Download 16 Palmer Globalization Grand Challenge

# 16 Palmer Grand Challenge problem: Globalization and the Environment
How can essential natural resources be produced and distributed to meet societal demands,
now and in the future, while sustaining ecosystem services that local societies prioritize?
As we move further into the 21st century the world is increasingly interconnected in ways that were
unimaginable even a decade ago. Globalization describes the increasing interactions among
cultures, economies, and societies across the world that are driven by increases in trade,
economic investments including employment, communication, or travel – all of these span
multiple spatial boundaries (ref). As these globalization processes have accelerated, so too has
recognition that many natural resources are being exploited locally at rates that are no longer
sustainable or will be soon exhausted (ref). Increasingly countries are thus turning to foreign
lands to obtain fuel, food, fisheries, and even water (ref). While some of these resources may be
limiting globally, most of them are simply not available where and when they are needed. For
the latter, the implications of extracting or producing those resources and distributing them
across the globe has both local and global environmental implications (Wiesmeth 2012). While
globalization may provide great benefits it also can result in serious environmental harm. Local
ecosystems may be degraded as resource use is decoupled from local economies, transportation
to distribute the resources often contributes to increased green-house gas emissions, and
ecosystem services that local communities have relied upon may decrease over time if resources
are over-extracted.
The challenge scientifically is to quantify the resource extraction and fluxes at scales that span
local to global. This will require a dramatic increase in access to geospatially explicit data that
are currently highly distributed and vary dramatically in their quality (e.g., export/import data,
rates of extraction and consumption, local dependence on the resource, link between cultural
preferences and ecosystem services). It will also require new models that can serve as local to
global ‘accounting systems” for assessment of resource use, needs, and environmental impacts.
These models must also be suitable for relevant and credible exploration of scenarios in which
various policies are developed for minimizing environmental damage while maximizing human
well-being.
. It will be transformative scientifically because: 1) it will provide a wealth of data
(environmental, social, economic, etc) that can be used to address many other important
questions; 2) it will require the development of models that couple local to regional to global
environmental AND social processes --- such a model structure will certainly inform other
modeling developments; 3) it will require development of novel ways to combine qualitative
information (e.g., categories of natural resource governance structures aggregated at various
spatial scales) with highly quantitative data (e.g., flux rates of emissions) – and all of this must
be geospatially dynamic.
This will benefit society by because it will provide information and tools to empower countries
and local communities to develop environmentally and socially sustainable path.
Starting on refs:
Wiesmeth, H. 2012. The international dimension of the environment. Environmental Economics.
Pp 27-42 in Theory and Policy in Equilibrium. Springer-Verlag.