In spring 2017, researchers at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions set out to determine what and how a broad cross-section of thought leaders at private corporations, nonprofits, government agencies, and universities think about emerging environmental trends, risks, and opportunities.
Through the Emerging Environmental Issues Survey, the researchers aimed to assess both the reach and the manageability of environmental change.
“We received responses from over three dozen CEOs, presidents, executive directors, senior economists, chief scientists, and sustainability managers, representing a wide variety of sectors and industries,” said John Virdin, Ocean and Coastal Policy Program director at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, who conducted the survey with the Nicholas Institute’s Water Policy Program director Martin Doyle and Christopher Galik, NCSU associate professor of public administration. “By virtue of their personal and professional experience these individuals are uniquely qualified to foresee new and developing environmental issues as, or even before, they arise.”
Responses suggested that in the initial months of the Trump administration almost half of survey respondents reported that they were at least somewhat optimistic about the general state of the environment. That perception changed when looking to the future.
“Looking ahead five years, more than half the respondents stated that they were somewhat or very pessimistic about environmental conditions in the future,” said Galik.
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