Global Change: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
n interdisciplinary graduate seminar at the University of California at Berkeley conducted over the last several years and exploring the ecological dimensions of climate change led the faculty involved to conclude that the effort to model the natural processes at work in climate change, as daunting a task as that was, needed to be expanded. The links to the surrounding social circumstances were numerous and fundamental. Climate change ultimately was about how many people there are and how they choose to live. In addition, the way that people react to the effects of climate change, both individually and collectively through their institutions, is a very significant variable in understanding the general phenomenon of global change. Thus the focus of the seminar was expanded to include both the ecological and social dimensions of global change, with faculty drawn from the Departments of Geography, Soil Sciences, and Integrative Biology; the Energy and Resources Group; and the School of Law. The aim of the seminar was to encourage faculty and graduate students drawn from various disciplines to speculate on issues developing in their fields, to understand the perspectives of other disciplines, and to identify the trans-disciplinary and interdisciplinary agendas necessary to address the problems posed by global change. The seminar involved leading researchers from around the United States and from a wide variety of fields who spoke about their work on aspects of global change.
cting now as editors, we seek in this book to extend the aim of the seminar to a much broader audience. The presentations, together with the discussion that followed and questions generated by members of the seminar, are the foundation of this publication. In addition, a few of the talks are complemented by short commentaries by a scholar intentionally drawn from a different academic field. Of particular value in our opinion is the extent to which the contributors in their talks were willing to follow our invitation to speculate informally and to reflect on their disciplinary perspectives. Suggested further readings are indicated at the end of each chapter.
he book can be read with two emphases: first, as an introduction to our understanding of global warming and related social issues; and second, as a means for considering how various disciplines work together and with policymakers, and what barriers arise when they seek to do so. As to the first emphasis, the contents of the book speak for themselves. The first part introduces perspectives of the natural sciences on global change. The next section examines the social and human dimension, and the book ends with a consideration of legal and political responses to the situation.
s to the second emphasis, exploring the problems of interdisciplinary and problem-based research, three issues underlie all of the contributions. First are the general issues of interdisciplinary work: how do scholars in different disciplines relate to each other or why do they fail to do so? Second, what are the contours of an integrated model of global change; that is, a model that would include both natural and social processes and their interactions? Third, how do the understandings asserted by natural and social scientists come to influence the policymaker who must consider societal responses to the problems considered? If this book is used as a reader for a seminar involving an interdisciplinary approach to global change problems, then it is suggested that these three questions regarding the interdisciplinary future of this inquiry serve as the point of departure for the reading of each contribution.
e hope that this book will encourage closer links and shared understandings among different academic disciplines so that they might work together more effectively to address the common problem of global change.
he editors wish to acknowledge the financial support of several University groups who contributed to the symposium and to this publication: the School of Law, International and Area Studies, the College of Natural Resources, and the Institute of International Studies. We also wish to thank the Ford Foundation for its grant in support of inter national legal studies. Letitia Carper of the Institute of International Studies copyedited and typeset the text and redrafted some of the figures.
David D. Caron
F. Stuart Chapin III
Joan Donoghue
Mary Firestone
John Harte
Lisa E. Wells
Berkeley, 1994
© Copyright 1994, Regents of the University of California
Note: The editors' names link to professional titles and information dating from 1994, when this book was published in print.
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