ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES

Ranging from the fundamental challenges facing scientists to the applied challenges facing policymakers and managers, environmental challenges take many forms. In the field of environmental change, the overall challenge is to understand the way the earth system and the many subsystems of the geo-ecosphere work: first, for its own sake, second, as a basis for clean-up of the legacy of environmental problems and, third, so that warnings of impending changes can be given and appropriate actions can be taken if the environment is under threat. This in turn necessitates knowledge not only of how the environment is changing now but also how it has changed in the past. Past changes and events broaden our experience and provide a test bed for ideas, models and mechanisms relating to how the environment is changing now and how it might behave in the future.

Many subsidiary environmental challenges are involved in understanding the whole, a selection of which can be listed: