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286Cairns: Eco-Ethics and Sustainability Ethicsmic institutions, regarding this independence as freedom from being told what to do. I contrastedthis with the requirements of an interdisciplinary team, the difficulty of achieving independence inthe sciences without extramural funding, and the risk of ideas for research in a highly specializeddiscipline languishing unfunded because they don’t coincide with the interests of funding agencies,which are concerned for interdisciplinary problems. ‘Haves’ with extramural funding are muchmore likely to publish in the sciences than the ‘have nots’, and publications enhance mobility andthe choices an individual has in the academic arena. These considerations suggest that independencemay be on the side of the interdisciplinary team worker, rather than the side of the specialiststaying within his discipline.In this period of financial hardship for most academic institutions in the United States and manyother countries, administrators of academic institutions look quite favorably on faculty memberswho bring additional financial resources to the institution and reward them with a lighter teachingload, better research space, and additional staff assistance paid for by the institution. While thepublic and its elected representatives are continually reminded by those seeking research fundingthat all investment in science, however esoteric, eventually produces societal dividends, they areincreasingly reluctant to fund purely theoretical research because it seems so remote from globalproblems.It is clear that all of the major global problems, such as climate change, acid rain, environmentalpollution, and loss of biodiversity, cannot be resolved within the confines of a single discipline.Interdisciplinary teams are needed to resolve these major environmental problems, and it is tointerdisciplinary teams that large block grants are made available to deal with such problems. Anenvironmental professional engaged in interdisciplinary work may have acquired a degree in anyof the major classical disciplines, scientific or non-scientific, but the gate keepers (i.e. those whoaward status) predominantly identify themselves with a specific discipline. Although many academicinstitutions have a department of environmental science or some variation of this, thepercentage of the total faculty in such a department is generally small. Rarely does such adepartment contain an adequate array of specialists to resolve a major environmental problem. Inmost academic institutions, the department organized according to discipline is still the dominantmode, and those working on broad-scale environmental problems must do so outside the disciplinarydepartment. This results in a loss of status within the department and the discipline at aparticular institution.The same dilemma exists at the national and international levels. Most of the well-establishedjournals represent a particular discipline or subunit of a discipline. For example, in biology, there area large number of sub-disciplines such as molecular biology, fisheries, ecology, genetics, and bytaxonomic unit. Certain short cuts can be taken within the discipline because of a correct assumptionof a substantial base of commonly shared knowledge. In interdisciplinary activities, such as abase of commonly shared knowledge cannot be taken for granted. Communications, both in publicationsand presentations at professional meetings, must include details that appear elementaryto highly specialized individuals. The highly specialized individuals within a discipline can moreeasily display unique research or insights to those sharing a common body of knowledge than canthe individual attempting to do so within an interdisciplinary context where the common body ofknowledge is far less substantial. Consequently, in the eyes of many professionals, there is a lossof status because of the mixture of basic and advanced information.When individuals from two distinct disciplines collaborate in an area shared between the disciplines,it is extraordinarily difficult to get appropriate reviewers for the resulting manuscripts, even