has been a concern for decades. For example, the National Academies Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy (COSEPUP) addressed the appropriateness of research goals in a 1999 study (NASEM, 1999). The report concluded, “…a full description of an agency’s goals and results, which is a principal objective of GPRA, must contain an evaluation of research activities and their relevance to the agency’s mission…. For applied research programs, agencies should measure progress” toward outputs. “For basic research programs, agencies should measure quality, relevance, and leadership.”
A positive example for which the Committee commends USGCRP is the specificity of its description of the nature of collaborative activities that the Program will undertake to: (1) identify particular stakeholders and groups with which that collaboration will occur, (2) recognize that international collaboration is bi-directional and has the potential to increase U.S. capacity, (3) emphasize collaboration and capacity-building related to global change science in low and middle-income countries, and (4) prioritize involvement of under-represented groups and communities to facilitate collaborative research within the US and internationally. The degree to which these objectives are achieved over the life of the ten-year research plan can be
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measured and assessed as the plan is implemented and when it is completed, although more specificity on research objectives, outputs, and measurements is warranted. As discussed later, this monitoring and evaluation can increase the flexibility of the plan during implementation, ensuring it addresses the urgent and immediate needs of the Nation.
Example Outputs
The Committee provides the following illustrative examples of what research outputs the DSP could include, but not necessarily for specific inclusion in the plan:
Example 1—Global changes drive harmful cyanobacteria blooms that pose risks to human and ecosystem health.
- Urgent science challenge—Quantify climate changes and nutrient pollution of fresh and brackish waters that stimulate cyanobacteria blooms that cause negative effects on human and ecosystem health.
- Approach—Expand the multi-agency (EPA, NASA, NOAA, and USGS) Cyanobacteria Assessment Network efforts to develop early warning indicators.
- Projected Output—A useful tool to help manage freshwater systems that are facing concurrent changes in drivers (i.e., warming and nutrient loading) of harmful cyanobacteria blooms.
- Link to policy and decision-making—Support for science-based management policies.
Example 2—The role of formal and informal education.
- Urgent science challenge—Advance research to better track and inform public understanding of the links between global change, human health and well-being, and inequities.
- Approach—Identify and scale up effective educational approaches that address climate and health equity outcomes such as K-12, informal education (e.g., museums), and community education led by frontline community organizations, faith-based organizations, extensions offices, and more.
- Projected Output—Strategies for professional development and training to build capacity among educators, practitioners, community members, emergency personnel, local government officials, and planners to increase equity and justice when implementing interventions to manage the health risks of climate change.
- Link to policy and decision making—Scaling up translation efforts (e.g., education, professional development, tool design, culturally-responsive interventions) that increase health and well-being, and reduce inequities.
The Committee recognizes that identifying outputs from the USGCRP is a challenging goal, but including objectives for research outputs that are ambitious but achievable would facilitate significant progress toward observing, understanding, and informing policies and decision making on key global change issues and would maintain the focus of the plan on the urgent needs of the Nation.
Recommendation: Include illustrative examples of key research outputs in the DSP, where enhanced understanding of underlying science processes could advance policy and decision making on global change challenges to human and natural systems.
NEED FOR STRATEGIC FLEXIBILITY OVER THE PLANNING PERIOD
Ongoing global changes, along with changing vulnerabilities, capacities, and technologies, will continue to alter the context for global change research over the coming decade. The final DSP should explicitly aim to increase flexibility over the planning period to capitalize on new opportunities to increase resilience and sustainability at all levels while maintaining focus on the most urgent needs of the Nation. New insights in one area of science may create opportunities to pivot portions of the strategic plan to rapidly advance knowledge and informed decision making. Similarly, recognition that investments are not resulting in hoped-for gains may suggest shifting funding to another scientific area where investment could lead to quicker advancements in understanding. Regular evaluation of progress within and across all pillars of the final DSP would help create flexibility for mid-course corrections.
Stakeholders can be a source of new thinking during implementation of the final DSP, bringing ideas to USGCRP and its member agencies that realign priorities and enhance collaboration and coordination. In finalizing the DSP, USGCRP may want to consider refining its language to encourage such stakeholder-driven activities. An example of a potential refinement relates to the “External organizations” section, “These efforts can support sustained engagement throughout the research-to-decision-support process.”19 Adding “and from the decision-support-to-research” would emphasize that opportunities also derive from decision-makers’ feedback to researchers. Where appropriate, the Committee encourages refining language throughout the document to convey that the USGCRP and strategic plan are encouraging stakeholder-initiated engagement, research coordination, and participation. Further, it would be helpful for the final DSP to clarify how the federal agencies are organizing to receive such input.
New technologies will arise during implementation of the final plan, some of which could improve how to monitor global changes, build resilience, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some of these technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) could facilitate compilation of massive data sets. Others, such as machine learning models, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), could play a valuable role in the analysis of big data. Machine learning has the capacity to discover patterns and trends buried within vast volumes of data that are not readily apparent to human analysts. Emerging visualization technologies, such as animations, also could have a role to play in USGCRP’s strategies for engaging and informing the Nation. New technologies for energy generation and transmission, as well as for new battery storage, can accelerate greenhouse gas emission reductions. Along with the benefits of these new technologies come challenges, such as privacy and bias concerns, that must be considered and addressed for equitable applications of these methods, tools, and approaches.
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Evaluation Strategy
The Committee applauds the USGCRP for including in the draft DSP a section on evaluation20 and supports assessing how USGCRP products are being used. However, the goal is limited and does not address how the assessment would be carried out. The Committee notes that the USGCRP 2012-2021 plan (USGCRP, 2012) discussed using peer review, dialogue with users, and evaluation of participatory processes to assess progress, all of which continue to be relevant. The existing triennial reviews and updates of the DSP provide opportunities for incorporating evaluation findings to direct future work. More detail would be helpful on what aspects of the Program would be evaluated, recognizing the limited available space, and perhaps include peer review by a sample of users.
Recommendation: Add an approach to evolve the research questions, needs, and outputs in response to systematic evaluation and feedback from stakeholders, and to respond to programmatic and technological developments.
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