Thomas Dietz Director, Environmental Science and Policy Program Michigan State University

1. Symposium on Linking Environmental Research and the Behavioral and Social Sciences 25 April 2007 Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change Thomas Dietz Director, Environmental Science and Policy Program Michigan State University environment.msu.edu "Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again." –Andre Gide Of course you were listening, but some things are worth repeating.

2. Major points: • We need both Type 1 (disciplinary) and Type 2 (neodisciplinary) research. Different strategies are required for each. • Type 1 research often isn’t targeting the right topics and is about an order of magnitude too small. • Type 2 research is critical bu has several limiting factors. The biggest may be data.

3. The MA cartoon of the system to be studied. Source: Carpenter et al. 2006

4. We are trying to occupy “Pasteur’s Quadrant” Assessments and NRC reports move research toward “use value.” Disciplinary “wind” is more problematic. Consideration of Use? No Yes “Disciplinary Wind” “Stakeholder Gravity” Bohr Pasteur Yes Quest for fundamental understanding? Commons research Assessments No Edison After: Donald Stokes. 1996. Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press.

5. What are the core theoretical questions that would motivate social, behavioral and economic research on environmental topics that would results in improved understanding of environmental phenomena as well as contributions to the core social science fields? The assumptions are: • We don’t have the right questions. • If we had the right questions, the science would happen.

6. We have already identified the questions! Repeatedly! They speak to fundamental science within and between the disciplines! The identification of these questions hasn’t yielded nearly enough of the science we need. What evidence is there that new questions will change this? Theory is hard but it isn’t costly. It’s the data, training and institutional change that are both hard and costly.

7. It’s useful to distinguish two types of research: 1. Environment as an example to which the discipline is applied (e.g. Sociology of the environment) 2. Research that looks at the links between coupled human and natural systems –creating a new field (or fields) (e.g. human ecology) The disciplinary machinery could help a lot with problems that can be addressed with Type 1 research. It is ill equipped to address many questions that are Type 2, and these are among the most pressing: -Drivers of environmental change -Vulnerability and resilience -Links between human wellbeing and ecosystem services -Long term coevolution of coupled human and natural systems So promoting Type 1 and 2 require somewhat different strategies.

8. The disciplines are not well mobilized even for Type 1 research. An array of disciplines with the most engaged on the left and the least engaged on the right. Anthropology Economics Political Science Psychology Sociology Geography Sociology, last 25 years (rough estimates): ASR & AJS have published ~~1800 papers, <<10 on environment. One presidential address in the 1980s. So 0.5-5% of the core of sociology is mobilized around these issues. Marginal increases in attention by the core still won’t get us to where we need to go quickly enough.

9. Most Type 1 research in the disciplines is not driven by the “grand challenges,” the assessments, and other priority setting mechanisms. The internal structure of the disciplines are ill-equipped to change this—the leadership does not engage with these processes. However, the disciplines are historically contingent constructs. Some things don’t change, most things do change when examined across ~2 academic generations. (What did your major professor’s major professor work on?) So change is a cohort process. Two problems: --Getting environment closer to the center of the disciplines --Getting folks to work on the important issues related to environment

10. Multidisciplinary (Type 1) (Pidgin) Neodisciplinary (Type 2) (Creole) Interdisciplinary (Pidgin→Creole) Moving from Pidgin to Creole • For Type 2 research we need to sustain emergent “disciplines” (neodiscipines) • Workers develop a “trading language” (pidgin) sufficient to get the work done • Over time, this can evolve into a “Creole,” a full language building on the best of both “parents” After Peter Galison’s Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Mircophysics (1997)

11. Encouraging Type 2 research is especially urgent. • The fundamental problems are not a lack of questions, but a lack of resources on which careers can be built. We need: • Sustained funding for neodisciplinary work • NSF role is essential but mission agencies are needed too.

12. Type 2 research, continued. • Data that allows articulation between human and ecological systems • I would rate this as the top priority. • Success of Land Use/ Cover Change research substantially a result of good data readily accessible to good researchers. I think this is strong evidence of the effects of good data. • Many wasted opportunities as a result of hubris or defending borders • NEON; Environment module in General Social Survey/ International Social Survey Program • LTERs are doing better but still in early development. • WATERS? • Other modalities

13. Type 2 research, continued. • High prestige venues for scholarship. • Lots of good journals but something to rival the top disciplinary journals is needed • Science, Nature and PNAS of course, but • We need the environmental social science equivalent of Ambio, ES&T, Frontiers in Ecology and Environment.

14. Some local examples. • STIRPAT research program • (www.stirpat.org) • -Conscious effort to speak across disciplines, engage with diverse communities. • -Publications in American Sociological Review and Social Science Quarterly but also Ambio, Ecological Economics, Frontiers, Human Ecology Review and Journal of Industrial Ecology, PNAS. • Simple starting point that makes sense to all disciplines then elaborated. • Taking on questions/ hypotheses from multiple disciplines. • Viewing the effort as a research program and not a just a set of papers. • Commons research is another example at a larger scale. • Public participation/ deliberation/ decision making may become one too.

15. MSU strategy: Working with and transforming the disciplines • New faculty hires (infecting departments with new approaches) • Job description set by interdisciplinary team to fill critical gaps • ESPP pays for position for five years with no teaching load for ESPP • Mortgage model: Department assumes position funding after ~5 years • Search committee joint between ESPP and department • Department is tenure home, ESPP advisory • So far: 2 faculty in risk, 1 in soil physics, 4-6 searches underway in coupled human and natural systems/ modeling. • First two hires have the Starr award, a UNEP GEO fellowship and a Robert Wood Johnson fellowship between them (in first two years)

16. MSU strategy, continued • Doctoral specialization • Four course (minor) open to students on 40 Ph.D. programs • Margaret Leinen’s “T-shaped graduate student” with discipline as the base and interdisciplinary program as the crossbar. • Cohort effect central: We use Gallison’s linguistic metaphor. • It’s less what they learn than the intellectual connections they make to each other and to the evolution of the science globally

17. Getting data for Type 2 research is very difficult. Consider just units of analysis. Biosphere World System Biotic province Nation Culture Landscape Watershed/ Airshed Community Political subdivision Community Organization Population Individual Individual Ecology Social sciences Any alignment above individual and below globe is a graphic artifact.

18. MSU’s Geospatial Information Support Team Data Hub One site to find many layers of high quality data in ready to use form • Finding GIS data on the web • Web links with annotation • MSU Data Viewer/ archive • Michigan • National • World • Posting Data • A location for MSU researchers to publish GIS data • Metadata creation • Also training and support

19. Major points: • We need both Type 1 (disciplinary) and Type 2 (neodisciplinary) research • Type 1 research often isn’t targeting the right topics and is about an order of magnitude too small. • Type 2 research is critical has several limiting factors but the biggest may be data.

20. Heeding Lepidus “Noble friends, That which combined us was most great, and let not a leaner action rend us. What’s amiss, May it be gently heard. When we debate Our trivial differences loud, we do commit Murder in healing wounds. Then, noble partners, The rather for I earnestly beseech, Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms, Nor curstness grow to the matter.” Triumvir Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Antony and Cleopatra, Act II, Scene II John Hopkins, James Hayes, RSC But to be optimistic: “Well, the first days are the hardest days, don't you worry anymore When life looks like Easy Street there is danger at your door…” R. Hunter and J. Garcia