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

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.

The book addresses the theoretical, philosophical, ethical and religious and spatial context of security and discusses the relationship between security, peace, development and environment. Furthermore, the book reviews the reconceptualization of security in philosophy, international law, economics and political science, the political, military, economic, social and environmental security dimension and the adaptation of the institutional security concepts of the UN, EU and NATO. The book also analyzes the reconceptualization of regional security and alternative security futures and draws conclusions for future research and action.

This book contains revised papers from three workshops at ISA ( Montreal), IPRA ( Sopron) and the Fourth Pan European Conference on International Relations (The Hague) and additional commissioned papers. Here, you can read more about the Spanish edition, and the Turkish edition.

Read more about the book here.

The findings of this report suggest a timely need to assess the role that disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation can play in minimizing threats to human security. The risk of more complex, frequent, intense or unpredictable extreme weather events associated with global temperature increases, changing precipitation patterns and sea level rise, coupled with both gradual and non-linear changes to ecosystems and natural resources, suggests the need for a renewed focus on the ways that disaster risk reduction and adaptation can influence the context in which climate change occurs. Rather than creating or perpetuating contexts for disaster, it is possible to use disaster risk reduction and adaptation strategies to create a context that promotes human well-being and security.

This report and a comprehensive bibliography served as a background and support for an International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR)/Norway lead proposal, presented at the 28th session of the IPCC in 1-4 September 2008, for an IPCC Special Report on “Managing the Risk of Extreme Events to Advance Climate Change Adaptation”. The writing of the report and the bibliography was funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Two types of contributions are sought for two sub-sessions: The first sub-session welcomes broad characterizations of the inequities involved in adapting to climate change, such as how vulnerability and adaptation interact with national poverty, regional imbalances in adaptive capacity, adaptation in the context of national colonial histories, and the ethics of imposing the adaptation burden in an already unequal world. This sub-session will ideally also reflect upon opportunities and barriers that might either enhance or frustrate sustainable development and resilience building efforts. The second sub-session invites contributions that discuss proposals and practice for funding climate adaptation. Several different models have been proposed to include equity issues in their frameworks for who should pay for and who should receive climate aid, including a nation’s emissions responsibility and capability to pay. This scientific conference in March will lead up to the COP-15 in Copenhagen in late 2009, and will provide a synthesis of existing and emerging scientific knowledge relevant for designing and implementing mitigation and adaptation strategies in response to climate change.

Abstracts can only be submitted online, no later than 1 September 2008.

For more information, see the conference website.

For more information, see the conference website. Abstracts of 250 words or less should be sent to the conference organizers before September 15, 2008.

Full details are available at the conference website.