A Summary and Reflections on the Meeting
Tom Wilbanks
A Summary and Reflections on the Meeting
Tom Wilbanks
During the period July 29 through August 7, 1997, more than 60 people convened at the Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI) in Aspen, Colorado, for a process entitled "Planning for a U. S. National Assessment," devoted to the forthcoming National Assessment of Consequences of Climate Change. Attendees included representatives of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and federal agencies, regional workshop teams, the expert community, and a few people from local government and the private sector.
Lasting eight working days plus a weekend, the session began with reviews of the early workshops on regional consequences of climate variability and change and with breakout groups to discuss issues for major sectors across the U. S., along with a discussion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regional assessment experience. With this background, it then turned to the U. S. national assessment, starting with a review of discussion documents produced by the National Assessment Working Group (NAWG) and the U. S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). Directions, emphases, processes, and organizational structures were discussed at length in both plenary and breakout sessions, and a strong consensus was reached by the participants. Finally, the participants discussed the Forum planned for November 1997 and provided a starting point for organizing the forum.
The context for this active, intensely participative meeting was the vision of a national assessment of consequences of climate change and variability articulated by Jerry Melillo at the regional workshops and at the Aspen conference itself. His vision was of a strikingly new approach to environmental policy assessment in the United States, grounded in dialogues at the regional/local level between regional experts and regional stakeholders: farmers, ranchers, local business people, local government leaders, local interest groups, and citizens at large. Activated by the regional workshops, this consultation would raise the level of awareness of local citizens of climate change issues, invite them to consider vulnerabilities to possible impacts, and then identify the major issues at the regional scale from the point of view of citizens and voters. Out of this democratic process of information exchange would come a picture of vulnerabilities of our country to impacts of climate change and variability not as a function of scenarios or local climate change forecasts that could result simply in arguments about assumptions, but as a strong, robust set of views from the grassroots across the country.
Out of this democratic process of information exchange would come a picture of vulnerabilities of our country to impacts of climate change and variability.
Moreover, this would not be a one-time process. The regional workshops and subsequent regional assessments would catalyze the development of stakeholder networks that would support a continuing process of information exchange, education, and outreach related to climate change issues. In fact, this approach might well serve as a model for addressing other thorny environmental policy issues in the United States in the future.
Most of the attendees in Aspen came because they were attracted by this vision, articulated by a leader who so compellingly represented the White House; and the group commitment was to develop an assessment design that would convert it into a workable plan for producing the national assessment document and also a workable plan for establishing the longer-term process. At a preliminary level, at least, the participants went away thinking that they had done so, that the leadership of the effort (Jerry Melillo, Robert Corell, Paul Dresler, Michael MacCracken, et al.) were in agreement with the consensus (or had at least accepted it), and that the National Forum in November would serve to publicize and refine the plan.
In a very real sense, by the end of the Aspen meeting the attendees had come to share an "Aspen spirit" that was forged through their participation in an intensive joint experience among a highly diverse group of people, gathered because of their commitment to the national assessment and (in most cases) their belief in the basic vision for that assessment. This vision included several dimensions:
(1) that the regional assessments, with stakeholders involved at every stage, would be the foundation of the national assessment; the national synthesis would be constructed largely from these building-blocks:
(2) these assessments could be done at a high level of professional quality, according to a template that would make aggregation and synthesis possible, although quantitative modeling would probably not be undertaken by every region;
(3) that, in fact, by drawing on the knowledge bases of stakeholders and local /regional experts the assessment would be stronger than if it were based only on the knowledge base of national experts and modelers; and
(4) moreover, that such a participative approach would increase the usefulness and credibility of the assessment for national policy making, mirroring the geographical and topical diversity of the report's principal audience, the U. S. Congress.
But the "Aspen spirit" was more than a philosophy about how best to produce an assessment product. It was partly the discovery of profound value in the interaction of people from diverse professional backgrounds in considering climate change issues. It was partly a sense that the participants were helping to break new ground in processes for environmental policy making in the U. S., pioneering a new kind of three-way engagement among scientists, policymakers, and stakeholders. And it was partly a drive to convert this one-time assessment (and that one-time meeting) into a continuing structure for analysis, assessment, stakeholder interaction, and out reach that will enable our country to do its very best in exploring the challenges and opportunities associated with global change.
Such a participative approach would increase the usefulness and credibility of the assessment for national policy making.
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