GECHS

16-17 April 2009

The conference “Climate change in South Asia: Governance, equity and social justice” will be organized at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Climate change presents significant challenges for South Asia. Although the effects of climate change on social and environmental systems are likely to be highly uneven (even between communities within South Asia), impoverished regions and populations may bear the brunt of these changes. Therefore, addressing climate change within the South Asian context will require new types of social institutions, cooperative responses and new forms of governance. Papers are invited that address climate change issues within any country or region of South Asia. Preference will be given in paper selection to those that connect their topic to one or more of the broad conference themes of governance, equity, and social justice. For more information, see the conference website. Abstracts of 250 words or less should be sent to the conference organizers before September 15, 2008.

26-30 April 2009

The 7th International Science Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (Open Meeting) will be organised by The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, IHDP. The conferencetakes place from 26 – 30 April 2009 in Bonn, Germany. The venue will be the former German Parliament premises at the United Nations University 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. GECHS will organize 12 sessions with more than 60 paper presentations in the conference.

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 the GECHS 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
• Conflict and Sustainability
• Climate Change and Conflicts
• 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

22-24 June 2009

The GECHS Synthesis Conference under the theme “Human Security in an Era of Global Change” will take place June 22-24, 2009, at the University of Oslo, Norway. The conference represents an opportunity to gather researchers, policy makers and stakeholders from different fields to discuss the interactions between various processes of change and what they mean for human security, and to reflect on how notions of human security are being transformed in the face of global environmental change. The conference will also serve as a forum for discussing future research agendas and linkages to policies and practitioner communities. A number of high-profile keynote speakers is invited to the meeting, and a series of “synthesis panels” is included in the program. We anticipate that the conference will attract approximately 160 participants. More information can be found at the GECHS conference website.