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"° ENTN'IRONMtVTAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT 



MAINTAINING A STRONG SCIENCE AND 

 TECHNOLOGY BASE 



Wc recognize that the federal environmental R&D effon will not be able 

 to create new knowledge and apply it to the problems the world faces over 

 time unless it rests on a strong intellectual base. Ultimately, the federal effon 

 will founder without a continuing supply of well-trained natural and social 

 scientists, engineers, health professionals, policy analysts, and others. By 

 strengthening training institutions, helping them communicate with each 

 other and with government and industry, and promoting interdisciplinary 

 training, the recommendations made here can help to provide the environ- 

 mental experts wc need. 



CREATING UNKAGES 



Our recommendations would also help produce new knowledge by creating 

 new links between environmental researchers. For example, wc have recom- 

 mended linking our national environmental efforts much more closely with 

 international efforts at the United Nations, the European Community, and 

 elsewhere. A closer working relationship would help the United Sutes learn 

 from other nations, help the United States provide assistance to nations 

 whose environmental efforts lag behind ours, and strengthen the bonds of 

 cooperation that are increasingly necessary for the solution of the environ- 

 mental problems we now confront. 



We have also called for the esublishment of a new grant program, 

 new forms of collaboration, and new informal forums to link the federal 

 cfiFon more closely with key research efforts outside government — at aca- 

 demic mstitutions, nongoverrunental organizations, and industrial environ- 

 mental R&D programs. 



Moreover, many of our recommendations would strengthen inter- 

 disciplinary collaboration on environmental R&D both inside the federal 

 government and outside it, bringing the environmental health, social science, 

 and engineering communities together with the ecological community This 

 is especially imponant because a reliance on the traditional disciplines of 

 natural and physical science will not be sufficient to overcome the challenges 

 of the future. To cite but one example, the federal government can no longer 

 afford to consider environmental and economic issues separately In the worcb 

 of one expcn in this area. 



Global warming is a form of feedback from the earth's ecological synem to 

 the world's economic system. So arc the ozone hole, acid rain in Europe and 



