Citation:
Global Environmental Change: Understanding the Human Dimensions, Paul C. Stern, Oran R. Young and Daniel Druckman, (eds), (Washington DC: National Academy Press, 1992, 292 pp.
Global Environmental Change: Understanding the Human Dimensions is an examination of the human sources, consequences and responses to the hydrological, climatological and biological global scale change.
Global Environmental Change: Understanding the Human Dimensions will be of interest to those who desire an understanding of the human dimensions of global change. The first chapter acts as a prologue to the work. The second chapter addresses the relationship between global change and social science. Specifically, the authors consider the relationships between: global change and environmental systems, and environmental systems and human systems. Chapter three examines three central issues: the identification of the major proximate causes, explanation of the proximate causes by the use of three cases, and the social driving forces of these causes. The first topic uses a "... tree-structured representation of relative contributions of human activities ..." to global change. The second topic examines the cases of: the American refrigeration industry, coal combustion in China, and forest clearing in the Amazon Basin. The final topic of the chapter addresses the social driving forces of the proximate causes of global changes with focus upon economic and population growth.
The fourth chapter examines human consequences and responses through the exploration of the "... interactions between human and environmental systems and the role of various types of human response..." .Following an assertion that conflict serves a pivotal role in the mitigation of the effects of global change, the authors offer three cases in support of their assertions: international regulation of ozone-depleting gases, U S energy conservation achievements of the 1970s and 1980s, and the human consequences of regional drought in the Sahel. The fifth essay is an examination the problems of theory and method and asserts the need for an interdisciplinary approach to global change. This is followed by focus on data needs.
The sixth chapter begins with an examination of three hypothetical research projects and proceeds "... to a systematic account of issues of data availability, data quality, and collection needs". The last chapter save one addresses human resources and organizational structures. The topics included are institutional structure, national centers for research, institutionalizing cooperative research, and organizational barriers to research in the federal government. The final chapter offers six recommendation for a national research program on the human dimensions of global change.
Global Environmental Change: Understanding the Human Dimensions is a thorough examination of the title topic. The text is nicely supported by tables, charts and graphs which the reader will find most useful.