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here seems to be a consensus that federal funding for U.S. scientific research will decrease over the next five to seven years, perhaps dramatically. Estimates for total funding decreases range from 20% to 40%, depending on the party in power and the federal agency involved. This suggests that efforts should be made to ensure that available funding is spent as effectively as possible. This in turn raises issues regarding basic versus mission-directed research; the relative emphasis on health, environment, energy, defense, and other research areas; and the roles of universities, national laboratories, and the private sector. In the area of environment, energy, and public health, these issues inevitably stimulate a discussion of the divided and overlapping responsibilities of different federal departments that conduct and sponsor research. Anyone who interacts with several agencies will soon realize that there is a lot of duplication in the research projects sponsored by the Department of Energy EPA, the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and others. In a day when we were flush with funding, duplication might have been ignored; but now and in the future, duplication means that some essential research will not be addressed. We must do something tangible and substantial to improve the efficiency of research administration within federal agencies. We must require more effective partnerships between the agencies and between academia and the national laboratories, set goals objectively and intelligently, and involve the private sector in a meaningful and constructive way to move research from the conceptual and basic stages to practice. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has made a commendable effort to improve cooperation between federal agencies so as to affect budgets. It is not clear, however, that these efforts have resulted in much change. Many people feel that we will not be able to improve the efficiency of research without a wholesale reorganization of federal research agencies. The ongoing National Institute for the Environment initiative is a step in this direction, but we may need something bolder. At a minimum, we need a serious discussion of options such as merging DOE and EPA (perhaps with separation of the regulatory arm of EPA and transfer of the weapons program from DOE to DOD) and transferring the environmental and energy programs within the other agencies to this new entity. This type of restructuring would need to be accompanied by a new mechanism to fund basic environmental research and a reorganization and merger of federal laboratories. Also needed would be the establishment of ways for the laboratories to effectively cooperate with universities and industry on a joint research agenda that goes beyond a preoccupation with short-term issues such as remediation to the needs of a sustainable, globally linked society. To accomplish this goal, Congress and the Clinton administration will need to overcome political differences and the resistance of the existing infrastructure to protect its territory. But if we get on with this task now, we might be able to have a more effective environmental and energy apparatus in place during the first decade of the new millennium.
0013-936X/96/0930-515A$12.00/0 © 1996 American Chemical Society
William H. Glaze Editor VOL. 30, NO. 12, 1996 /ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS " 5 1 5 A
