OVERSEAS countries are increasingly coming to Britain for research into the environment, just as the British government is cutting its own funding. The Natural Environment Research Council anticipates a major shift in the balance of commissioned research income over the next four years, with funding from overseas and nongovernment sources overhauling guaranteed funding from Whitehall by 1995. This projection emerges in the council’s latest corporate strategy, published this week (see Table above). Although the NERC faces cuts from both the British science budget and commissioned research, it insists that ‘expectations of new funding remain high due to the priority now given to environmental matters’.
