Earth Institute News Archive
posted 10/03/05
CIESIN, Earth Institute Play Key Roles in International Global Change Research Conference in Bonn, Germany
The Earth Institute’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) is a co-organizer of a major meeting of social scientists who study the human role in producing and responding to global environmental changes. The sixth Open Meeting of the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Research Community, which will take place in Bonn, Germany, from October 9 to 13, follows on two successful Open Meetings in 2001 (Rio De Janeiro) and 2003 (Montreal) which CIESIN also helped organize.
“These meetings are highly relevant to the Earth Institute, because they bring the world’s best social science experts together to share research progress and to identify new avenues for understanding humans as both ‘victims’ and ‘villains’ of global environmental change,” says Alex de Sherbinin, Senior Staff Associate at CIESIN and a member of the Open Meeting organizing committee. “We hope that in working together, the world will ultimately be able to find effective solutions through open dialog, informed policies and actions.”
With 700 researchers expected to attend, this year’s Open Meeting is expected to be the largest to date — almost twice the size of prior events. Plenary presentations and discussions encompass the policy relevance and understanding of human dimensions research. After an intense review process, 128 parallel sessions were selected. These sessions focus on different areas of human dimensions research include human security and global environmental change, land-use and land-cover change, institutional dimensions of global environmental change, industrial transformation, urbanization, and carbon sequestration, to name a few.
CIESIN has organized the following four panels for this year’s Open Meeting
Can We Study Global Change Without Global Data? This session will showcase efforts to fill the gaps and provide a forum for identifying needs for new data to further the human dimensions research agenda.
Where Do the Poor Live? This session will report on recent progress in poverty mapping, and in particular a collaborative international effort to develop a global-scale atlas of poverty at the sub-national level in support of the Millennium Project.
Making Population-Environment Research Relevant to Policy Makers: This panel will explore the relevance of policy to population-environment research through the analysis of related papers from four continents.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Lessons Learned from a Multiscale, Interdisciplinary Process: Roundtable discussion involving: Marc Levy, CIESIN; Ruth de Fries, University of Maryland; Roger Kasperson, Clark University; Kasper Kok, Wageningen University; and Monirul Mirza, University of Toronto
Other Earth Institute participants include Daniel Hillel and Cynthia Rosenzweig, researchers at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Jane Ingram, Center for Environmental Research and Conservation; Elke Weber, Department of Psychology at Columbia University; and Earth Institute Fellows Christopher Doll, Christina Rumbaitis del Rio and Christian Webersik. A full list of their paper titles is given below.
“These conferences provide an ideal venue for young scientists to meet and develop collaborative relationships with older scientists, and for fruitful partnerships to emerge between researchers from North and South,” says Marc Levy, Associate Director for Science Applications at CIESIN and co-chair of the organizing committee for the 2001 and 2003 Open Meetings
For more information on the 6th Open Meeting, please visit the conference website at: http://openmeeting.homelinux.org
The Earth Institute at Columbia University is the world's leading academic center for the integrated study of Earth, its environment and society. The Earth Institute builds upon excellence in the core disciplines — earth sciences, biological sciences, engineering sciences, social sciences and health sciences — and stresses cross-disciplinary approaches to complex problems. Through research, training and global partnerships, it mobilizes science and technology to advance sustainable development, while placing special emphasis on the needs of the world's poor. For more information, visit www.earth.columbia.edu.