18th IHDP Scientific Committee Meeting

Twenty scientists from across the world accepted the invitation of Professors Partha Dasgupta and Anantha Duraiappah to join the 18th IHDP Scientific Committee Meeting last month. The event, hosted by the IHDP National Committee in China (CNC-IHDP) took place in Nanjing, China from 20-22 October 2011. The aim of the annual meeting of IHDP’s governing body is to provide advice regarding the further strategy for the programme’s research, and development of the activity portfolio.

This year, members of the IHDP Scientific Committee and representatives of IHDP projects and partners focused on the overarching topic of “Unpacking the Social Sciences for Global Sustainability”. On the basis of this agenda, IHDP expects to make progress on several important areas that are vital to its core and joint projects.Participants discussed re-framing the research agenda on the human dimensions of Global Environmental Change and Global Sustainability for the upcoming decade, so as to confront directly the most critical and under-addressed questions and challenges to pursuing environmental and social sustainability.The participants acknowledged that scientists and policy makers have a fairly thorough understanding of the mechanisms through which human activities cause or exacerbate global environmental change.

The social dimensions of these trends, however, are less understood and often overlooked by the global environmental change research community.  Yet understanding the social aspects of environmental change is crucial to recognizing causes and identifying solutions. Therefore, the first step towards a transition to sustainability must be to incorporate social science research and development into the broader environmental change science-policy community. Scientists gathered in Nanjing analyzed a number of current social-scientific driven research questions and identified the following clusters:  

1. World Views, Beliefs, Values and Ethics  

2. Social and Institutional Structures

3. Choices, Decisions, and Behaviors

4. Plausible Futures  

5. Methodologies. 

Participants agreed that outcomes of this important discussion shall be publicized in the coming months, raising awareness and adding the voice of the social scientific community to the current sustainability discourse.  Impending publications include an IHDP strategic paper and an accompanying scientific article.

The next Scientific Committee meeting is scheduled to take place in London, UK from 24 to 25 March 2012.