Environmental treaties are different from other types of international instruments. The complex technical nature of the underlying science can prove to be a hindrance, lead to overgeneralizations to achieve consensus, and thus reduce the effectiveness of the agreement. This stems in part from the difficulty that a given country might experience in grasping the full ramifications and implications of a given agreement and, in turn, leads to concerns about the existence of invisible asymmetries within in the treaty that could unfairly burden certain parties. Particular components of the agreement have to be carefully crafted to make them workable and acceptable to all parties in a given negotiation, thus helping to bolster its subsequent authority.

This outline describes the development of a residency program for visual artists, film-makers, writers, and scientists, as well as a facility to house the program. The mission of the center will be to promote collaboration among highly creative people to make art that celebrates and elevates our perception of the natural world and our sense of place in it. The program will select and invite resident fellows to use the facility and its location in coastal southeastern Massachusetts for this specific purpose. Artists and scientists who focus their work on nature and the environment will break new intellectual ground by forging collaborative partnerships. This section summarizes the overall concept, followed by a rationale, a brief description of the program, and an outline of the financial model.

In this paper, I have tried to capture something of the essence of these great institutions and I have tried to connect this to our aspiration for their potential future leadership role in society. The ideas outlined below are distilled from six years of institutional experience, gleaned from convening over 40 workshops with more than 1500 participants. Participants came from all segments of the 250 colleges and universities that were represented at these meetings. We have also drawn on the rich source of information provided by our stakeholders and audience that has accumulated on our website, to refine the workshops over time to reflect our own organizational learning on this issue.

Science has a special place in the expert-role in public persuasion in the late twentieth century, perhaps rivaled only in history by the control exerted by the Christian Church in the Middle ages in Europe.[1] The Church was able to allege that it was able to unearth the “Truth” from insights into a reality that was totally independent. This authority was believed to have been grounded in the very nature of everything. The growth of modern science and the reformation began to erode this once infallible position and Christians became restive over the abuse of power both within and by the church. The “One Church” became many and science and reason was ascendant. Sensory observation provided the data and reason made it reasonable. Public experience and rationality became the cornerstones of truth, and scientific and objective became synonymous - “If I could see the yellow Forsythia bush, you probably could as well”. The subjective was relegated to the unscientific and even beyond the scope of reason. In the early debate over the ozone issue we see the essence of this argument played out in a strictly late-twentieth century issue. There are echoes in this story of Galileo and many of the other subsequent challenges to all types of “current dogma.”