11 comments

1. Nadine Brachatzek says:

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   As the comments induce and the Visionising Process Task Team, we need:

   INDC – International Network Dialog Channels, INDC is founded in 2010 by the ICNU and ISSC. That is a part of step two of the Visionising Process Task Team of Visioning Earth System. Maybe you will choose another name at the 22th of June 2010 in Paris.

   2013 the INDC provides database usability in terms and within scientific calculating and communicating worldwide. The key is the Database Structure, Accessibility Training Data Integration and member or userintegration with relative low entrance barriers.

   2015 social engineering initiation large scale use. The INDC, ISSC, ICSU together with IRGCs mission improve global risk governance forming a powerful tool in drawing the apt conclusions out of this global data accessibility for real live action and climate.

   2020 the Ideal International Legal Liga presents an intelligent global legal framework of the “Basic Sustainable Law” as an offer of orientation. That is to go beyond face to face action or situations to the generalized humanity recommendations of action.
2. Professor Umesh Kulshrestha says:

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   1. Future success of Sustainable Environment depends on the response/action from third world countries. I think there should be a room for discussions in this Forum how research will be encouraged in developing countries with regard to these five challenges- Forecast, Observations, Threshold, Responses and Innovation. Pursuing good quality innovative science has been a major challenge for majority of developing world which needs to be strengthened in order to find new knowledge about earth system.
   2. Under Challenge 2: Observations on page 12 need for observation, data preservation and information systems is realized but it is missing how this data system should be managed. This may be out of scope of this ICSU forum. However, I believe that this is high time to develop a Global Environmental Data Bank (including local, regional and global scale data) under ICSU/United Nations or a similar umbrella ensuring data accessibility to all stakeholders. This will strengthen Earth System Science as well as Forecasts.
   3. Under Challenge 5: Innovation on page 16, as a third issue, it is mentioned that `solving the problem of poverty is integral to solving the problems of global environmental change’. The statement seems unconvincing. It is important to eradicate poverty but in my opinion it will not solve the problem of global environmental change. According to recent findings of IPCC, increasing GHG emissions have been correlated with more energy usage especially during past two…
3. Anantha Kumar Duraiappah on behalf of IHDP says:

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   Comments on the Global Challenges of the ICSU visioning initiative

   1. The document s a vast improvement of earlier versions and IHDP commends ICSU for producing a comprehensive and forward-looking document.
   2. IHDP appreciates the importance placed on the pivotal role the social sciences and the humanities will need to play in the coming decade if the goal of sustainability is to be reached.
   3. The shift from global environmental change research to global sustainability research is welcomed by IHDP.
   4. There are however some important points that need to be addressed in the document which we believe will strengthen the document:
   a. One of the main gaps in the present work on global environmental change and which need to be addressed in the global sustainability research is on the evaluative space which we need to use to measure progress. There is mention of well-being but the bottom line is that we use economic based indicators to measure progress with the GDP/capita being the main indicator and the HDI following closely. Both pay little attention to two key variables of critical importance for sustainability. The first is the environment and the second is the equity or distributional issue. There is some work being done in this area namely the recent Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi report and this is an area that has much relevance to the grand challenges and is an area that can mobilize the broader social sciences community to be fully engaged with the sustainability…
4. Marvin Geller says:

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   I think this is an excellent document, but there is one other Grand Challenge, and that is to achieve the needed level of science (or knowledge) literacy for the research findings to resonate with society. One problem that is occurring now is that the general populace does not understand the scientific method and is open to mischaracterizations of the science. If we live in a world where democracy has a lerge presence, it is not sufficient for just the knowledgable to understand what the research is teaching us, the public must be sufficiently well educated so that they understand the issues and can tell the false prophets from the true ones.
5. Joe Carson says:

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   There are significant, persistent, deficiencies in the scope and implementation of engineering ethics which need to be addressed as part of advancing a more just, sustainable future.

   “Engineering Ethics” are about “what ought,” not “what is.” They are value-laden statements, adopted by consensus in the significantly self-regualting engineering profession.

   The impetus to this entire effort is largely ethical – what ought mankind do, now that we know how we are influencing our common environment and exploiting its irreplaceable resources?

   Studying how engineering ethics have succeeded (and not succeeded) in advancing the common good via influencing whether and how engineering profession implements it fundamental purpose – to apply the laws of math and discoveries of science to the universe’s natural resources for the betterment of mankind – might have significant relevance to Challenge 4, “Responses.”
6. mick4recycle says:

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   has anyone suggested sharing the sometimes hugely lucrative rewards of succesfull research amongst more of the ppl researching in am area but who werent lucky enough to be on the “winning team”

   by agreeing beforehand that after they have made ,say 5 million personally, – the next most deserving ppl are probly their fellow researchers who didnt get the prize

   i mean like insurance

   Btw could this also encourage cooperation
7. Professor Ranjan Ramasamy says:

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   I have 5 comments on this important and generally well prepared document:

   1. In the opening argument the scientific importance of global sustainability research is emphasised. Should this not be “importance to humanity” as it will be addressing issues that are fundamental to the survival of the human race?

   2. There is an apparent unnecessary emphasis on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. The terms are somewhat verbose, can be argued as being catchy, and are poorly defined. It will lead readers to think that only such “broad” research is regarded as useful therefore supported by ICSU. It may be better to emphasise ” research” and indicate the need for “cross-disciplinary research” to address some of the research questions.

   3. There is an apparent bias against natural sciences that might be best removed?

   4. Challenegs 1-3 are focussed on the environment. However some listed ones in 4, such as 4.1 – 4.3, 4.5 as well as challenge 5 involve very broad questions that, although very relevant, will require disproportionately large efforts in comparison to the ones in challenges 1-3.

   5. What are the possible roles for ICSU in these finding solutions to the research questions? Many of these questions have already been posed by other organisations. I would hope that ICSU will be able to find seed funding to encourage and also generally facilitate research by scientists from outside the existing networks who might have important new projects
8. D. Alan Hansen says:

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   Re: Develop the observation systems needed to manage global and regional environmental change.

   This goal is too arrogantly stated. We are far from having the ability to manage changes, even as a grand challenge.
   Rather, the observational systems will provide a basis for better understanding changes that are taking place and evaluating models of environmental responses to anthropegenic forcings. In the forseeable future, we can, at best, take steps to mitigate negative impacts; but our best use of resources is to develop adaptation strategies.
9. Cheikh Mbow says:

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   Big challenges related to adapting to climate change

   a. Interplay of socio-economic, political and biophysical causes of vulnerability of poor rural dwellers in the Sahel region. What is the magnitude of the impacts linked with various factors (poor rural development policy, rainfall variability, external drivers, i.e. market conditions, oil crisis, international crisis)
   b. Importance to find responses for both slow variables (e.g. agriculture decline, population increase) as rapid chocks (climate extremes, unplanned collapse of national economies, etc). These issues will permit to assess vulnerability of poor population on a dynamic way as importance of factors can change over time.
   c. Analyse the pathways (adaptive options and scenarios) for sustainable resilience to climate change depending to local conditions and driving factors that undue local and national development

   Chunks of research (social or biophysical) that I think would be needed to help to address adaptation to climate change in Africa.
   d. Track back the moving perspective for environment dynamics analysis in the Sahel. What is the history of crisis and do we learned from those past crises? Example: In early 1970s, with the well-known severe drought most of environmentalists were interested by the desert expansion with the human and biophysical explanation. During the period 1980-90’s arid land degradation and natural resource management was paramount to most studies and that t
10. Felix Creutzig says:

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    I find the Grand Challenges Prepublication version well written, accurate in topic identification, and very coherent. I am, however, concerned, that the language is sometimes quite general. Probably most researchers would agree anyway and point out that their research already contributes to these questions.

    One recommendation, to be added to question 4.2:

    How can the transition from economics as a axiom-based growth theory to a data-based sustainability theory be accelerated? How can non-quantifiable values and related well-being become an accepted framework for macro-economic decision making (together with hard data on environment, equality and conventional economic data)?
11. Ekkehard Mochmann says:

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    How can we facilitate better inter- and trans-disciplinary collaboration ?

    Based on successfully tested models from Social Research:

    1. High level Data confrontation seminars

    Topically organised multidisciplinary data confrontation seminars bringing together principal investigators and potential users from various disciplines. PI´s present their data bases and demonstrate research examples.All data bases are prepared by a data infrastructure for free access and data linkage. Data analysis and technical support are provided for testing jointly developed hypotheses.
    Format: 1 week, 30 participants, highly qualified support staff, leading edge data laboratory environment providing sustainability research resources (access to literature, data, analysis tools)

    2. Virtual research environment for Sustainability Research (VRE-SR)

    Disciplinces have started to support their research by e.infrastructure and to organise their networks in Virtual Research Communities (VRCs)with resources provided in a Virtual Research Environment (VRE). Ideally the future VRE-SR would be open to network users from various VRCs, who are invited by the VRE-SR co-ordinator to share resources. After start up phase linkage and resource sharing with disciplinary VREs is advisable to create snowball effects for resource sharing and transfer learning.

    This model needs high level support by international research policy and funding organisations. It also requires persistent suppport to…