Appendix A to Chair's Essay
Questions Used to Initiate the AGCI Discussions
Appendix A to Chair's Essay
Questions Used to Initiate the AGCI Discussions
To start off discussions of the Aspen workshop, a number of questions were posed to the participants upon their arrival. These were intended to be provocative and stimulating rather than impose a rigid structure on the workshop. Thus while included here the final deliberations that resulted were a consequence of a continuing reworking of the questions through debate and interaction. For these reasons, these questions were not, and are not, used as a way in which to encapsulate the results of the meeting.
The initial questions were grouped into three areas:
A. Questions about Regional Activities
(1) In undertaking a national assessment of the consequences of climate change and natural variability, would it be better to have a broad focus involving all aspects of global change or to concentrate on climate change in the context of multiple stressors? What type of assessment is possible given the information that is available?
(2) Are the regions identified too big or too small, too few or too many? Are the regions reasonably defined and able to address issues that arise in a satisfactory manner?
(3) What information do the regions need from other regions, or from areas outside of the U. S.? How can we treat the international couplings that may affect how regions are affected or may respond?
(4) What are the steps that must be taken in order to retain interest at the regional level during the assessment process?
B. Questions about Sectoral Activities
The charter for this USGCRP activity is to prepare a national assessment. We have been assuming that this will require both regional and sectoral focuses. The experiences so far with regional workshops and past experiences with national assessments would be expected to provide insights about a number of key questions, including:
(1) If we have one component of the national assessment that has a regional focus, how do we deal with issues outside the regions that will have feedbacks to the regions? Along the same lines, if we have another component of the assessment that has a sectoral focus, how do we deal with issues or actions that feed back to the regions?
(2) What is the best way to organize the sectoral cross-cuts? Do we require each region to be organized to address each sector or do we undertake separate nationwide assessment efforts?
Would it be better to have a broad focus involving all aspects of global change or to concentrate on climate change in the context of multiple stressors?
(3) What are the sectoral cross-cuts that are suggested by the regional studies that have taken place? How should national cross-cuts be different or similar to what is done in the regions (e. g., do regions focus on farming and disease vectors while the national cross-cuts focus on food production/availability and public health)?
(4) Will information from the present set of regions provide adequate information for the sectoral studies, and how should it be integrated?
(5) What are the steps that must be taken in order to undertake a set of activities that would lead to national sectoral assessments?
C. Questions About Integration and Synthesis
In addition to issues and questions of scope and organization, there are questions of structure and conduct of the national assessment. These would seem to include:
(1) What overall coordination and guidance is needed to integrate and synthesize the regional and sectoral efforts?
(2) What types of information must be provided from the national level (so thereby encompassing all regions and sectors) in order that the results from regional and sectoral efforts can be synthesized into a national assessment useful to decision makers and policymakers?
(3) What must we do to ensure that the assessment process is seen as open and flexible? That it is seen as scientifically-based and credible?
(4) What must we do in order to ensure that the findings of the national assessment reach stakeholders of all types and levels? What sort of communication process is needed?
These are just a few of the issues and questions that have been arising as we have discussed how to develop and structure a plan for the national assessment. We have some ideas and options for approaching these questions. However, we have been learning that the best ideas usually trickle up and we look forward to hearing your ideas as we work toward a full first draft of a plan for how best to conduct a credible, open, and informative national assessment of the impacts of climate change.
What must we do in order to ensure that the findings of the national assessment reach stakeholders of all types and levels? What sort of communication process is needed?
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