Global Environmental Assessment: What Works?

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The last 2 decades have seen an enormous increase in the demand for scientific assessments to help address issues of global environmental change. What does this experience have to teach us about why a few assessments are quite influential, whereas most are not? More broadly, what does the historical record have to say about the design of assessments that can play a more effective role in the "decision support systems" called for in the new US government climate and global change programs? Prof. Clark will draw on work conducted by the international Global Environmental Assessment Project to present some tentative answers to these questions. Further information on the Project, its findings and publications can be found at: http://www.environment.harvard.edu/envath/gea.html.

This seminar is sponsored by MIT's Mexico City Program and STPP. The seminar, and the reception to follow, will be held on the MIT campus in Building 6, Room 321. For a map, go to: htpp://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?locate=bldg_6