This award will provide support for The ?Planet Under Pressure: new knowledge towards solutions? conference (26-29 March 2012, London) being developed by the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP) in conjunction with the International Council for Sciences international global environmental change research partners. Building on a comprehensive update of our current knowledge of the Earth system and the pressure it is under, the conference will present and debate new insights into potential opportunities and constraints for innovative development pathways based on novel partnerships. The conference will focus on three broad themes which are critical to the scientific and societal challenges surrounding global sustainability. These themes are:
1. Meeting global needs: food, energy, water and other ecosystem services; 2. Transforming our way of living: development pathways under global environmental change; and 3. Governing across scales: innovative stewardship of the Earth system.
This conference will provide a critical step toward reaching solutions to these challenges and will provide a venue to highlight the current state of our planet prior to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June of 2012. The conference will bring together 2,500 global change experts from around the world in a discussion of the current status of, future predictions for and potential solutions to the issue of global change as it relates to human and environmental sustainability. The synthesis of ideas generated at the conference will advance our collective understanding of the pressures on our planet and what steps need to be taken to alleviate these pressures while maintaining and promoting quality of life. The conference will provide a venue for early career and developing country scientists and students to forge new international networks and partnerships to better understand and overcome the issues involved in providing pathways for a sustainable planet. A major component of the conference will be stakeholder engagement through plenary talks, technical sessions, workshops and seminars. In addition, the conference will include strong policy and science interactions through these mechanisms and strong public engagement through webcasts and interactive media.
The Planet Under Pressure conference (London, 26-29 March 2012) was the largest and most ambitious conference and broader engagement strategy in the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program’s (IGBP) 25-year history. Working with the International Council of Sciences (ICSU) and the other international global-change programs, the IGBP Secretariat operated as the command center for the conference. Outcomes: Scientists from 107 countries attended. 150+ public events globally organized with the Association of Science and Technology Centers – a first for this type of global coordination. Publication of the first State of the Planet Declaration. Live-streaming of the entire plenary. Daily news show (the Daily Planet, hosted by leading UK journalist Julian Rush). Allowing questions in plenary from Twitter (the conference reached around one million people via Twitter and at times was a "trending topic" on Twitter. Building a Facebook following in excess of 2500. Launch of the first educational website on the Anthropocene. Launch of a major data visualization on the Anthropocene. Production of 9 policy briefs on global sustainability. 400+ articles in the mainstream media including New York Times, Forbes, Denver Post, Chicago Tribune, BBC, Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune. Major editorials in high-profile scientific journals Nature and Science. The goals of Planet Under Pressure were to: Strengthen and build the global-change research community, in particular form closer links between natural and social science. Spearhead a new direction for international research focusing on global sustainability. Reach out to a broader community – the development community, policy, industry, media, and public. The conference was timed to contribute to the UN’s Rio+20 Summit, the largest summit in UN history (June 2012). The UN recognized the conference as part of the official preparations for the UN summit. The NSF grant facilitated an ambitious and often experimental international engagement strategy targeting key stakeholders: International scientific community International development community Policy makers Media Public Business and industry Planet Under Pressure attracted over 3000 participants plus an additional 3000 online, including world-leading experts on climate, global change, global sustainability, development, policy, economics and many other disciplines. The conference brought together social and natural sciences and has made significant progress in creating the foundation for the new community for Future Earth: research for global sustainability. Beyond this, funding from NSF provided major financial support primarily for the wide range of engagement efforts that greatly enhanced the global reach and success of the conference. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addressed the conference on the High-Level policy day via recorded video. The conference, helped inform Ban Ki-moon’s Global Sustainability Panel report, Resilient People, Resilient Planet, and became a major landmark on the road to Rio+20. Indeed, IGBP secretariat staff are acknowledged in the Secretary General’s report. Articles on Planet Under Pressure have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, BBC, International Herald Tribune, Deutsche Welle and many more. Over 400 original articles in the media have been published as far afield as Lebanon, China, India and Guatemala. The conference and IGBP were mentioned in Ban Ki Moon’s opening address to the Rio+20 summit to an audience of 188 heads of state and ministers. The IGBP secretariat produced a short film, Welcome to the Anthropocene, a 3-minute crash course in global sustainability, which was released at Planet Under Pressure and used to open the Rio+20 summit. The film has had over 800,000 hits online and has been shown to several national presidents and ministers, and business leaders, in addition to the Rio+20 summit. The conference created an ambitious data visualization strategy allowing IGBP and partners to develop and launch the first educational website dedicated to the concept of the Anthropocene: www.anthropocene.info During the conference the organizers developed a series of "World Cafes" and "Pro-Action Cafes" to engage the business and policy communities in key issues relating to global sustainability. One "World Café" style event was the first major science-policy dialogue on the proposed Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, Planet Under Pressure’s communications team worked with the Association of Science and Technology Centers to develop 150 events for the public and schools in science and technology centers worldwide from Columbia to Indonesia, the United States to France. The events were developed under the uniting theme of a Planet Under Pressure. School children working on sustainability projects from many countries created short video diaries of their work which were shown at Planet Under Pressure during the plenaries. Major findings and outputs The conference culminated in the publication of the first State of the Planet Declaration which was reprinted in its entirety in the New York Times online. State of the Planet Declaration www.planetunderpressure2012.net/pdf/state_of_planet_declaration.pdf New York Times - Scientists Call for Practical Steps to Smooth Humanity’s Journey http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/scientists-call-for-practical-steps-to-smooth-humanitys-journey/ New York Times – the Greatest Challenge of Our Species www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/opinion/the-greatest-challenge-of-our-species.html?_r=0 Conference webcasts http://view6.workcast.net/?pak=8051301437434580&cpak=5876441157257134 www.youtube.com/user/PlanetUnderPressure?feature=results_main
