Conference
13.10.2009
Institute hosts first event under the aegis of the newly endowed André Hoffmann Chair.
On 8 and 9 October 2009, the Graduate Institute hosted an international conference on the topic “Environmental Change and its Impact on Human Societies”. This meeting was the first event organised under the aegis of the newly endowed Chair for Environmental Economics generously funded by Mr. André Hoffmann. It was intended to examine, in detail, the potential impacts of global environmental change, with an emphasis on climate change, on a variety of societal issues, socio-economic and health concerns, conflict, and demographic and migration patterns. Legal issues surrounding the status of migrants displaced by environmental factors and change were also discussed.
The two-day event, which brought together several high-level experts, was divided into two main parts. Presentations and debates focused initially on an analysis of fundamental trends with a view to establishing the major defining characteristics of the nexus between environmental change, social vulnerabilities and demographic and migratory phenomena. Keynote speakers in the event included Professor Martin Beniston of the University of Geneva who masterfully introduced the theme of the meeting by outlining the array of potential social consequences of climate change. His introduction was followed by a presentation from Professor Martin Parry of the Grantham Institute and Centre for Environmental Policy at London University’s Imperial College who spoke of the vulnerability to climate change of people whose livelihoods depend on subsistence agriculture and the corrective policies that could be applied. Graciela Chichilnisky, the Director of the Columbia University Consortium for Risk Management, described how climatic change, population expansion and North-South migrations are intimately connected through institutional factors such as property rights, whose definition and enforcement vary across developed and developing countries. This part of the programme was concluded by Martin Frick of the Global Humanitarian Forum who described how climate change is already causing major problems for populations in the South and pleaded for concerted efforts to assist these populations in their adaptation to climate change.
The second part of the programme consisted of a series of panel discussions focusing on a whole host of issues including conflict and natural resources; demography and natural resources, particularly forests and water; and legal issues surrounding environmental migrants and the status of territories, such as small island developing states (SIDS) whose territories could become seriously eroded or even disappear as a result of climate change impacts. In the first panel, devoted to conflict, Dominic Rohner of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Urs Luterbacher of the Graduate Institute and Serdar Güner of Turkey’ Bilkent University in Ankara, sought to identify environmental trends that could result in bargaining failures between groups or lead to conflict escalation and massacres. They also discussed the challenges inherent to creating and implementing collaborative natural resources management structures. In the second panel, Professor Alisson Barbieri from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil and Alex de Sherbinin from the Centre for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University examined the impact of climate change on migration through the lens of reduced water availability and deforestation. In the third panel, David Keane of the Law Department of Middlesex University and Jane McAdam from the Faculty of Law at Australia’s University of New South Wales examined the difficult legal status of environmental migrants and citizens of states such as the islands of Tuvalu and Kirabati in the Pacific that risk submersion in the near future due to rising sea levels.
Finally André Hoffmann chaired a roundtable discussion on the topic “Environmental Challenges to Human Security” which covered, in particular, the institutional conditions necessary to alleviate the human security problems raised by climate change. Panelists included Professor Martin Parry, who was joined by the Graduate Institute’s Professor Urs Luterbacher, Associate Professor Liliana Andonova, and Professor Jean-Louis Arcand, and by Christian Blondin, Senior External Relations Officer at the World Meteorological Organization.
Upon conclusion of the two-day event, participants were all agreed that the discussions had been both informative and fruitful. The proceedings of the conference will be included in a book to be published shortly.
The “André Hoffmann Chair for Environmental Economics” is a newly-established Chair at the Graduate Institute set up thanks to a generous contribution from André Hoffmann. Its mission is to make an important scientific contribution to the study of the impact of global environmental changes; it is also intended to examine the repercussions of the finite character of natural resources on societies and the international system as a whole. It is intended to stimulate global research in this area and to become an important repository of analysis and expertise for global policy and decision-makers in governments, international governmental and non-governmental organisations, the private sector and academic institutions working in this field.
For more information on this conference see the event programme [pdf].
Dowload the presentations [pdf]
