Conference session: Culture, Values, World Perspectives and Climate Change
GECHS chair Karen O’Brien at the University of Oslo and Thomas Heyd at the University of Victoria are organizing a session for the upcoming Copenhagen science congress on Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions, which will be held from 10-12 March 2009. The session falls under the broader theme of Mobilising the Populace: Human Dimensions of Climate Change. The session welcomes papers and posters that address climate change from the perspectives of individual and societal values, cultures, and worldviews. A wide range of issues, including psychological, ethical, and anthropological perspectives on climate change, are critical to understanding the behavioral and systemic responses that can potentially contribute to both mitigation and adaptation. The session will identify contributions from the social sciences and the humanities that enhance understanding of the factors that influence vulnerability and resilience, and that broaden discussions and debates about global risks, challenges, and decisions related to climate change. The scientific conference in March will lead up to the COP-15 in Copenhagen in late 2009, and the findings will be supplementary to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Deadline for submission of abstracts is the 1 September 2008, and guidelines for submission of abstracts are available on the conference website.