Leadership Support of the Board on Environmental Change and Society

This project aims to serve the nation by mobilizing the social and behavioral sciences to address social, political, economic, and equity dimensions of environmental challenges. The Board on Environmental Change and Society (BECS) draws on nationally recognized experts from different disciplines and practitioner communities to identify and inform solutions for the increasingly urgent and complex challenges facing the nation and the world at the intersection of environmental change and society.

BECS provides a unique platform for objective, independent, and rigorous deliberation among researchers, the public, the media, Congress, professional associations, the National Science Foundation, and other federal agencies. Activities such as consensus studies, workshops, expert meetings, seminars, and virtual events in response to societal needs and explicit requests from federal agencies and other sponsors are the foundation of the Board’s work.

Topical areas include climate change, environmental shocks to social systems, energy transitions, the rural/urban divide, land-use changes, and advancing new lines of research to provide benefits to society through advancing partnerships and collaborations between the natural and social sciences.

The following themes will be addressed in the three years covered by this award: identifying new lines of cross-cutting research; increasing greater coordination and integration across solution areas; and advancing community engagement so that solutions more comprehensively address community needs and equity issues. Among the complex scientific challenges faced by the government and society at large, better insight into the interactions between human activities and the environment is paramount.

The social and behavioral sciences are the foundation for advancing knowledge about how people and societies behave and interact while both responding to and contributing to global environmental change. By joining the social sciences and natural sciences to examine such interactions, BECS provides a unique forum for advancing scientific knowledge while informing solutions to improve societal well-being.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.