Policy Response

The Administration's strategy for meeting the challenges described above rests on three pillars: preventive diplomacy, promoting sustainable development, and responding to global threats. Preventive diplomacy endeavors to resolve problems, reduce tensions, and defuse conflicts before they become crises. The promotion of sustainable development seeks to ensure that development occurs in a manner that can be maintained for the long term, thereby avoiding environmental, resource, or other degradation that fosters poverty and instability. Finally, there is a class of global threats that may take years or decades to become apparent or to build toward crisis but which may directly threaten the well-being of U.S. citizens as well as people around the globe. Responding to these threats will require decisive domestic action as well as international cooperation.

Preventive Diplomacy

The Administration emphasizes support for democracy, sustainable development, traditional diplomacy, and military strength to prevent conflicts from escalating into violence and to contain conflicts that do occur. This strategy defines the practice of preventive diplomacy. When combined with timely early warning systems, and a commitment to use the warning information, preventive diplomacy is a wise investment in national security, offering the prospect of resolving problems with the least human and material cost. The tools of social science are required to identify the most significant factors involved in producing conflicts, and information technologies are needed to detect changes in these factors and to provide early warning. Because this strategy is based on prevention, its successes will often have to be measured in terms of undesirable events that do not happen.

Many conflicts that have occurred since the end of the Cold War may owe more to struggles for political or economic control rather than to environmental stress or population growth. In the case of those conflicts that are essentially political in derivation, the role for science and technology narrowly conceived to prevent or manage them will necessarily be constrained.

Promoting Sustainable Development

As part of its prevention strategy, the Administration is vigorously promoting sustainable development, both at home and abroad. Sustainable development requires that the economies of the world, including our own, try to meet contemporary needs without compromising the resources available to future generations.

Domestically, the United States works to halt local and cross-border environmental degradation. In addition, the United States fosters environmental technology, targeting pollution prevention, control, and cleanup. Companies that invest in energy efficiency, clean manufacturing, and environmental services today will create the high-quality, high-wage jobs of tomorrow. By providing access to these types of technologies, our exports can also provide the means for other nations to achieve environmentally sustainable economic growth. At the same time, we are taking ambitious steps at home to better manage our natural resources and reduce energy and other consumption, decrease waste generation, and increase our recycling efforts.

Internationally, the Administration's foreign assistance program focuses on four key elements of sustainable development: broad-based economic growth; the environment; population, health, and nutrition; and democracy and governance. We will continue to advocate environmentally sound private investment and responsible approaches by international lenders. At our urging, the multilateral development banks are now placing increased emphasis upon sustainable development in their funding decisions, to include a commitment to perform environmental assessments on projects for both internal and public scrutiny. In particular, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), established in 1994, will provide a source of financial assistance to the developing world for climate change, biodiversity, and oceans initiatives.

Population Stabilization

Very early, multiple, closely spaced pregnancies drastically increase the health risks to women and their children, limit opportunities for women, and diminish the ability of families to invest in their children's education and health.

The Administration is leading a renewed global effort to address population problems and promote international consensus for stabilizing world population growth. The United States supports further research to improve existing methods of contraception and to provide a better variety of methods appropriate to different phases of couples' reproductive lives. In addition, the Administration's comprehensive approach stresses family planning and reproductive health care, maternal and child health, education, and improving the status of women. The International Conference on Population Development, held in September 1994 in Cairo, endorsed these approaches as important strategies in achieving global population goals.

In the past, research and development in the field of contraception has emphasized methods with high inherent contraceptive efficacy and safety. Both in the United States and abroad, the increasing need to simultaneously address prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, along with prevention of unintended pregnancies, calls for a shift in emphasis. For this reason, the Administration is now giving highest priority in research and development to products or methods that meet these needs. In addition, the Administration seeks further research specific to the needs of particular countries or regions on the acceptability and use-efficacy of present and future methods.

Food Security

The enhancement of international food security plays an important role in achieving U.S. foreign policy objectives. Chronic hunger can set off a cycle of instability, migration, and, in the worst case, war.

Science and technology have valuable contributions to make by increasing agricultural productivity; sustaining the natural resource base on which productivity depends; adapting crops to changing environmental conditions; furthering good nutrition through the development of better food crops; and improving food preservation, storage, and distribution. This science-based approach will not only enhance food security, it will also foster more sustainable management of natural resources.

With the global population forecast to increase at nearly 90 million people per year, there is no acceptable alternative to increasing productivity of agricultural and other land- and water-use systems. Scientific research is key to increasing yields of land-use systems; past gains stemming from area expansion, and even fertilizer use in some areas of Asia, can no longer be continued. The scientific intensification of agriculture must continue in favored areas, but research applications must also target more marginal areas, many of which are those most threatened by nonsustainable practices and environmental degradation. For example, better management of agricultural chemical use in developing countries can lead to higher yields and less crop loss while limiting the risks to the environment and the health of farm workers. Integrated pest management, conservation tillage, and integrated nutrient management when adapted to resource conditions through research are likely to offer useful technological alternatives.

As a starting point, the United States recognizes the need for a comprehensive program to acquire, document, and conserve genetic resources of economic plants and animals. Germplasm conservation is integral to sustainable agricultural productivity. To this end, the United States conducts a domestic agro-biodiversity conservation program and provides support to important multilateral initiatives.

In some areas, where crop production activities may remain marginally economic, food security will be enhanced through the development and application of science-based, resource-efficient production of livestock, fuel, fiber, or forest products. In this light, enhanced research emphasis is being placed on developing agro-forestry and other systems that provide livelihoods to rural families while protecting the natural resource base. Moreover, postharvest processing, prevention of losses, and many other income-generating activities can contribute to food security. U.S. programs therefore also include research to reduce postharvest losses and to develop further applications of agro-industrial crops. U.S. assets are also engaged in remote-sensing endeavors that forewarn of impending famine.

Natural Resource Stewardship

The Administration is acting to ensure the sustainable management of U.S. forests by the year 2000. In addition, U.S. bilateral forest assistance programs are being expanded, and the United States is promoting sustainable management of temperate and tropical forests. The sustainable use of forests is essential to ensuring that these resources will continue to be available to fuel development through the future.

In the wake of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the United States has sought to reduce land-based sources of marine pollution, to maintain populations of marine species at healthy and productive levels, and to protect endangered marine mammals.

The Administration also places high priority on protecting the ocean and coastal environment and conserving living marine resources, reflecting the important national security, environmental, and economic interests at stake regarding ocean resources. The United States has five principal objectives in this area: (1) becoming a party to the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, as modified in 1994; (2) ensuring sustainable management of ocean fisheries; (3) supporting integrated coastal resource management and reducing marine and coastal pollution; (4) promoting the conservation of marine biodiversity, including whales and other protected species; and (5) conducting scientific research and ocean monitoring both to support these objectives and to more fully understand oceanic and atmospheric processes of global importance.

An understanding of the changing ocean and coastal environment is essential in order to manage ocean resources in a sustainable manner. This Administration places a priority on ocean monitoring and supports appropriate research on fisheries and marine biodiversity, as well as on the marine physical system and ocean-atmosphere relationships important to understanding climate change. The United States will continue to cooperate with other countries and international bodies in support of the Global Ocean Observing System. We will continue to vigorously promote the consistent and equitable implementation by nations of the provisions of the U.N. Law of the Sea Convention on marine scientific research to ensure maximum access to oceanographic data vital to managing ocean resources, as well as for understanding global change. And we will continue to push for international acceptance of the principle of full and open access to oceanographic and meteorological data. This increased emphasis on oceanographic research and monitoring will directly benefit global maritime operations-both civil and military.

Natural Disaster Mitigation

To be sustainable, a society must be resilient to natural hazards. Natural hazards, ranging from earthquakes to pestilence, are inevitable. By contrast, natural disasters-defined as long-lasting disruption of entire communities exceeding the communities' ability to recover unaided-are as much a product of societal behavior and practice as of nature. Natural disasters can and should be mitigated.

The United States is a world leader in developing and implementing technologies for both monitoring natural hazards and mitigating natural disasters. The United States is in the final stages of major improvements in weather forecasting and is working to improve the dissemination of this information. In keeping with its strategy of prevention, the United States provides technical assistance and equipment to other countries to help them predict and assess changes in the natural environment and minimize the loss of lives and property due to natural disasters.

Multilaterally, the United States is participating in a U.N. initiative intended to ensure that by the year 2000 all countries will have incorporated into their plans for achieving sustainable development comprehensive national assessments of risks posed by natural hazards and mitigation plans for these risks at the national and local levels. Countries will also have incorporated into their plans ready access to global, regional, national, and local warning systems.

Promotion of Knowledge

The preceding discussion makes clear the central role that the dissemination of knowledge and expertise plays in any sustainable development strategy. An effective way to promote sustainable practices globally is through partnerships in teaching and research among developed and developing countries. A global community of scholars, united by a shared understanding of scientific methodology and responsibility, and linked via modern telecommunication networks, will be a positive force for promoting stability, democracy, and economic development. This is one reason why the Clinton Administration has made the development of national and global information infrastructures national priorities.

To promote scientific knowledge abroad, the United States enters into cooperative science and technology agreements with countries around the world. These agreements provide the protocols for cooperative research by government-sponsored scientists and engineers. The United States maintains these agreements, and the intellectual property rights protection contained within them, both for geopolitical reasons and because U.S. scientific and technological leadership can be strengthened through international cooperation. Some of today's most difficult challenges cannot be solved by the United States (or any country) acting alone. During a time of severe budgetary constraints, some projects are too costly for any one nation. Sometimes the work must be done in situ; for example, assessing and preserving biodiversity or monitoring disease outbreaks. Other issues naturally invite collaboration because of unique foreign expertise or facilities. Cooperation builds bridges among nations, sometimes even when no other avenues are available.

The Administration fosters international collaborative research by universities, government, and private sector laboratories with counterparts in developing countries and will also build on the opportunities in existing multilateral efforts. Of particular note are the international agricultural research centers sponsored by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). These centers, which are funded largely by the United States and other OECD donors, link closely to research institutions here and in other developed countries. They represent a key means of developing and delivering food-security enhancing, public-goods technologies to developing countries. With a large contingent of U.S. and U.S.-trained scientists, they represent an excellent means of linking to domestic research.

There are an estimated 1 billion illiterate people in the world. High levels of illiteracy undermine sustainable development goals. Clearly, scientific and technical literacy is required as well. Technology transfer and the development of locally appropriate solutions cannot take place if countries with nearly 80 percent of the world's population (and over 90 percent of population growth) continue to have only 6 percent of the world's scientists. Training students from the less developed sectors of the world who then do not return to their own countries, or organizing training without adequate concern for promoting infrastructure for them at home, will serve to undermine the role of the U.S. education sector as a tool for global sustainable development.

On Earth Day 1994, Vice President Gore announced the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program. GLOBE is an international environmental education and science effort designed to enable students, educators, and scientists to work together to monitor the global environment and provide information for developing a worldwide environmental database. The GLOBE program, with participating schools around the world, will allow students to perform environmental measurements that will greatly augment Earth observations from existing satellite and ground-based systems. Scientists and educators are working together to design experiments that will provide hands-on science and mathematical experience for elementary through high school students and generate useful environmental data for scientists.

An Environmental Technology Strategy

Not only knowledge but also appropriate technology must be promoted if we are to foster global sustainability. The Clinton Administration has crafted a forward-looking environmental technology strategy that should allow us to move expeditiously toward sustainable development. The result of working with thousands of stakeholders over two years to identify a core set of five themes to guide future activities, this national strategy is presented in the Administration document, Bridge to a Sustainable Future. The five themes are designed to establish a framework for partnerships, goal setting, policy development, and action. Within each theme, a series of findings, goals, and initiatives have been identified that together articulate a technological path leading toward sustainable development. The agencies of the Federal Government are developing specific action plans for implementing this strategy, but industry, labor, communities, nongovernmental organizations, individuals, state governments, and nations around the world all have important responsibilities as well. The key to progress is to build on the strengths of each sector in order to achieve goals collectively that cannot be achieved individually.

Broadly, the five themes of the strategy comprise: (1) the development of a new generation of incentive-based policies and programs that stress performance, flexibility, and accountability; (2) shifting from reacting to environmental damage to anticipating and avoiding it; (3) supporting investment in and the diffusion of successful technologies; (4) moving rural and urban communities toward sustainability; and (5) building more effective, open, and productive collaboration among stakeholders.

Specific goals of the national environmental technology strategy include improving substantially the nation's environmental monitoring data and information systems over the next five years through public-private partnerships designed to share information essential for sustainable development, and promoting the use of environmentally sound and socially appropriate technologies in developing nations throughout the world.

Responding to Global Threats

A strategy of sustainable development and preventive diplomacy also requires a robust response to global threats such as emerging or reemerging infectious diseases, climate change, and biodiversity loss. Whereas natural disasters threaten sustainable development in a particular nation or region in a catastrophic manner, these other threats are potentially global in scope but may have onsets that take years or decades to become apparent or build these global threats.

Infectious Diseases

Modern transportation, international trade, and population shifts all contribute to the spread of diseases in developed and developing countries. As a result, infectious diseases that originate in distant parts of the world represent a potential health risk to U.S. citizens. Early detection and vigorous intervention efforts are essential to containing new and reemerging diseases before they spread. In the United States and in other industrialized nations, however, the majority of health care funds pay for treatment of those who are already ill. The key to dealing effectively with new or re-emerging infectious diseases is global surveillance and response, and basic biomedical research.

Infectious diseases can prevent U.S. troops operating abroad from being an effective fighting force. Techniques to prevent, detect, and control these diseases are important to keeping our troops healthy.

A well-designed surveillance program can detect and track unusual clusters of illness and establish their geographic and demographic characteristics. Effective surveillance and prevention strategies must be based on an understanding of the complex interactions between humans and microbes as well as an understanding of the evolutionary and genetic factors that cause epidemics.

The Administration is putting into place a national response to the threat of infectious diseases. While continuing to support research and training in basic and applied research to support U.S. leadership in disease surveillance, the United States will strengthen its ability to respond to epidemics by increasing U.S. "surge" capacity for the emergency production of diagnostic tests, drugs, and vaccines. Internationally, the United States will work with multilateral organizations and other countries to improve worldwide disease surveillance, reporting, and response, encouraging other countries to make infectious disease detection and control national priorities. U.S. Government laboratories and field stations abroad will be coordinated to form regional hubs in a global disease surveillance system. Our ultimate goal is to foster the creation of a worldwide disease surveillance and response network.

Climate Change

In 1992 the United States joined the international community in signing the Framework Convention on Climate Change. It was a treaty that called on all nations to work together to protect the global environment. Specifically, the industrialized countries were urged to take the lead by stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. Soon after taking office, the Administration went beyond the nonbinding language of the treaty to declare that the United States would meet this goal.

The Administration has developed a plan aimed at fulfilling this commitment. The government has signed voluntary agreements with the bulk of the U.S. utility industry to keep greenhouse gas emissions down. Similar partnerships have been forged with U.S. industry on energy-efficient computers, buildings, and lighting systems. The Administration has launched a partnership for a new generation of vehicles-the Clean Car Initiative. And the United States has pledged $430 million to the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) for its second phase, the largest contribution of any nation in the world.

But in addition to these action-oriented steps, the Administration also recognizes that our understanding of climate change and other environmental issues rests on fundamental research, the data for which must come from comprehensive observations. The Administration has therefore identified environmental observations and data management as an area to receive enhanced emphasis.

Observations and Data Management

Extensive Earth observation and monitoring are a critical component of environmental and natural resource research aimed at advancing scientific understanding and developing predictive capabilities. The coordination of observation and data management efforts ensures that the data necessary to answer the questions of highest priority to both scientists and policymakers are being gathered and distributed and that U.S. efforts are taking full advantage of, and being sufficiently coordinated with, international efforts.

The Administration has identified four areas for enhanced emphasis: (1) linking local-scale data collection efforts to regional- and global-scale efforts; (2) linking remote sensing data from satellites to in situ measurements; (3) linking socioeconomic data to data on the natural environment; and (4) making Federal agency environmental data and information available in forms useful to the public, educators, policymakers at all levels, business activities, and researchers.

Although the United States and many other nations are collecting critical environmental and natural resource data, successfully understanding many aspects of environmental science will require the implementation of an international policy of open and stable exchange of data and information. The United States promotes the continuance and extension of the full and open exchange of all environmental data and related information at no more than the marginal cost of fulfilling specific user requests.

Finally, the Administration is acting to put hard-won and expensive data collected during the Cold War to the service of environmental understanding. Following a Presidential Executive Order, some 800,000 spy satellite photographs taken between 1960 and 1972 are to be released. Selectively declassifying information gathered during the Cold War will allow these images to shed new light on the progression of deforestation, the loss of fresh water, desertification, and other issues.

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research

In June 1993, the United States signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, which aims to protect and utilize the world's genetic inheritance. The Interior Department has been directed to create a national biological survey to help protect species and to help the agricultural and biotechnology industries identify new sources of food, fiber, and medications.

The Administration has set a goal of developing the understanding of ecological systems necessary for assessing the ecological consequences of environmental change. This goal will promote the efficient use of natural resources, while sustaining ecosystem integrity for future generations by developing science-based management principles and a predictive understanding of the ecological impacts of environmental change.

It is imperative that we understand and quantify the drivers of change in ecological systems. Understanding the importance of the influence and magnitude of different drivers of change is critical to developing strategies for sustainable development. To this end, the Administration has identified six areas for enhanced emphasis in ecosystem research: (1) documenting change in ecological systems; (2) understanding processes in ecological systems; (3) synthesizing and assessing ecological data and information; (4) predicting ecological change; (5) understanding the interactions of human and ecological systems; (6) and the restoration, rehabilitation, and management of ecological systems.

An example of the Administration's increased emphasis on ecosystem research, and its importance for preserving biodiversity, is provided by the Coral Reef Initiative. The declining health of coral reef ecosystems links the larger issues of climate change and increased stress from human population growth. Some scientists estimate that 10 percent of reefs have already been degraded beyond recovery, and that 10 to 20 percent more could be gone by the year 2010. Not only does this mean the loss of a large fraction of the ocean's most biodiverse ecosystems, but also this decline is bad for tourism and fisheries, and hence for development. To address this degradation, the U.S. Government is forming partnerships with states and territories, other nations, multilateral development banks, and nongovernmental organizations. The Initiative's goal is to enable countries to use existing resources to sustainably manage coral reef ecosystems over the long term.

Socioeconomic Dimensions

The social and economic sciences represent a critical component of any research agenda on environmental change. Research in the social and economic sciences aims to clarify how human activities affect the environment; how environmental changes affect our society and its component groups; and how we and our institutions respond to environmental change.

Long-term research is needed on human-environmental interactions and system dynamics. Their complexity requires greater collaboration of physical, life, and engineering scientists with social scientists than usually prevails. The Administration has identified three research areas for enhanced emphasis: (1) fundamental human and social processes that affect our use of the Earth; (2) the development of a better portfolio of policy instruments and decision tools; and (3) improving the flow of information between the research and policy communities and within the public and private sectors.

Science Policy Tools

Science policy tools for decisionmaking provide the links between the physical, natural, social, and economic sciences and environmental policy. Technical assessments are key tools in formulating national and international environmental policies. To be useful, however, these assessments must be credible to all stakeholders, including the Administration, Congress, industry, nongovernmental organizations, and the public.

The Administration's goal is to use assessment methods to characterize, prevent, and reduce health and environmental hazards in the most effective, efficient, and fair manner. The Administration is committed to strengthening the methods used to perform risk and integrated assessments of health and environmental hazards.

Strategic International Cooperation

As a world leader in science and technology, the United States has an opportunity to apply its science and technology capabilities to support international initiatives that benefit the United States and the global community. To realize this potential, the Office of Science and Technology Policy is developing strategies for cooperation with other nations-"country strategies"-placing a priority on those that are key to the stability of their region, have the scientific and technological base to attract long-term investments and trade, and offer emerging markets for U.S. goods and services. By strengthening the progress of science and technology and the communities of researchers and scholars, international cooperation can contribute to positive political and economic reform, regional stability, sustainable development, and economic growth.

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