By Michele Koppes, APECS representative to the ICSU Earth System visioning working group
Last fall, I attended a visioning workshop to identify the key research questions in Earth System science that need to be addressed over the next decade, and the steps 
needed to answer them. The workshop was part of a three-step process spearheaded by the International Council of Science (ICSU) in cooperation with the International Social Science Council (ISSC). The first step involved an online consultation to the international science community last summer that asked: ‘What is the most important
research question in Earth system research that needs answering in the next decade, and why?’ The online consultation yielded more than 300 research priorities and contributions from more than 1000 people from 85 countries. The research priorities proposed formed the background for the workshop, held last October outside Paris, which involved ~60 senior researchers, early-career scientists, science-policy experts and funders.
The 3-day workshop was one of the first times an international scientific organization has made a concerted effort to involve early career scientists and social scientists in the formulation of international research policy. Anticipating that the younger researchers they had invited to participate might be cowed by the weight and fame of many of the senior people in the room, many of whom had been at the helm of other global scientific working groups such as the IPCC and the Humans Dimensions of Global Change working groups, ICSU invited the 12 early career scientists to attend the workshop a day before the rest of the participants. Prior to the workshop, we were each asked to synthesize the online consultation and come up with a ranking of the five top research priorities from the online contributions. The first day was then spent reviewing these research priorities and discussing what perspectives were still missing, in particular the perspective of the social science research community who historically did not see themselves as part of global change research efforts. The outcome of this endeavor was a revised list of priority research directions, including adding several questions addressing the role of the social sciences and interdisciplinary efforts to better understand a) the impact of humans in the earth system, and b) the challenges to the formation of effective institutions and other governance structures to implement sustainability policies. The revised list was then put to the larger group in the days following, and through a process of smaller task forces and roundtable debate was refined into a list of five grand challenges, or research priorities.
The outcome of the workshop is a draft document entitled ‘Grand Challenges in Global Sustainability: A Systems Approach to Research Priorities for the Decade’, a focused global initiative centered on five grand challenges that must be addressed over the next decade if society is to manage the global environmental change that is now underway and cope with the change that we cannot manage. The draft document has been resubmitted to the global community for your input through a second online consultation that will remain open until 21 February 2010. The goal of this multi-step process is to produce a widely shared, internationally-supported vision of the scientific priorities for global sustainability research in the coming decade. The next step in the visioning process will begin on June 22 with a forum in Paris to discuss the institutional structures that will be necessary to facilitate this new Earth system research strategy. The forum is open to anyone interested in attending.
The consultation process is now at a crucial stage and, once again, ICSU is seeking the opinions of the global community and particularly of early career researchers, like you, who will play an ever greater role in research efforts and funding strategies in the coming decade. We would like your reflections on the proposed Grand Challenges, on what current research efforts can be woven into these challenges, and on what international research coordination is needed to get the job done. The draft document and online consultation are available at www.icsu-visioning.org until 21 February 2010. Please take a few moments to review the document and send your comments to ICSU. Let your voice be heard!
