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Press Release | 3. May 2005

Center for Research on Environmental Decisions Launched

A new center to investigate individual and group decision making under climate uncertainty and environmental risk has been created with a five-year National Science Foundation grant of $5.9 million. The Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED), based at Columbia University, celebrated its official launch in a ceremony at Low Library on Wednesday, May 4 at 6 p.m. The event was followed by CRED's first annual meeting of affiliated researchers and advisory boards.

Elke Weber launches new Center for Research on Environmental Decisions

The launch featured speaker Michael Oppenheimer, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. Oppenheimer discussed serious global environmental threats such as rising levels of greenhouse gases and potential melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Yet he emphasized the great degree of uncertainty in our knowledge of the extent and timing of these threats and our understanding of the risks that they pose to human society. These dangers pose social questions as much as scientific ones. It is therefore critical that natural and social scientists work together to understand the effects of climate uncertainty and its impact on human decision making.

CRED is led by David Krantz, Professor of Psychology and Statistics at Columbia; Elke Weber, Jerome A. Chazen Professor of Management, International Business and Psychology at Columbia Business School; Roberta Balstad, Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN); and Kenneth Broad, Assistant Professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy at the University of Miami.

The work of the center is coordinated by Director Elke Weber, Associate Director Sabine Marx and Assistant Director Debika Shome. Bridging the social and natural sciences, CRED is a joint center of ISERP and the Earth Institute, and is affiliated with ISERP's Center for the Decision Sciences. CRED currently serves as an umbrella for 16 projects, conducted by 24 researchers at eight universities. Research projects include a wide range of decision makers - farmers, water resource managers, policy makers -dd in a variety of geographical regions around the globe.

Peter Bearman, chair of the Department of Sociology and Director of ISERP, is an enthusiastic supporter of the new center: "As an interdisciplinary initiative linking the social and natural sciences, and one that brings basic science to bear on matters of critical public concern, CRED exemplifies the kind of project that ISERP was established to promote."

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, also expressed strong support: "It is likely that climate change will further stress the lives of the world's poorest people, especially those in the tropics and arid regions of the world. CRED's work will be of critical importance to learning how society can best manage these changes and minimize their impacts."

Decisions based on weather and climate predictions impact critical matters such as agricultural production, water supply and usage, and public health. Yet the uncertainty surrounding climate change and climate variability, and the potential threats associated with it, complicate the decision-making process. If how people deal with such uncertainty can be better understood, the way people adapt to increased variability and change can be improved with better decision tools, including improvements in the format and delivery of climate forecasts.

CRED will produce basic research on environmental decision making. According to Krantz and Weber, individual and group decision mechanisms have generally been studied separately, the first by cognitive and social psychologists, the second by other social scientists such as sociologists or anthropologists. CRED will integrate these approaches and provide research based in the laboratory and in field sites.

Building on its research, CRED will develop new interventions and decision tools to improve decision making. By educating scientists, CRED directors aim to improve the flow of information between the fields of decision making and climate change. The center will also develop educational programming for audiences ranging from high-school students to academic researchers and policy makers.