There are budget difficulties in Congress. There is a presidential election looming. And many Washington, D.C., observers also report that there is a power struggle among diverse components of the executive branch--including the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the Environmental Protection Agency, and the vice president's Council on Competitiveness--over who will translate the summit agreements into action.
Moreover, the real story coming out of the summit, according to many who attended, is that the "new world order" in environmental research means setting up international collaborations and building up the scientific capacity of developing nations, as measured in buildings and training programs. And that is where much of the growth in funding and opportunities will occur, they say.
Even if there were no political issues in Washington clouding the translation of the Rio summit into research, the process would still be daunting. A CEQ spokesman says that the summit agreements are ...
