This group travel proposal requests funds to cover the travel and subsistence of U.S. participants in the Tokyo International Symposium on the Human Response to Global Change on September 19- 22,1988. The symposium has the potential of being an important step in the process of developing an international social science research program that could become part of, or be parallel and complementary to, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme: A Study of Global Change (IGBP). The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, as currently conceived, includes very little social science research. To comprehend global change fully it will be necessary to understand the human dimensions of global change. Human activities have consequences for the Earth system, and changes in the Earth system will have consequences for mankind. The potential importance of social science research for IGBP has been broadly acknowledged, and initial steps have been taken to launch an international social science research program to be part of or to complement IGBP. The National Science Foundation provided funds to support two workshops on the human dimensions of global change: the Ann Arbor workshop, held in September 1987 which was comprised primarily of U.S. social scientists, and the Chinese-U.S. workshop, which was held in Beijing in May 1988. The Tokyo symposium will be the first meeting on the human dimensions of global change with broad international representation. It could make a major contribution to defining an international research program on the human dimensions of global change. To insure that the results of the two NSF-supported workshops influence the outcome of the Tokyo symposium, it is important that U.S. participants in the two workshops be able to take part in the Tokyo symposium.
