Future Earth: Research for Global Sustainability
Photo by Barbara Platzer
February 23, 2012
Future Earth: Research for Global Sustainability
New York, New York
CRED co-hosted Diana Liverman, Co-Director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona to discuss the new Future Earth initiative. This new 10-year initiative aims to deliver knowledge to enable societies to meet their sustainable development goals in the coming decades. Created by an alliance that includes the International Council for Science (ICSU) and its global change programs, the International Social Science Council (ISSC), the Belmont Forum (a high level group of major funders of global environmental change research), UNEP, UNU, UNESCO, and WMO, Future Earth seeks to reinvigorate international global change research as an enterprise that links natural and social science, science and stakeholders, and environmental research to development agendas. Prof. Liverman reflected on the challenges that have faced integrated international programs to date, based on experience with several ICSU programs, and shared the conceptual frameworks and initial priorities of Future Earth. ICSU seeks to engage the international global change research community in this endeavor.
Photo by Barbara Platzer
Photo by Barbara Platzer
Diana Liverman Bio
Diana Liverman is the co-director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona and a Regents Professor in the School of Geography and Development. She is also affiliated with Oxford University as a visiting professor of Environmental Policy and Development and senior research fellow in the Environmental Change Institute.
Her research focuses on the human and social dimensions of environmental issues including vulnerability and adaptation to climate change, environmental change and food security, climate policy and governance, climate and the arts, and environment and development. She is known for her work on climate vulnerability and on environmental issues in Latin America, especially Mexico. Her recent publications include edited books on environment and food security and on climate change, articles on the governance of adaptation, carbon offsets, and planetary boundaries, and an award winning textbook on world regional geography.
She was recently awarded the Founders Gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society and distinguished scholarship honors from the Association of American Geographers for her pioneering work on the human dimensions of global environmental change. She has been an active member of national and international advisory committees on global environmental change including the US National Academy committees on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change and Informing America’s Climate Choices and international committees for the Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) program, the Inter American Institute for Global Change, and the Earth Systems Governance project. She also advises several arts and cultural organizations on environmental issues and Oxfam.
She is currently co-chairing the transition team for ICSU and an alliance of international organizations to create a new integrated, interdisciplinary and international research program called Future Earth.