Project Scope

The National Academies’ Science and Technology for Sustainability Program is undertaking a nationally-focused study entitled Sustainability Linkages in the Federal Government. The Linkages initiative will attempt to identify and describe the linkages among domains such as energy, water, and health that are not routinely considered in decisionmaking. The premise is that sustainability is a systems problem that cannot be achieved by separately optimizing its pieces. The study will build upon existing and emerging expertise throughout the scientific, technological, and policy communities, describing the nexus where domains intersect but existing institutions and disciplines do not. The committee will convene a series of fact finding meetings, commission expert-authored case studies, review the pertinent literature, and author an overall consensus report, which will include a decision framework that can be used by U.S. policymakers and regulators to help them examine the consequences, tradeoffs, synergies, and operational benefits of sustainability-oriented programs

Meetings & Events

Meeting 1: Sustainability Linkages in the Federal Government
The Dupont Circle Hotel
1500 New Hampshire Avenue
Washington, DC 20036
September 20-21, 2011  

• Meeting Information
• Agenda and Presentations

Meeting 2: Sustainability Linkages in the Federal Government
Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture
17th Ave NE and NE 45th St
Seattle, WA 98195
February 7-8, 2012  

• Meeting Information
• Agenda and Presentations

Reports

Report Forthcoming
 

Committee Membership Information

• Thomas Graedel (Chair) (NAE)
  Clifton R. Musser Professor of Industrial Ecology, Yale University
• Robert Anex
  Professor, Biological Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• William Carroll, Jr.
  Vice President, Industry Issues, Occidental Chemical Corporation
• Glen T. Daigger (NAE)
  Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, CH2M HILL
• Faye Duchin
  Professor of Economics, Director of the Doctoral Program in Ecological Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Paulo Ferrao
  Professor, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Technical University of Lisbon
• Howard Frumkin
  Dean, University of Washington School of Public Health
• Sally Katzen
  Visiting Professor, New York University School of Law
• Anna Palmisano
  Associate Director of Science for Biological and Environmental Research, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy (ret.)
• Stephen Polasky (NAS)
  Fesler-Lampert Professor of Ecological/Environmental Economics, University of Minnesota
• Lynn Scarlett
  Senior Visiting Scholar, Resources for the Future
• Robert Stephens
  President, Multi-State Working Group on Environmental Performance
• Deborah Swackhamer
  Professor and Charles M. Denny Jr., Chair in Science, Technology, and Public Policy, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota
• Thomas Wilbanks
  Corporate Research Fellow, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Lauren Zeise
  Chief, Reproductive and Cancer Hazard Assessment Branch, California Environmental Protection Agency
  
  View the committee membership information in the National Academies' Current Projects System

Staff 

• Marina Moses, Director, Science and Technology for Sustainability Program
• Jennifer Saunders, Program Officer, Science and Technology for Sustainability Program
• Emi Kameyama, Program Associate, Science and Technology for Sustainability Program
• Dylan Richmond, Research Assistant,  Science and Technology for Sustainability Program
  
   

Sponsors

The project is sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, BP, Lockheed Martin, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation.