10 Year Vision
The Forum's ten-year vision guides the activities of the Forum, and our partnerships with other bodies, through which we will enable its realisation:
- The UK will maintain and enhance a world class environmental research base, recognised for its scientific excellence and valued for its effective contribution to addressing key issues of environmental management in the UK and internationally.
- Funders, the science community and users of that science will be working effectively together, ensuring that efforts are directed to priority issues, that scientific outcomes are taken up and applied and that environmental science enables and informs government policy. There will be an appropriate balance between basic, strategic and applied research and no barriers to effective interdisciplinary research.
- Horizon scanning and our scientific endeavour will be enabling the early identification of environmental issues and developing new knowledge and technologies to enable them to be resolved.
- UK environmental research will be well linked internationally, with the UK acting as a prime mover in relevant international initiatives and having access to facilities and equipment developed internationally.
- Where equipment and facilities are appropriately provided at a UK level they will be state of the art and their use optimised. We will have a clear, shared view of the UK's needs for environmental data and effective mechanisms for the collection and management of those data.
- Training of environmental scientists will result in graduates and postgraduates with the knowledge and skills required by industry, government and academia. Academic career paths will ensure a healthy scientific community and enable the development of future world leaders in environmental research.