The International Human Di­mensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Anantha Kumar Duraiappah as its new Executive Direc­tor. Dr Duraiappah, an environmental-development economist with more than two decades of experience at the international level, will assume his new position in January 2010.

Americans Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson won the Nobel economics prize for their analyses of economic governance. Ostrom, a former Scientific Committee member of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) is the first woman to win the prize since it was founded in 1968, and the fifth woman to win a Nobel award this year – a Nobel record.

On 21 October 2009, the Chinese National Committee for the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (CNC- IHDP) organised a workshop in the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change. This workshop was held at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

In 2050, around 9.2 billion people are currently forecast to inhabit our planet. Providing sufficient food in terms of quantity and quality in a sustainble manner is one of humanity*s central challenges. A new report commissioned by Friends of the Earth, UK and Compassion inWorld farming now shows that biomass demand for food strongly interacts with future bioenergy potentials.

The United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV) has launched a global campaign to create awareness about volunteer activities that take place on environmental issues, sustainable development, and in support of adapting to or mitigating climate change. www.VolunteeringForOurPlanet.org is tracking the time environmental volunteers spend volunteering in the six months between World Environment Day, 5 June, 2009 and International Volunteer Day, 5 December, 2009. More than 325,000 hours have already been registered.

The next Bonn Dialogues discusses the issue of "Energy & Food Security - Much Ado About Nothing?". The public symposium takes place on Tuesday, 10 November 2009, at 6:00 pm at Deutsche Welle in Bonn. The energy and food issue are interconnected and constitute two of the biggest challenges in the near future. The production of biofuels has increased considerably. Large areas of rain forests are being cleared for soybean and oil palm cultivation to produce biofuels which are needed for energy production.

UN-HABITAT is organising an e-Debate on Inclusive Sustainable Urbanization. The debate will be moderated by David Simon, member of the UGEC Scientific Steering Committee and Head of the Development Geography Department at the University of London.

We are pleased to present IHDP's forth E-Zine of 2009 including the most updated news, events, calls and vacancies from IHDP and the IHDP network.

The IHDP Secretariat has recently re-launched the National Committee Bulletin that includes news and announcements, tailor-cut for IHDP National Committees and Contact Points. The bulletin, circulated via e-mail three times a year, serves as an exchange platform for the Committees.

The International Council for Science (ICSU) developed a new brochure which promotes ICSU's acitivities and explains its role in international science. The International Council for Science (ICSU) is a non-governmental organisation with a global membership of national scientific bodies (117 Members, representing 137 countries) and International Scientific Unions (30 Members).

This initiative is developing standards that can be used by governments, NGOs, financing agencies and other stakeholders to design and implement REDD and other forest carbon programs that respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities and generate significant social and biodiversity co-benefits.

The current issue of the UGEC Viewpoints was conceptualized at the end of the 7th Open Meeting of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change which was held in Bonn, Germany between April 26-30. The conference was deemed a great success with nearly 1,000 participants including researchers, NGOs, practitioners, and decision makers in attendance for the four-day conference and more than 100 sessions. The Open Meeting clearly demonstrated that humans and societal challenges are now and should continue to be at the forefront of the global environmental change research agenda.

Bonn hosts the headquarters of sustainability. A multitude of organizations in Bonn are working on the subject of sustainable development for our planet. Eight of these institutions, specialized in the fields of development cooperation, training, research and teaching, conference organization and logistics, have launched the Bonn Sustainability Portal, an online thematic portal: Bonn Sustainability Portal.

The Challenge Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) has just been launched. The new 10-year research program will explore new ways of helping vulnerable rural communities adjust to global changes. Researchers will generate new knowledge and tools that explain changes in climate and new models to forecast what the changes might be.

Global change, including a wide range of inter-connected processes ranging from global climate change to economic globalisation, disproportionately affects mountain areas and the billions of people who depend on them for their livelihoods and for various goods and services. Presenting, evaluating and synthesising progress in our understanding of global change in mountain regions is one of the Global Change and the Worlds Mountains conference aims.

International bureaucracies - highly visible, far-reaching actors of global governance in areas that range from finance to the environment - are often derided as ineffective, inefficient, and unresponsive. Yet despite their prominence in many debates on world politics, little scholarly attention has been given to their actual influence in recent years. Managers of Global Change fills this gap, offering conceptual analysis and case studies of the role and relevance of international bureaucracies...

START has launched a redesigned website. The site has been spruced up with updated information on its organization and programs, a rejuvenated look and layout and several new features to enable readers to better interact with the site.

The GECHS Synthesis Conference represents an opportunity to synthesize the results of 10 years of research on the human security theme and to gather researchers, policy makers and stakeholders from different fields to discuss the interactions between various processes of change and what they mean for human security. Over the years there has been a considerable evolution in the ways that both human security and global environmental change research have been framed and discussed.

"Dear IHDP Community,
My term as Executive Director of the International Human Dimensions Programme is coming to a close on July 31st. When I joined IHDP in the fall of 2005 we had just held a fairly successful Open Meeting of the Global HD Community in Bonn. Now, at the time I leave IHDP, we just held another, even more successful Open Meeting on the “Social Challenges of Global Change” with 938 participants from all over the world, again in Bonn....

We are pleased to present IHDP's third E-Zine of 2009 including the most updated news, events, calls and vacancies from IHDP and the IHDP network.