GECS-2012 KEY TOPICS 

The conference, as a major knowledge consolidation initiative, is structured around three key themes and under each of these a number of session topics are listed. We would like to invite proposals (panels, roundtables, sessions, presentations, etc.) that address these topics.

KEY THEME 1: GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AND HUMAN SECURITY: IDENTIFICATION OF CHALLENGES, IMPACTS, AND VULNERABILITIES

• Global environmental change as a new security policy challenge: Towards a new geopolitics
• Global environmental change as a human security threat
• Human security as an ecological process
• Trade-offs between global environmental change and food security, health security, and water security
• Global environmental change, energy, migration, and conflicts
• Biosafety for bio-engineered primary commodities 
• Environmental change, poverty and the MDGs
• Mechanisms for rewarding communities for conservation and sustainable management of ecosystem services- Bio-right perspective
• Climate change as a civilization challenging ethical problem: Policy implications

KEY THEME 2: GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AND HUMAN SECURITY: IDENTIFICATION OF DYNAMICS, ADAPTATION, AND MITIGATION OPTIONS

• Strengthening multi-level resilience and adaptive capacity to face the impacts of environmental change
• Building resilience against insecurity and trade-offs between various options to ensure security
• Adaptation and mitigation: Relevant governance and risk management options
• Market-based and technical green economy responses to global environmental change
• Managing global change with new Knowledge, Know-how, technology and funding mechanisms
• Usefulness of ecosystem and community-based approaches and climate-smart practices
• Global environmental change within a gender and equity perspective

KEY THEME 3: GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AND HUMAN SECURITY: FEATURES OF A NEW VISION

• Rethinking human security in a changing environment: The need of a paradigm shift
• Partnerships between science and policy, industry, and the public
• Facing global change: The role of dynamic innovation in science, technology and policy
• Mainstreaming equity imperative in enacted policies
• Pathways towards global sustainability
• Role of integrative and multi-levels governance systems
• Importance of North-South and South-South perspectives
• Role of stakeholders and public leadership
• Role of nation state and discretion to choose from the menu of potential solutions

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