Acidification research: Lessons from history and visions of environmental futures

For many centuries, human activities have become progressively more significant forces in the biogeochemical circulation of matter in the earth. In recent decades, the phenomena and effects of acidification have played a central role in scientific and social learning about both human impacts on ecosystems and the importance of regional, international, and global strategies in environmental protection. The history of acidification research and policy analysis in Europe and North America is reviewed in an attempt to discover lessons that can be learned from past successes and shortcomings in environmental research and policy. These lessons are summarized in the context of distinctions among possible futures, probable futures, and preferable futures in industrial and developing regions. These analyses indicate four general needs for the future: 1) New paradigms for certain types of scientific research - especially natural resources and environmental research, 2) Effective mechanisms to ensure quality, integrity, and social- and policy-relevancy in science itself and in science-based assessments of alternative means by which societies can achieve economic-development and environmental goals; 3) Guidelines for the collaborative roles that scientists, policy analysts, decision makers, and professional communicators in democratic societies should play at the interface between science and public policy; and 4) Further debate, public understanding and increased acceptance of ethical guidelines in making decisions among probable futures, possible futures, and preferable futures in the relationships between humans and ''The Nature.'' Such guidelines could be based on: a) Aldo Leopold's concept of land ethics, b) Gro Brundtland's concept of sustainable development, c) van Rensselaer Potter's concept of ecological bioethics, and d) Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative - ''Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law''.