GECHS

The International Ocean Institute, USA and the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, are hosting a Coastal Cities Summit on November 17-20 2008, to address the complex challenges that coastal city leaders face as populations increase, resources are depleted, and the impacts of climate change are felt.  The Coastal Cities Summit intends to bring together 600-700 coastal city leaders, managers and academics to discuss environmental, social, economic, and public policy challenges and viable solutions. The 3 ½ day conference will focus on three themes: Climate Change, Risk and Vulnerability, and Sustainable Development.  The planners are soliciting speakers on areas that are particularly relevant to coastal cities: freshwater, pollution, energy, infrastructure, and port security.  All sessions are intended to give a long-needed voice to those who are on the front lines taking leadership on climate change, providing implementation and response plans and continuing to focus on protecting citizens from possible extreme events and human-induced degradation. Full details are available at the conference website.

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.

The third International C.E.U. Congress will be held in Oslo, Norway the 14.-16. September 2008. At this congress, the science, policy, education and best practice in urban design in the context of climate change will be discussed. The congress welcomes government officials, planners, architects, social scientists, ecologists, developers, local community activists, and all other development stakeholders who feel a responsibility to contribute to more sustainable urban development. For more information, please see the conference website.

The second International Sustainability Conference, ISC, will be held on 21 and 22 August 2008 at the University of Basel, Switzerland. The Central theme of the conference is “Creating values for sustainable development”, and provides a platform for both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary oriented social scientists working in the field of sustainable development. The conference is committed to promoting dialogue, especially among economists and other social scientists. Moreover, the conference aims to act as a meeting point for committed individuals from the political, corporate and academic world as well as for representatives from civil society. Abstracts can be submitted before 16 February 2008. For further details, please refer to the conference website.