Plenary Sessions

The presence of a grand piano surprised hundreds of participants on Monday 27 April morning, as they arrived at the opening ceremony of the 7th International Science Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Change in Bonn, Germany. The German tenor Christoph Prégardien, who is widely regarded as among the foremost lyric tenors, captivated the audience by performing a number of renowned songs.

Opening Ceremony

The artistic performance was followed by introductory speeches. For example, the Mayor of Bonn, Bärbel Dieckmann, emphasized the role of the City of Bonn as a catalyser for networking and international cooperation in the field of sustainable development. State Secretary for Education and Research, Germany, Frieder Meyer-Krahmer, the IHDP Scientific Committee Chair, Oran Young, Heide Hackmann who spoke on behalf of ISSC and ICSU, and Hebe Vessuri, UNU Council Chair, spoke to the audience during this opening ceremony. Other speakers included the Vice Minister for Science and Technology from China, Yanhua Liu, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Research.

State Secretary Mayer-Krahmer emphasized the need for strengthening the bridge between research and policy-making to transform theory into practice. Vice-Minister Liu Yanhua described the many social challenges faced by China, especially those related to land use changes, air pollution, and the impacts of urbanization and industrialization. Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber warned of what „we haven’t seen on the pipeline yet“, referring to the future challenges presented by global change in general and climate change in particular. Schellnhuber concluded that the intensification of solution-oriented research is needed.

Plenary Sessions

Demographics

The challenge of demographics in a rapidly changing world was the main subject of the plenary session of the first day of the IHDP Open Meeting. Lori Hunter, from the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, chaired the session, which focused on the interactions between global change and human health, urbanisation, pollution and resource usage.

Keynote speakers included Wolfgang Lutz, from the International Institute for Applied Sciences in Austria, who stressed the importance of population forecasting, Flavia Pansieri, the Executive Coordinator of UN Volunteers, who emphasised the role of voluntary actions in the providing sustainable solutions to the greatest social challenges of global changes, and Xizhe Peng, the director of Fudan University, who spoke, for example, on the implications of changing population dynamics in China.

Resources and Technological Innovation

Can we achieve sustainability through technological innovation? Is it possible to identify an agenda for action necessary for the transition towards sustainability? How do we transform the economic basis of our society into a sustainable one? What role does the current economic crisis play in shaping a possible sustainability transition?

These and other urgent questions where debated by international experts during the plenary session on “Resources and Technological Innovations” on 28 April 2009. Convenor Frans Berkhout (chair of the Industrial Transformations Project) opened the discussion by stating that technology is crucial to decoupling economic welfare from the imprint we leave on global systems.

Ernst von Weizsäcker, member of the IHDP Scientific Committee, was optimistic, saying that we can increase resource productivity fivefold within the next 50 years. Richard Tol, from the Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland, followed and entered a lively debate with von Weizsäcker by presenting his vision of the transition needed in the current energy system.

Ortwin Renn, University of Stuttgart and Director, DIALOGIK, Germany, and Christopher Bunting, Secretary General of IRGC, Switzerland presented recent insights from work on risk governance and stressed the fact that risk governance is crucial in times of rapid change and must cover the physical, economic, and social dimensions.

Social Equity, Cohesion, and Sustainable Adaptation

“We come as ambassadors from the planet to alarm Western society that we need urgent action now,” said Dessima Williams, Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), during the plenary session on Social Equity, Cohesion and Adaptation, on the third day of the Open Meeting. Wolfgang Schmitt, Managing Director of the GTZ, emphasised the integration needed of scientifically based human security concepts into practice oriented project development.

Robin Mearns of the World Bank Social Development Department, argued that climate change was an issue of social justice, and he explained that both inequity and injustice are rising, especially in developing countries, and therefore, priorities at the international level must be reconsidered. Walter Ammann, chairman of the International Disaster Risk Reduction Center (IDRC), called for a redefinition of development goals, as climate change was not taken into account upon their initial definition.

Adaptive Institutions and Governance

Jan Pronk of the Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands, spoke on the role of the United Nations in environmental, socio-economic, and political sustainablity. Laurence Tubiana, the director of the Institute of Sustainable Development and International Relations in France, asked if sovereignty is a major obstacle to address the challenges of global change or if a redefinition of sovereignty is necessary and impending. Oran Young, chair of the IHDP Scientific Committee, explained the incongruity that may arise when institutions increase adaptiveness as well as accountabiltiy. Roberto Guimaraes, vice-chair of the IHDP Scientific Committee, asked as “We have been speaking to power for so long now, is power willing to listen?” and elaborated on various aspects of science-policy interactions. Mark Fulton, managing director of the Global Head of Climate Change Investment Research at Deutsche Asset Management, concluded that adaptation and mitigation are dependent on the private as well as the public sectors.