GECHS

The international conference Climate Change, Social Stress and Violent Conflict, will be organized at the Klima Campus at Hamburg University, November 19-20, 2009. The workshop aims to bring together national and international experts to explore and discuss main elements of the current “state of the art” in terms of knowledge on security implications and conflict potential of climate change. Furthermore participants will explore research needs, both with respect to problem analysis and methodologies. Besides providing a snapshot of the current debate, it aims at building connections among individuals and research groups that can provide a basis for establishing an international network on climate security and conflict.

These are some of the guiding questions for the conference:

• What are the major causal chains between climate change and violent conflict, and what is the empirical basis for these linkages, revisiting previous assessments of environmental conflict?

• Which approaches, methods and theories are helpful for the analysis of the links between climate change, social stress and violent conflict?

• Is it adequate to call climate change a threat to national or international security?

• Are broader security conceptions (such as environmental or human security) useful for evaluating the violence risks of climate change?

• What is the likelihood, potential damage and resulting risk for violent conflict of water and food scarcity, mass migrations and natural disasters induced by climate change?

Deadline for submission of abstracts is August 31, 2009. Send abstracts of maximum one page to: ClimateSecurity@uni-hamburg.de (Subject line: Abstract Climate Conflict Conference). The conference organizer is KlimaCampus, Universität Hamburg.

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

The book “Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures”, written by GECHS Associate Robin Leichenko and GECHS Chair Karen O’Brien, has been selected to receive the 2008 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography. The book explores the connections between two of the most transformative processes of the twenty-first century, namely global environmental change and globalization. In the book, Leichenko and O’Brien present a conceptual framework for analyzing the interactions between these two processes, and they illustrate, through case studies, how these interactions create situations of “double exposure.” Drawing upon prominent recent and current environmental events – Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, recurring droughts in India, and the melting of the Arctic sea ice – the case studies each demonstrate a different pathway of interaction between globalization and environmental change. The double exposure framework not only sheds light on the challenges raised by these processes, but also possibilities for using the interactions to generate positive opportunities for action.

Read more about the book here.

The Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) project organized an International Human Dimensions Workshop (IHDW) on “Sustainable Adaptation to Climate Change” October 11-16, 2009, New Delhi, India. A total of 17 researchers and practitioners from around the world attended and contributed to this seminar. The participation of 5 young researchers from Africa was funded from START/PACOM African Global Change Research Grants. The training seminar focused on the concept of sustainable adaptation to climate change as a means of enhancing human security. In particular, the relationship between adaptation and development was explored, including how poverty reduction strategies can have either positive or negative influences on vulnerability to climate change. The role of social and technological innovations for development was also addressed in the seminar, especially the role of renewable energy technologies in contribution to increased adaptive capacity and sustainable adaptation. The presentations given during the IHDW are listed below:

• Presentation Chaurey IHDW Delhi 2008.pdf
• Presentation Erhart IHDW Delhi 2008.pdf
• Presentation Park IHDW Delhi 2008.pdf
• Presentation O’Brien IHDW Delhi 2008.pdf
• Presentation Eriksen IHDW Delhi 2008.pdf
• Presentation Roychowdhury Delhi 2008.pdf
• Presentation_Sygna_IHDWDelhi2008.pdf
• Case Study Presentation Aldunce IHDW Delhi 2008.pdf
• Case Study Presentation Erhart IHDW 2008.pdf
• Case Study Presentation Martins IHDW Delhi 2008.pdf
• Case Study Presentation Olorunfemi IHDW Delhi 2008.pdf
• Group Presentation Plenary Nhemachena IHDW Delhi 2008.pdf