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Day 2: Lunchtime Key Event

Earth System Sustainability Initiative (ESSI)

Professor Yuan T. Lee, President of ICSU, effective end of September 2011, Nobel Laureate, China: Taipei; Tim Killeen, Belmont Co-Chair, NSF Assistant Director for the Geosciences, USA

Session content:
A new global Alliance¹ is establishing a major 10-year initiative, which aims to effectively deliver solution-oriented research on global environmental change for sustainability. This Earth System Sustainability Initiative arises from the convergence between the ICSU-ISSC Earth System Visioning process, the Belmont Forum effort and other partners’ activities to mobilise international resources to deliver the environmental science-derived solutions that societies needs.

The goals of the Initiative are to:

1. Deliver at global and regional scales the knowledge that societies need to effectively address global change while meeting economic and social goals, by answering the most pressing questions the world needs answered in the context of securing human development in an era of rapidly escalating global environmental risks;
2. Coordinate and focus international scientific research to address the Grand Challenges arising from the ICSU-ISSC Visioning process and the Belmont Challenge in a fully integrated way;
3. Engage a new generation of researchers in the social, economic, natural, health, and engineering sciences in global sustainability research.

This key event will be an opportunity for two-way interaction between the wider community and the leaders of this Initiative, to provide input and feedback on the developing plans.

¹The International Council for Science (ICSU), International Social Science Council (ISSC), Belmont Forum, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and United Nations University (UNU).