GECHS

The title of the current IHDP Update is “The Implications of Global Environmental Change for Human Security in Coastal Urban Areas”. The issue is a joint effort by three IHDP core projects: Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC); Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS); and Land-Ocean Interactions in Coastal Zones (LOICZ). It focuses on natural disasters associated with global environmental change in coastal urban areas and sheds light on the main pathways of social and urban vulnerability to natural disasters caused by climate variability and change. The invited authors explore the close links between global environmental change, human security, and urbanization from multidimensional perspectives seeking to provide integrated approaches to those complex interactions. To subscribe to the newsletter, see the IHDP website under Publications.

This years theme for the global Human Development Report is climate change, as the defining human development challenge of the 21st century. The report, “Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world”, states that failure to respond to that challenge will stall and then reverse international efforts to reduce poverty. And looking to the future, no country - however wealthy or powerful - will be immune to the impact of global warming. This Human Development Report argues that climate change poses challenges at many levels. In a divided but ecologically interdependent world, it challenges all people to reflect upon how we manage the environment of the one thing that we share in common: planet Earth. The report points out that climate change challenges us to reflect on social justice and human rights across countries and generations. It challenges political leaders and people in rich nations to acknowledge their historic responsibility for the problem, and to initiate deep and early cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Above all, it challenges the entire human community to undertake prompt and strong collective action based on shared values and a shared vision.

Several members of the GECHS scientific steering committee as well as GECHS associates are among the editors and authors of the comprehensive, new volume in the Hexagon series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, which will be published on 6th December 2007. The title of the book is “Globalisation and Environmental Challenges, Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century”. Among the authors are GECHS chair Karen O’Brien, GECHS SSC-members John Barnett and Indra de Soysa, as well as GECHS associate Richard Matthew. GECHS associates Hans Günter Brauch and Ursula Oswald-Spring, and GECHS SSC-member Patricia Kameri-Mbote are co-editors. 92 authors from five continents and many disciplines, from science and practice, assess the global reconceptualisation of security triggered by the end of the Cold War, globalisation and manifold impacts of global environmental change in the early 21st century. 75 chapters address the theoretical, philosophical, ethical, religious and spatial context of security.

An international symposium titled “Coping with global change in marine social-ecological systems” will be held in Rome in July 2008. Principal sponsors of the symposium are GLOBEC, EUR-OCEANS and FAO. Marine socio-ecological systems have marine and human components which are highly inter-connected and interactive. The IPCC report identifies the need to make social-ecological systems more resilient by building “adaptive capacity”. This is an issue on which both natural and social scientists can contribute, for example by identifying the essential characteristics of such systems and relevant approaches to building such capacity. By “global change” the symposium includes climate change, but also resource over-exploitation, competing uses of the marine environment, changing lifestyles, and globalisation of trade and economies. While the focus is on climate and environmental change, how these interact with other global changes are important considerations. The central goals of the symposium are to share experiences across disciplines and to identify key next steps and common elements and approaches that promote resilience of marine social-ecological systems in he face of global changes. This involves:

• Exploring conceptual issues relating to social-ecological responses in marine systems to global changes;
• Analysing case studies of specific examples of social-ecological responses in marine systems to significant environmental changes manifested locally;
• Synthesising the work of natural and social scientists and building comparisons of social-ecological responses in marine ecosystems subjected to major environmental variability;
• Developing innovative approaches to the use of science and knowledge in management, policy and advice;
• Identifying lessons for governance for building resilient social-ecological systems.

For information and registration, see the symposium website.