Ecologists Hope Planned NAS Evaluation Will Lead To New Environment Institute

But advocates wonder if the kind of research body they have in mind can survive turf skirmishes in the Washington ecosystem WASHINGTON--Ecologists scored a victory last month when Congress earmarked $400,000 for the Environmental Protection Agency to sponsor an independent evaluation of the nation's environmental research. Scientists view this study, which EPA initially opposed as unnecessary, as a first step toward creating a national environmental research institute. As envisioned, this new government entity would benefit the nation and scientists in several ways. It would lead to more research that could provide answers to the many thorny environmental questions that policymakers face. It would offer investigators a central source of support for environmental projects, particularly interdisciplinary efforts, eliminating the need to peddle their ideas to a dozen agencies. And by emphasizing dissemination of data as one of its missions, the institute would make the information generated by these scientists more accessible to others. But even as proponents make their case, they are beginning to real-ize that the complexities of Washington politics pose as much of a test for their skills as do the dynamics of the ecosystems they study. An environmental institute would require shifts in power and resources within science and the federal government. For example, this institute would provide more money and a greater role for ecology and social sciences in environmental research, bringing to greater prominence the human dimensions of environmental problems. Such a shift could call into question the thrust of current environmental efforts, which tend not to focus on these aspects, say some federal officials. In addition, the Bush administration has expressed opposition to the idea of a new agency, regardless of its mission. And Congress might have to reshuffle committee responsibilities as programs shift into the purview of a new government entity. A proposal to protect biodiversity and create a national center to study the subject provides an example of how the fate of a new federal program rests not only on the merits of the case but also on who's asking the questions. In March 1989, Rep. James H. Scheuer (D-N.Y.) introduced HR 1268, the National Biological Diversity Conservation and Environmental Research Act. A bill already several years in the making, the proposal was approved this past June by the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. But another House panel, the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, decided it deserved a piece of the action. And in July, when it held a hearing on the bill, federal agencies and private sector organizations questioned the purpose of the bill and where the proposed center would be based. Subsequently, the bill was tabled, at least until next year. "We will have to start over," says one staffer on the science committee. Opponents of the bill, while acknowledging importance of the topic, argued that it was either unnecessary or poorly conceived. "We testified we didn't think the bill was the right one [to address the problem of biodiversity]," says Hardy Wieting, deputy director and legal adviser for science at the Nature Conservancy, a private, nonprofit group. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service argued that existing legislation, under which it has authority to handle endangered species, covered much of what this new bill would address. And the executive branch's Council for Environmental Quality pointed out that 29 federal statutes already deal with species preservation. Even those who supported the bill, such as natural history museums, were unhappy. These museums were competing with the Nature Conservancy and the Smithsonian Institution to be home to this new center--and its proposed $10 million annual budget. Wieting and others thought that the 15-year-old Heritage Program had been doing what this center was intended to do and, thus, should become the core of the center. Through that program, the Nature Conservancy had worked with all 50 state governments to set up four-person scientific teams that monitored endangered species by following a common methodology and being linked to a national database. "We thought it should be much broader," says Elaine Hoagland, executive director of the Association of Systematic Collections, which represents 80 of the nation's natural history museums and botanic gardens and 21 affiliated scientific societies. Hoagland hopes that the new center will look more broadly at whole ecosystems than does the Heritage Program, which focuses on conservation of endangered species. Hoagland thinks the center should be part of the Smithsonian. Not surprisingly, so does Thomas Lovejoy, the Smithsonian's assistant secretary for external affairs. "It should be at a place that is essentially an academically independent operation," Lovejoy says. "It's a mistake to put it in a regulatory agency." In the interest of getting some biodiversity measure into law, these groups are now working to resolve their differences. The members of the systematics collections association are trying to work out memoranda of understanding with local Heritage Programs, as is the Smithsonian with the Nature Conservancy, says Lovejoy. "It's just a question of trying to get a lot of people working together who aren't used to working together," says Hoagland. But it's another matter to get two congressional committees to sit down and agree on how to handle the bill before it is reintroduced. "We're going to have to change the way we do business," says one congressional staffer. --E.P. Promoters of the project say they aren't sure they're prepared for what may occur in this political environment. "We've all been rather snowed by how quickly this has grown," says Stephen Hubbell, an ecologist at Princeton University. "We feel kind of like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." What Hubbell is talking about began last December when he and Henry Howe, an ecologist at the University of Illinois in Chicago, convened 50 biologists, social scientists, physical scientists, and federal officials to discuss the idea of an institute. From that meeting arose the nonprofit Committee for the National Institutes for the Environment (NIE) and a plan for such an entity. Modeled after the National Institutes of Health, this free-standing agency would include institutes on biotic resources, ecosystem protection and management, sustainable resource use, the changing human environment, and climate change. It would provide training and grant support to revitalize ecology and help spur interdisciplinary research. "We want to do for the health of the environment what NIH does for health-related human sciences," says Brown. The idea was already in the wind when the ecologists met in Washington. Three months earlier, Rep. H. James Saxton (R-N.J.) had made a similar proposal in a speech at the Oceans '89 Conference in Seattle. Shortly afterward he introduced a resolution advocating a national institute. In 1988 the EPA science advisory board had urged the agency to do more long-term, basic ecological research. Its report, "Future Risk: Research Strategies for the 1990s," suggested that a research institute be set up. And other advisory bodies had made similar suggestions, which fell on deaf ears, in 1978 and 1983. This time may be different. The congressional action earmarks $400,000 from EPA's current budget for a study by the National Academy of Sciences. The academy's report, scheduled to be completed in a year, will go well beyond a potential environmental research institute to a broad examination of what the federal government is doing in environmental research. And while Eric Bretthauer, EPA assistant administrator for research and development, opposed such a study during Senate hearings on the matter last April, he has since issued a statement saying that the agency favors the study. In fact, the agency organized three public hearings in May and June to receive comments on the proposed institute. In the meantime, it's up to people like Howe and Hubbell to try to forge alliances with government officials who do not necessarily share their vision for an institute. Some scientists who support the concept want it to be independent of EPA; government officials would rather have it be part of some existing agency. In addition, while the scientists' NIE committee, which wants most to increase federal support for academic research, does not see a need for a big government operation, government officials hope to boost their research programs significantly. An In-House Program Many federal officials argue that a major part of NIE's mission should be database management and long-term monitoring and research. And those duties, they say, are best accomplished where investigators are not under the pressure to publish scientific papers frequently or to compete for grant support every few years. "There needs to be a strong in-house federal program," says Rick Linthurst, director of modeling, monitoring systems, and quality assurance of the EPA office of research and development. And then there are those federal officials who worry how their own environmental programs might be affected by a new kid on the block. "The big problem that this concept faces is one four-letter word--turf," says Robert Smythe, an ecologist at the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council, who emphasized that he was speaking for himself and not the NAS. "We all need to think like ecologists and ask how this [institute] will fit into the Washington financial ecosystem," he says. Otherwise, NIE could face the same unhappy stalemate as a proposal put forth last year to protect and enhance biodiversity (see accompanying story). Many federal agencies have programs that do some of what this new institute would do. Their administrators need to be part of the planning for any new institute, says Linthurst. Otherwise, he says, "it will be a `we and them' situation, and [the bills to create an NIE] will be turned down because they will be [seen as] a threat." Hubbell agrees. "The main thrust is not to blindside these agencies," he says, "but to make them aware that there is a vacant niche." That niche has arisen, he explains, because the nation needs more long-term research, a coordinated re- search agenda and increased integration and availability of environmental data. Critics of the proposed institute point to existing mechanisms for technology and data transfer and to a few long-term research projects at the U.S. Geological Survey, NSF, and the U.S. Forest Service. There are also opportunities for coordination. One example is the work of the Committee on Earth and Environmental Sciences, which, under the leadership of the Office of Science and Technology, oversees an interagency effort to develop a dynamic scientific agenda on global change and to make research data more accessible. But academic scientists aren't satisfied. "We want to broaden their agenda," says Hubbell. "We're trying to plug some major holes in the biological and social sciences dike." Too often, many experts agree, economics, demographics, and effects of human population growth are not part of research related to the health of ecosystems; yet these are important components. "The ultimate problem is us," says Brown. Those holes result in part from there being too little support for environmental biologists, Hubbell says, especially those whose research is applied. Right now, environmental biologists get about $64 million in federal grants support, three-quarters of which comes from NSF. NIE proponents hope that, within five years, the institute will have an annual budget of $500 million for supporting environmental biology and social science research--projects that develop basic knowledge that can be applied to some of the world's environmental problems. While environmental sciences encompass a range of issues, from the effects of the environment on human health to studies of deep- sea sediments and atmospheric circulation, investigations of ecosystems tend to receive less funding than these other aspects of the field, say NIE promoters. "It [biology] is easy to overlook because it doesn't have the constituency that some of the other types of sciences have," says Frank Harris, executive officer at the NSF Directorate for Biological, Behavioral, and Social Sciences. He adds that physical scientists seem able to agree on the bigger questions they want to address and, so, can argue more forcefully for congressional support. An environmental institute also could provide one-stop grant shopping for researchers, federal officials say. "There's no single place [for funding or for research]," says EPA's Linthurst. "There are many organizations in the federal government that do some of it, but from an ecologist's standpoint in academia, finding that source of funding is a difficult challenge at best." A unifying entity, NIE would fill in gaps created by the work at existing federal laboratories supported by the Departments of Energy, Interior, Defense, and Agriculture; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; NSF; and the Smith- sonian Institution. "Each of them is constrained one way or other by the operation of their parent agency," says Thomas Murphy, director of the EPA laboratory at Corvallis, Oreg. "They are influenced by political forces in terms of budget and operation, issues of quality, relevance, and responsiveness." In addition, the current federal environmental apparatus is weakened by redundancy and inefficiency, argues William Gordon, director of New Jersey Sea Grant, who from 1981 to 1986 headed the National Marine Fisheries Service. "Government is too huge; we have too many compartments," he says, noting that nine agencies are concerned with oceans and no less than 37 are involved in fisheries. "Despite what they say, they don't work well together," he adds. "There's all these jurisdictional squabbles, and the science isn't being used. There needs to be consolidation." But even officials who support the concept of expanding environmental research grow worried when that change involves creating another agency. "Under the present budget [situation], the last thing we need is to create a new, glitzy agency," says Linthurst. "I know a lot of people who are scared to death about creating a new mouth to feed." Nonetheless, NIE proponents say the present system just isn't up to handling the job. "One begins to run down federal agencies with research capability, and in each case, one has serious reservations about the ability of the organization as it is now constituted to serve as an appropriate home for this new institute," says Arthur Cooper, professor of forestry at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. "EPA's past research posture doesn't really inspire a great deal of confidence at this point," Cooper says. "Its funding shifts are too dramatic." Linthurst and others are hoping that the NAS study will put to rest some of these issues. And Gordon suggests that some squabbling can be avoided if NIE proponents include the agencies in the process. Donald Knowles, deputy under secretary of the Department of Interior, points out that scientists can be convinced to cede part of their turf if they think a change might create new career opportunities or a fresh chance to study a problem. But such acceptance by government scientists could be moot. Gordon fears that agency directors, even if they think the NIE is a good idea, will be told by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to testify against it because it means new money will have to be found. If not, then another program will have to be cut. OMB has taken no formal position on NIE because the proposal hasn't even reached its formative stages. But one OMB official admits, "There's no such thing as new money. Until you raise taxes you have to cut something to create something else." And Gordon is skeptical that Congress will believe strongly enough in the value of a new institute to warrant a reorganization of its bureaucracy. Currently, about two dozen committees have some say over the programs or budgets of agencies that support environmental research. "I think there is a reluctance of congressional committees to give up power," he explains. "The staffers would not allow that to happen. There would be a tremendous fight." To strengthen themselves for such a battle, scientists are rallying broad support for their efforts. Hubbell has gotten endorsements from such environmental organizations as the Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, and the National Resources Defense Council. About 600 scientists have signed onto Bitnet, an electronic mail network, and form the basis for grassroots activism. Even Allan Bromley, the president's science adviser, has voiced his support for the NAS study, although he says he will wait for its findings before taking a stand on the issue. Given the long odds, Princeton's Hubbell isn't about to predict victory. "There's a political momentum that has been started," he says, "but whether we can ride it out is anyone's guess." But Hubbell thinks that a more unified approach to environmental research is inevitable. "It's just a question of whether the country is going to wake up and do it sooner... or take a much more reactive option."

Ecologists Hope Planned NAS Evaluation Will Lead To New Environment Institute

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