Global Change - History of Global-change Research

History of Global-change Research

In 1980, a group of scientists led by Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin set up an international programme, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), to determine whether the climate was changing, whether climate could be predicted and whether humans were in some way responsible for the change. The programme was sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization and the International Council for Science (ICSU). As time went on, there was a growing realisation that climate change was one part of a larger phenomenon, global change. In 1987, a team of researchers, led again by Bert Bolin, James McCarthy, Paul Crutzen, H. Oeschger and others, successfully argued for an international research programme to investigate global change. This programme, sponsored by ICSU, is the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). The programme has eight projects investigating different parts of the Earth system and links between them.

IGBP, WCRP and a third programme, the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP, founded in 1996), spearheaded a landmark science conference held in Amsterdam in 2001. The conference, Challenges of a Changing Earth: Global Change Open Science Conference, led to the Amsterdam Declaration which stated, “In addition to the threat of significant climate change, there is growing concern over the ever-increasing human modification of other aspects of the global environment and the consequent implications for human well-being. Basic goods and services supplied by the planetary life support system, such as food, water, clean air and an environment conducive to human health, are being affected increasingly by global change.”

The declaration goes on to say, “The international global change programmes urge governments, public and private institutions and people of the world to agree that an ethical framework for global stewardship and strategies for Earth System management are urgently needed.”

Many nations now have their own global change programmes and institutes, for example the US Global Change Research Program and the UK’s Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System (QUEST) programme. And since the Amsterdam conference another international programme focusing on biodiversity has been set up, DIVERSITAS. These programmes form the Earth System Science Partnership.

In 2012, these international programmes held another major science conference in London, Planet Under Pressure: new knowledge towards solutions.