Global Environmental Change Committee
The Global Environmental Change Committee (GECC) was an
inter-agency committee, chaired by Defra’s Chief Scientific Adviser
(CSA) and reporting to the Government CSA. It ceased to
exist in 2010 following the creation of the Living With
Environmental Change (LWEC) programme.
Membership was drawn from Government Departments, Research
Councils and other organisations. The committee was founded in 2001
and met annually in the autumn. Responsibility for management
of the GECC and all its subgroups except Biodiversity was with
the Climate and Energy: Science and Analysis (CESA) team in the
Department of Energy and Climate Change.
GECC provided a forum for the coordination of the UK’s
involvement in climate change and other global environmental change
science and technology nationally and internationally, working
through sub-groups as required and taking into account the work of
other relevant coordination mechanisms and fora. Its Terms of
Reference were:
- To review the effectiveness of the
national capacity, capability and performance in these areas and to
make recommendations;
- To recommend to the Government’s
Chief Scientific Adviser a lead Department / Agency in areas of
science and technology where responsibility is unclear;
- To ensure that Government policy on
climate change and other global environmental change issues is both
sufficiently informed by and informs the work undertaken by the
science base;
- To support effective UK participation
in international climate change and other global environmental
change science and technology programmes;
- To encourage effective communication
of climate change and other global environmental change science and
technology;
- To report to CSAC on developments in
Climate Change S&T and other global environmental change
science.
GECC was supported by five sub-groups, intended as
ad hoc working groups dealing with specific issues as
needed. The following sub-groups were established in
2004, but ceased to operate in this form 2010:
- Observations
- Global environmental research
coordination and agenda
- Global biodiversity
- Science – Policy forum
- Supercomputing and other capital
requirements