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GECS 2012: Global Environmental Change and Human Security

May 28, 2012

Call for Proposals:

International Conference on “Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECS 2012): The Need for a New Vision for Science, Policy and Leadership (Climate Change as an Opportunity)”

Deadline for Submitting Abstracts: July 15, 2012.

Introduction:

The North-South Center for Social Sciences (NRCS) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), along with Department of Environment, Ministry of Energy, Mines, Water and Environment, Morocco, and National Council for Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Leadership (NCCSD), India, are organizing the third edition of their annual international conference with focus on the theme, “Global Environmental Change and Human Security: The Need for a New Vision for Science, Policy and Leadership (Climate Change as an Opportunity)”.

This edition is expected to provide an update of the newest understanding of environmental change caused by current development models and schemes, human security implications of this change, and options available for different societies to respond to present and future challenges.

Participants will consider how understandings and conceptions of security are being transformed in the face of global environmental change (with a focus on climate change), and how urgent a shift – in science, policy and technology levels – is required to manage efficiently and prudently the current dynamics. The event will serve as a space to conceive this critically needed roadmap.

ThinktoSustain.com is the ‘Media Partner’ for the event.

Conference Key Themes:

Key Theme 1: Global Environmental Change and Human Security: Identification of Challenges, Impacts and Vulnerabilities

Global environmental change as a new security policy challenge: Towards a new geopolitics
Global environmental change as a human security threat
Human security as an ecological process
Trade-offs between global environmental change and food security, health security and water security
Global environmental change, energy, migration and conflicts
Bio-safety for bio-engineered primary commodities
Environmental change, poverty and the MDGs
Mechanisms for rewarding communities for conservation and sustainable management of ecosystem services: Bio-right perspective
Climate change as a civilization challenging ethical problem: Policy implications

Key Theme 2: Global Environmental Change and Human Security: Identification of Dynamics, Adaptation and Mitigation Options

Strengthening multi-level resilience and adaptive capacity to face the impacts of environmental change
Building resilience against insecurity and trade-offs between various options to ensure security
Adaptation and mitigation: Relevant governance and risk management options
Market-based and technical green economy responses to global environmental change
Managing global change with new knowledge, know-how, technology and funding mechanisms
Usefulness of ecosystem and community-based approaches and climate-smart practices
Global environmental change within a gender and equity perspective

Key Theme 3: Global Environmental Change and Human Security: Features of a New Vision

Rethinking human security in a changing environment: The need of a paradigm shift
Partnerships between science and policy, industry, and the public
Facing global change: The role of dynamic innovation in science, technology and policy
Mainstreaming equity imperative in enacted policies
Pathways towards global sustainability
Role of integrative and multi-levels governance systems
Importance of North-South and South-South perspectives
Role of stakeholders and public leadership
Role of nation state and discretion to choose from the menu of potential solutions

Who Should Attend?

The conference is expected to engage a broad range of audience – academics from all relevant disciplines, key experts, policy-makers, development agencies, business, civil society actors, etc.

Important Dates: