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GECS 2012: Global Environmental Change and Human Security

Global Environmental Change and Human SecurityCall 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:

  • Deadline for Abstract/Proposal Submission: July 15, 2012
  • Notification of Abstract/Proposal Acceptance: August 1, 2012
  • Conference Early-bird Registration: August 15 – September 30, 2012
  • Deadline for the Submission of Full Papers: October 1, 2012
  • Conference Days: November 22-24, 2012