The International Council for Science (ICSU) will coordinate international science, bringing together the best minds to address global issues and to help make investments in science more cost-effective, particularly through implementation of its new Strategic Plan. ICSU will address a number of global environmental change activities, emphasizing its reviews and analyses of the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP), the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP), the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and DIVERSITAS (an international program of biodiversity science). ICSU will conduct these activities in large part through the efforts of its Environment Science Officer.
Other ICSU environmental activities will include: representation of science (especially research) interests in activities of the international Group on Earth Observations (GEO), in particular in development of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS); promoting and encouraging international efforts to assure the effective and timely international exchange of scientific data and information; and the convening of international scientific meetings to advance research in the geosciences and environment, in particular, in the area of global change research.
Assuming that ICSU's reviews of the ESSP and WCRP referred to above are positive, ICSU will continue its partial funding of the ESSP and WCRP program coordination activities. The WCRP will continue to provide the structure that enables physical climate system researchers to develop long-term and short-term international strategic plans addressing key research questions, coordinate international activities on a tremendous range of scales, and engage in and seek out new opportunities for interdisciplinary research activities. The WCRP will also be responsible for development of the increased knowledge and tools needed for operational and experimental climate forecasting.
ICSU will expand and improve its efforts to advance research in the geosciences in developing countries - most especially in Africa - but in other parts of the developing world as well.
A focus of ICSU's efforts will be to more effectively address the need to assure that the results of international research under its aegis are transmitted effectively to policy-makers and stake holders.
The NSF grant GEO – 0837928 (Oct 2008–Sep 2013) supported several environmental activities undertaken by the International Council for Science (ICSU) and by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). In 2008-2009, ICSU in partnerships with other organisations conducted reviews of its two global environmental change research programmes IGBP and WCRP and of the Earth System Science Partnership . The reviews explored a more holistic framework for priority setting and research planning across the global environmental change community. ICSU, together with its partners, promoted international scientific research in the Polar Regions, including: the Oslo Polar Science Conference (2010, Norway), the preparation of a final the International Polar Year (IPY) report; and the IPY conference "From Knowledge to Action" (2012, Montreal). NSF funding has also enabled a series of activities in relation to scientific data and information. This includes the meetings of Science Committee of the ICSU World Data System (WDS) and the first WDS Conference "Global Data for Global Science". In 2012, ICSU through an international consultation explored the incentives and measures needed to encourage open science. ICSU led a number of new environmental initiatives, including the Belmont Challenge – a project that analyzed the international research capability to respond to the challenge of delivering knowledge to support human action and adaptation to regional environmental change. ICSU in cooperation with the International Social Science Council spearheaded an Earth system visioning process to develop a new vision for global environmental research in the coming decade. The process resulted in ‘Grand Challenges in Global Sustainability research’ and in an agreement to develop a new initiative that would mobilise the scientific community, funders, and users to address the Grand Challenges. A Transition Team was set up to design the new initiative – Future Earth. After a series of meetings in 2011-2012, the initial research strategy and governance was elaborated. Its draft was presented at the "Planet under Pressure" Conference (March 2012). Future Earth was also presented at the "Rio+20" Conference (June 2012). At the end of 2012, the initial design was completed. In 2013, ICSU continued management of Future Earth, on behalf of the global Alliance of partners. This involved the establishment of a Science Committee, the appointment of an Interim Director and the recruitment of additional staff for the programme. ICSU also worked to ensure that scientific knowledge is integrated into policy initiatives for sustainable development through the UN’s Commission on Sustainable Development and Rio+20. From 2009 to 2013 the World Climate Research Programme focused on scientific advances leading to improved understanding of and prediction of the Earth’s climate system. These advances required international cooperation in land, ocean, atmosphere and ice research, skilful and systematic climate model developments and inter-comparisons, and recruitment and retention of climate researchers across many cultural backgrounds, several age groups and both genders. WCRP identified and promoted activities and events that engaged scientists from several specialties to address cross-disciplinary topics of high and immediate relevance. These included focus on interactions of atmospheric circulation with atmospheric chemistry relevant to short-range processing of pollutants in cloudy environments and to long-range transport of persistent contaminants, and the role of the global water cycle, and particularly precipitation, in connecting terrestrial and oceanic processes. WCRP programmes and activities during those years stimulated and coordinated much of the research and modeling that enabled national and international climate assessments including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 5th Assessment Report and USA National Climate Assessments. Through a community-wide priority-setting process coupled with a large international climate science conference WCRP identified six climate grand challenges covering sea level rise, water availability, changing cloud and storm patterns, snow, ice and permafrost, regional prediction and climate extremes including floods and droughts. By the end of 2013 leaders of those WCRP grand challenge efforts had produced and shared initial scoping and priority setting documents and developed implementation plans and proposals. In partnership with the host countries for each international project office (UK, Norway, Switzerland and USA in these cases), WCRP supported dozens of advisory, planning and coordination meetings of its ocean, ice, atmosphere and land projects. At each of these events volunteer scientists from institutions and universities around the world identified next steps and necessary partners, evaluated recent research reports, ensured information flow and project coordination across activities and among countries, and reviewed and revised overall directions for their projects and for WCRP in general. The WCRP activities often occurred in close cooperation with the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme. Recognizing both the complexities of the climate system and the urgency of conveying useful and solution-based information to the public and to decision makers, WCRP contributed substantial planning and start-up assistance to programmes such as the Global Framework for Climate Services in WMO and Future Earth from ICSU.
