GECHS

Podcasts and presentations are out for the conference RESILIENCE 2008: Resilience, Adaptation and Transformation in Turbulent Times. GECHS chair Karen O’Brien gave the presentation Rethinking social contracts: building resilience in a changing climate. View her presentation on podcast here. This International Science and Policy Conference was organized in Stockholm, Sweden, 14-18 April, and approached society and nature as interdependent social-ecological systems, which are complex adaptive systems. Furthermore, the focus was on cross scale and dynamic interactions that represent new challenges for governance and management in relation to social-ecological systems and ecosystem services. 9 overall themes helped to shed light on the issues, and the overview can be found on the conference website.

In July 2008, Robin Leichenko and GECHS chair Karen O’Brien will launch the book Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures. 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. The book can be ordered here.

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.