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The latest news from the International Council for Science.
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Welcome to the April 2015 edition of the ICSU newsletter, bringing you highlights from ICSU's activities in the first quarter of the year. We've updated the format of this newsletter and hope you will find it useful.

What's in this e-mail?
  1. The latest news from the International Council for Science
  2. The latest stories from Road to Paris, ICSU's blog on climate change, sustainable development & disaster risk reduction
  3. Jobs at ICSU and in the network
  4. News from ICSU's Regional Offices
  5. Upcoming events

News

Highlights from ICSU's work in the first quarter of 2015.

Science and the Sustainable Development Goals. ICSU led a delegation to attend meetings in New York last week, as part of the ongoing intergovernmental negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda. Together with ISSC and Future Earth, ICSU presented a statement which calls for a stronger role for science and technology in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals and articulates responsibilities for the scientific community in the means of implementation and monitoring. Nature published a commentary highlighting five priorities for the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In February, ICSU had already published the report "Review of Targets for the Sustainable Development Goals – the Science Perspective," which assesses the draft of the UN Goals from a scientific perspective. The report attracted significant media attention, including an article in the journal Science (paywall), in Thomson Reuters AlertNet and in SciDev.Net.

ICSU at the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction: a succesful week for science. For the event in Sendai, Japan in March, ICSU convened a delegation of almost 400 researchers and pushed for a strong role for science in the post-2015 DRR framework. David Johnston, chair of the ICSU co-sponsored Integrated Research on Disaster Risk programme (IRDR) Science Committee, delivered the official statement of the Science and Technology Major Group to the conference. A working session on â€œApplying Science and Technology to Disaster Risk Reduction Decision-making” attracted more than 350 participants. Allan Lavell, a key member of the IRDR community, won the prestigious United Nations Sasakawa Award for Disaster Risk Reduction. A review and synthesis paper of the basic knowledge of natural hazards, vulnerabilities, and disaster risks, which aims to highlight potential contributions of science to disaster risk reduction, was also released on the occasion of the conference.
 

More news in brief:

Road to Paris

Three of our favourite stories from ICSU's Road to Paris blog covering disaster risk reduction, sustainable development and climate change:
The science of building a perfect world. An introduction to the ICSU/ISSC Review of Targets for the Sustainable Development Goals, including perspectives from the authors behind it.
Did you know that most of the world’s copper is mined from old volcanoes? Volcanologist Steve Sparks explains why, and discusses the close links between sustainable development and disaster risk reduction.
Will the Paris climate deal be legally binding? Politically, it’s unlikely that major emitters like China & the USA will agree to binding targets. But a legally binding climate deal may not mean legally binding emissions targets. A look at possible outcomes for COP21.

Jobs at ICSU and in the network

News from ICSU's Regional Offices


Africa

Following up on one of the recommendations of the 2nd Future Earth Regional Workshop for Africa held in Pretoria, South Africa, on 23 – 24 June 2014, eleven scientists were selected to constitute the African Future Earth Committee (AFEC). The composition of the Committee reflects a fair geographical spread across all the sub-regions of the African continent as well as the diverse and trans-disciplinary nature of the stakeholders involved in Future Earth activities. The main goal of the AFEC is to drive activities of Future Earth on the continent until such time that an African Future Earth regional node has been established and is operational. The Committee will be working with the new Future Earth Secretariat and will consult relevant stakeholders within and outside the continent while executing their mandate.

The Regional Office for Africa has also moved to a new host organization. After ten years with the National Research Foundation (NRF), as of 1 April 2015, the Office is now hosted by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf).

More news from ICSU's Regional Office for Africa
 

Asia & Pacific

The ICSU Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) recently published its Annual Report for the year 2014. The report documents the activities of ROAP highlighting key activities in its priority areas of work in health and wellbeing in the changing urban environment, hazards and disasters, and sustainable energy. The report also details the contributions made by ROAP towards the development of Future Earth in Asia and the Pacific.

More news from ICSU's Regional Office for Asia & the Pacific
 

Latin America and the Caribbean

On 9-10 March 2015, ICSU National Members’ Focal Points in Latin America and the Caribbean met for a workshop in the University of Panama, Panama City. The objectives of the workshop were to report the activities of the ICSU Regional Office for Latin America and the Carribean (ROLAC) in the last 5 years, to share experiences and successful cases along the region, to promote actions to enhance the three pillars of ICSU in Latin America and the Caribbean, to enhance the scientific  links among all the organizations, to receive feedback from the  Focal Points, and to establish a communications network among the Focal Points.

At the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction on March 14-18 in Sendai, Japan, ROLAC was represented by the Chair of the ROLAC Disaster Risk (DRR) Steering Committee, Barbara Carby, the Vice-Chair Patricia Alvarado and the committee members Irasema Alcántara and Allan Lavell. Barbara Carby presented the results of the ROLAC-sponsored consultancy “Identification of existing advances and linkages of the scientific and academic community initiatives with Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)”.

More news from ICSU's Regional Office for Latin America & the Caribbean

Events


3rd Young Scientists Networking Conference on Integrated Science. 24-29 May 2015, Menaggio, Italy.
CFRS Symposium at the World Conference on Research Integrity. 2 June 2015, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
1st International Workshop on Supporting Future Earth with Global Geo-information. 9-10 June 2015, Beijing, China.
Our Common Future Under Climate Change Conference. 7-10 July 2015, Paris, France.
2nd ICSU/IUPAC Workshop on Crystal Engineering. 30 August - 1 September 2015, Como, Italy.
World Social Science Forum. 13-16 September 2015, Durban, South Africa.
Global Data Activities for the Study of Solar-Terrestrial Variability. 28-30 September 2015.
International Collaboration for Advancing Polar Data Access and Preservation. Waterloo, Canada, 27-28 October 2015.
PECS 2015 conference. Stellenbosch, South Africa, 2-5 November 2015.
2nd COSPAR Symposium: Water and Life in the Universe. Foz do Iguacu, Brazil, 9-13 November 2015.
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