GECHS

The GECHS project is currently in its synthesis phase, and therefore a special issue of IHDP UPDATE Magazine has been dedicated to important themes in the process of synthesising 10 years of research on human security and global environmental change. The GECHS Synthesis Conference was organised June 22-24 2009, at the University of Oslo, Norway, as part of this synthesis process. At this conference, the new role for “human dimensions” research on human security in a rapidly changing world was discussed. Building on these multiple perspectives and a wide range of thematic and geographical expertise, the IHDP Secretariat and GECHS co-published this special issue of the IHDP UPDATE magazine, No. 2 2009, which is available for download here.

GECHS chair Karen O’Brien is co-editor of this comprehensive book on adaptation to climate change, with Neil Adger, University of East Anglia and Irene Lorenzoni, University of East Anglia. The book presents the latest science and social science research on whether the world can adapt to climate change. Written by experts, both academics and practitioners, it examines the risks to ecosystems, demonstrating how values, culture and the constraining forces of governance act as barrier to action. The book includes historical, contemporary, and future insights into adaptation to climate change. It covers adaptation issues from different perspectives: climate science, hydrology, engineering, ecology, economics, human geography, anthropology and political science; and contains contributions from leading researchers and practitioners from around the world.

A conference on ‘Climate change and security’ is being organized for the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, on the occasion of its 250th anniversary. The conference will take place 21–24 June 2010 in Trondheim, Norway. The purpose of this conference is to examine the broad security implications of climate change. For the last few years, the debate about climate change has increasingly focused on the social implications, including the implications for security and peace. But as yet there is little academic work in this area. While the science of climate change is well established on the basis of peer-reviewed publications, the literature on the security implications remains more speculative. We aim to move this field forward with the joint efforts of scholars from multiple fields.

Over four days, morning plenary sessions will feature keynote addresses by established names in the field. The afternoon sessions will consist of workshops with research papers selected on the basis of an open call. Following the conference, we hope to gather some of the best papers in a special issue of a relevant journal or an edited volume with an academic publisher. More information is published at the conference webpage. You can also go directly to the Call for papers . The Call ends on 31 August 2009.

GECHS will organize 12 sessions with more than 60 paper presentations in the Open Meeting in Bonn 26-30 April 2009. The meeting will take place at the former German Parliament premises on the United Nations Campus.

This 7th Open Meeting, “Social Challenges of Global Change”, addresses the need to incorporate not only the social aspects of climate change, but also the social aspects of many other environmental changes which happen in our society, such as resource shortages, the destruction of ecosystem services, and new threats to human health.

The GECHS sessions cover important aspects of the social challenges of global change, including how to approach the threats to human security, emerging new vulnerabilities in megacities and its implications for human security, interactions between globalization and global environmental change, limits and barriers to climate adaptation, climate change and conflicts, sustainable adaptation, environmental management and human security for disaster resilient communities, sustainability and adaptive capacity, and reducing water insecurity through stakeholder participation.

An overview over these sessions is presented below. The full program for the conference is available at the Open Meeting website.

• Emerging New Vulnerabilities in Megacities and Implications for Human Security
• Emerging Urban Vulnerabilities under Climate Change: Implications for Health and Human Security
• Sustainable Adaptation: Climate Change and Poverty Reduction
• Reducing Water Insecurity through Stakeholder Participation in River Basin Management
• Human Security in the 21st Century
• Double Exposure: Interactions between Globalisation and Global Environmental Change
• Limits I: Barriers and Limits to Adaptation Posed by Governance (international focus)
• Limits II: Barriers and Limits to Adaptation Posed by Governance (National and Subnational Focus)
• Limits III: Barriers and Limits Relating to the Role of Communities in Local Adaptation
• Sustainability and Adaptive Capacity

GECHS associates Hans Günther Brauch and Úrsula Oswald Spring are the first and second editors of Volume IV in the Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace. The title of the new volume is “Facing Global Environmental Change – Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts”.

This is a policy-focused, global and multidisciplinary security handbook which addresses new security threats of the 21^st century posed by climate change, desertification, water stress, population growth and urbanization. These are security dangers and concerns that lead to migration, crises and conflicts, and they are on the agenda of the UN, OECD, OSCE, NATO and EU.

The book analyses the global debate on environmental, human and gender, energy, food, livelihood, health and water security concepts and policy problems. They suggest a new research programme to move from knowledge to action, from reactive to proactive policies and to explore the opportunities of environmental cooperation for a new peace policy. For information on the whole Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, please see the Springer Link website.