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* The research establishment is poorly structured to deal with complex, interdisciplinary research on large spatial scales and long-term temporal scales. These traits characterize the primary needs of an effective environmental research program.
* There is no comprehensive national environmental research plan to coordinate the efforts of the more than 20 agencies involved in environmental programs Moreover, no agency has the mission to develop such a plan, or is any existing agency able to coordinate and oversee a national environmental research plan if one were developed.
* The lack of an integrated national research plan weakens the ability of the United States to work creatively with governments of other nations to solve regional and global problems.
* The Nation's environmental efforts have no clear leadership. As suggested by the lack of a cabinet-level environmental agency, the United States has lacked strong commitment to environmental research at the highest levels of government. Environmental matters have been regarded as less important than defense, health, transportation, and other government functions.
* Although individual agencies and associations of agencies analyze data to provide a base for decisions on strategies and actions to address specific environmental problems, no comprehensive "think tank" exists for assessing data to support understanding of the environment as a whole and the modeling of trends whose understanding might help to set priorities for research and action.
* Bridges between policy, management, and science are weak. There is no organized system whereby assessments of environmental problems can be communicated to decisionmakers and policy-setters.
* Long-term monitoring and assessment of environmental trends and of the consequences of environmental rules and regulations are seriously inadequate. The United States has a poor understanding of its biological resources and how they are being affected by human activities. Although biological surveys have a long history at the State and Federal level in the United States, it is only very recently that we appear to be approaching a consensus on the need for a comprehensive, national biological survey.
* There is insufficient attention to the collection and management of the vast amount of data being developed by the 20 agencies involved in environmental research. Collection and management of environmental life-science data are less well organized than those of environmental physical-science data.
* Education and training in the Nation's universities are still strongly disciplinary, whereas solution of environmental problems requires broadly trained people and multidisciplinary approaches. Opportunities for broadly based interdisciplinary graduate degrees are few, and faculty are not rewarded as strongly for interdisciplinary activities as they are for disciplinary activities. Thus, there is a risk that environmental scientists appropriately trained to address pressing needs will be lacking.
* Biological-science and social-science components of environmental research are poorly supported, compared with the (still inadequate) support given to the physical sciences.
* Research on engineering solutions to environmental problems is seriously underfunded. That reduces our ability to protect ecosystems and restore damaged ones to productivity and jeopardizes the Nation's ability to achieve major economic benefits that are certain to derive from increasing worldwide use of technologies for these purposes.
* With respect to environmental affairs, government operates in a strongly adversarial relationship with both industry and the general public, to the detriment of integrated planning and maintenance of an atmosphere of mutual trust that is essential for effective government functioning.
* With important exceptions in the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Geological Survey, most environmental research and development is narrow, supporting either a regulatory or a management function. That appears to be particularly true in the environmental life sciences.
SOURCE: National Research Council, Research to Protect, Restore, and Manage the Environment, Committee on Environmental Research, commission on Life Sciences (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1993).