Green growth can be a way to pursue economic growth while preventing environmental degradation. The Interim Report highlights preliminary findings on a number of key issues that policymakers face in creating greener economies.

The Committee on the Future of Supercomputing was tasked to assess prospects for supercomputing technology research and development in support of U.S. needs, to examine key elements of context-the history of supercomputing, the erosion of research investment, the changing nature of problems demanding supercomputing, and the needs of government agencies for supercomputing capabilities-and to assess options for progress. This interim report establishes context-including the history and current state of supercomputing, application requirements, technology evolution, the socioeconomic context-to identify some of the issues that may be explored in more depth in the second phase of the study.

Martin Parry University College, London, UK The 13 country studies collected in this re Adaptations Assessment published by the port represent the first of what is likely to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change become a worldwide, country-by-country (Carter et al., 1994) as an agreed technical estimate of the likely impacts of, and appro set of scientific methods for climate impact priate adaptations to, greenhouse-gas-in assessment and has written its own guidance duced global climate change. document, Guidance for Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment (U.S. CSP, 1994). Under the U.N. Framework Convention on The u.S. Country Studies Program devel Climate Change (UNFCCC), signatories oped the Guidance and other reviews of agreed to two near-term actions and one ma methodology into a nonspecialist set of jor subsequent one. The two near-term ac workbooks for use at the country level, tions are to make annual estimates of the which, backed up by advice from experi emissions and sinks of greenhouse gases, enced scientists from the United States and which are now being reported as part of a other countries, enabled local scientists to country-by-country inventory developed by conduct their own vulnerability and adapta the U.N. Environment Programme, the Or tion assessments.