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Speakers on Wednesday

Which development pathways within planetary boundaries?

(Plenary moderated by Denis Meadows, Emeritus Professor of Systems Management, at the University of New Hampshire)

Wednesday the 7th, 8:30-10h, Pasteur amphitheatre

For the last two years scholars have been debating  and advancing the concept of planetary boundaries and its implications for human development in the Anthropocene. After the famous Nature  paper on Planetary boundaries  by Johan Rockstrom and co-authors, Melissa Leach raised questions about their political implications: whose agendas are at stake? Could this scientific concept usher in a new era of ‘power grabbing’ in the name of environment? How can global governance for human prosperity within planetary boundaries be pursued in a safe and fair way?

Amidst this debate,  common publications have been producedon transforming innovation for sustainability within planetary boundaries, and  on navigating pathways in the safe and just space for humanity. The concept of social and planetary boundaries, integrated with a three "Ds" agenda – direction, diversity and distribution – provides a framework which can be used to identify alternative pathways and inform consideration of their social and political implications.

During this plenary dialog J. Rockstrom and M. Leach will present  recent advances  on these concepts. They will also present the implications of this new paradigm for addressing challenges of resilience and development. Political questions remain: Whose boundaries? Whose goals? Which types of control, by whom and at what scale? What are the implications of the ideas of boundaries for notions of progress,  adaptation and transformation?

Leach

 Melissa Leach has just been appointed Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex.

Over the last thirty years she has been closely involved both in ethnographic fieldwork, speaking four African languages, and in extensive interdisciplinary research. This has engaged anthropology with historical, ecological and science and technology studies approaches, as well as working with foresters, agricultural and medical scientists.

Her work and numerous book and journal publications have forwarded new perspectives in areas ranging from the anthropology of environment and development; gender-environment relations; environmental history and discourse;  the politics of environmental and health policy processes, society-ecology-disease interactions, and ‘green grabbing’.   She serves on a number of international boards, including vice-chairing the Science Committee of Future Earth.

Johann

 Johan Rockström is a Professor in Environmental Science with emphasis on water resources and global Sustainability at Stockholm University, and the Executive Director of Stockholm Resilience Centre..

He is a leading scientist on global water resources, and strategies to build resilience in water scarce regions of the world, with more than 15 years experience from applied water research in tropical regions.

He was the Executive Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) during 2004-2012, and co-chaired the design phase of Future Earth. He currently chairs the Arctic Resilience Assessment of the Arctic Council, the Advisory Board of the EAT forum on food, health and sustainability, and the Steering Committee of the Water, Land Ecosystem program of the CGIAR. He is also a member of the Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network of the United Nations, the Earth League and a member of the Resilience Alliance.