Future Earth is an international research program which aims to build knowledge about the environmental and human aspects of
Global change
Global change in broad sense refers to planetary-scale changes in the Earth system. It is most commonly use to encompass the variety of changes connected to the rapid increase in human activities which started around mid-20th century, i.e. the ...
, and to find solutions for
sustainable development
Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The des ...
. It aims to increase the impact of scientific research on sustainable development.
Future Earth is an interdisciplinary research programme bringing together natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities, engineering and law, and focused on designing and producing research together with stakeholders from outside the scientific community.
Mission and principles
Future Earth's mission is to "build and connect global knowledge to intensify the impact of research and find new ways to accelerate sustainable development". Its vision is for "people to thrive in a sustainable and equitable world". To do this, Future Earth aims to mobilize the international community of global environmental science researchers to:
* Inspire and create interdisciplinary science relevant to major global sustainability challenges
* Deliver products and services that society needs to meet these challenges
* Co-design and co-produce solutions-oriented science, knowledge and innovation for global sustainable development
* Build capacity among scholars world-wide
History
Future Earth was launched in June 2012, at the
UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).
A globally distributed consortium was appointed as the Secretariat of Future Earth in July 2014, with offices in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
(Canada),
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
(Sweden),
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...
(USA),
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
(Japan) and
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
(France).
Amy Luers is the Executive Director.
Projects
Scientific research and synthesis in Future Earth is carried out by a number of international networks, known as ‘global research projects’, many of which were launched under the umbrella of the existing four global environmental change programmes,
DIVERSITAS, the
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP),
the
International Human Dimensions Programme
The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) was a research programme that studied the human and societal aspects of the phenomenon of global change.
IHDP aimed to frame, develop and integrate social science ...
(IHDP) and the
World Climate Research Programme
The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) is an international programme that helps to coordinate global climate research. The WCRP was established in 1980, under the joint sponsorship of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Inter ...
(WCRP). Some further projects arose out of the
Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP). A formal process for the affiliation of these projects into Future Earth began in 2014. The projects are:
*
AIMES (Analysis, Integration and Modelling of the Earth System)
* bioDISCOVERY
* bioGENESIS
* CCAFS – Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, a collaboration among the
* oneHEALTH
* ecoSERVICES
* ESG –
Earth System Governance
Earth system governance is a recently developed paradigm that builds on earlier notions of environmental policy and nature conservation, but puts these into the broader context of human-induced transformations of the entire earth system.
The in ...
* GCP –
Global Carbon Project
The Global Carbon Project (GCP) is an organisation that seeks to quantify global greenhouse gas emissions and their causes. Established in 2001, its projects include global budgets for three dominant greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (), methan ...
* GLP –
Global Land Project {{unreferenced, date=April 2017
The Global Land Project hanged to Global Land Programme in 2016is a research initiative of Future Earth (originally the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions Progra ...
* GMBA – Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment
* GWSP – Global Water System Project
* IGAC –
International Global Atmospheric Chemistry The International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) project is a non-profit organization created in the late 1980s to address growing international concerns over rapid changes observed in Earth's atmosphere.
It developed under joint sponsorship ...
* IHOPE – Integrated History and Future of People on Earth
* ILEAPS – Integrated Land Ecosystem-Atmosphere Processes Study
* IMBER – Integrated Marine Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research
* IRG – Integrated Risk Governance Project
* LOICZ – Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone
* MAIRS – Monsoon Asia Integrated Regional Study
* PAGES –
Past Global Changes
The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience ...
* PECS –
Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) is a core project of Future Earth. PECS is an international research network that aims to connect and integrate research on the stewardship of social–ecological systems, how these systems support ...
* SOLAS –
Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study
See also
*
International Council for Science
The International Council for Science (ICSU, after its former name, International Council of Scientific Unions) was an international non-governmental organization devoted to international cooperation in the advancement of science. Its members ...
*
Great acceleration
References
External links
Official website*{{dead link, date=January 2017 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes
Research
Research projects