Future Earth 🌏 July Newsletter

News, events and a spotlight on our activities.
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Welcome to Future Earth's monthly newsletter, featuring the latest news, events, and opportunities in global sustainability research. Please join Future Earth's Membership Portal to share your own news.

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Future Earth Updates

News & Events

Future Earth's 1st Assembly – September 29-30, 2021

The Assembly is an inclusive body representing the full scope of the Future Earth community (mostly scientific). It provides a platform for broad consultation and enables the full community to participate in the development of Future Earth core agenda, strategies, activities and structures through an annual gathering. It is also the body that elects the Governing Council, and makes regular recommendations to it.

All Future Earth community groups are represented in the Assembly and allocated (voting) seats, and each Future Earth entity (e.g. a single National Committee, a single Global Research Network, etc.) is asked to select representatives who will serve for 3-year terms by using this form.

Call for Representatives from Low and Middle Income Countries to Join the Future Earth Assembly

Currently, only four of Future Earth’s 19 national structures are located in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LIC-MIC), and only a limited number of the Global Research Networks have International Program Offices in LIC-MIC. This illustrates the urgent need for a greater representation of Global South constituencies within Future Earth.

Future Earth is looking for sustainability experts (whether already part of the Future Earth community or not yet) from LIC-MIC to be the voices of these countries in Future Earth’s Assembly and Governing Council, so as to contribute to the development of the Future Earth core agenda, strategies, activities, and structures. Read more here.

Future Earth's Governance Transition

Future Earth, the world’s largest community of sustainability scientists, has been operational for over six years. In that time, the urgency of our work has only increased, and it is now time to position this global organization to achieve the next level of impact.

Future Earth is making a bold shift to become a more inclusive, accessible, transparent, and transformative organization, promoting sustainability science globally, nationally, and locally. Read more about the new Global Secretariat Hubs, governance structures, and more. Moving forward, the entire Future Earth Community will have a voice and representation in this new structure to set priorities, strategic directions and elect the Governing Council. Read more about these changes here.

Project Progress

Global Research Projects & Knowledge-Action Networks

Rebuilding Coral Reefs: A Decadal Grand Challenge

Organized under the auspices of the International Coral Reef Symposium 2021 by Future Earth Coasts, and partners including the International Coral Reef Society, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, UN Environment Programme, ICRI, HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and the Kellner & Stoll Foundation for Climate and Environment.

The International Coral Reef Society (ICRS) assembled a team of experts to highlight the urgency of taking action to conserve and restore reefs through protection and management measures. This effort culminated in the creation of a paper titled “Rebuilding Coral Reefs: A Decadal Grand Challenge” which provides a summary of the most relevant and recent natural and social science findings and their implications for the numerous discussions and negotiations taking place at the global level.

This event brought together scientists and policy actors to discuss the paper and how it can support governments as they prepare for key negotiations on the dual crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss. See a recording of the event here, and view the paper here.

Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES) Global Conference

The Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES) held a Global Conference entitled, “A Digital Planet for Sustainability” on June 30-July 1 2021, with the support of the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology. Stimulating panel discussions and workshops brought together a broad range of stakeholders, science disciplines, policy-makers, business and digi-tech leaders, and civil society, to discuss key challenges, enabling factors, pathways and joint actions needed to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the digital age.

The conference kicked-off with messages from the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Maria Francesca Spatolisano, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme Achim Steiner, and the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme Inger Andersen. Opening keynotes were given by Prof. Yoshua Bengio, one of the leading experts in artificial intelligence most known for his pioneering work in deep learning, and Dr. Amy Luers, former Executive Director of Future Earth and current Global Lead for Sustainability Science at Microsoft. The key outcomes of the conference will be a shared Acceleration Plan for Digitalizing Environmental Sustainability that firmly anchors environmental sustainability needs within the UN Secretary-General’s Digital Cooperation Roadmap.

The CODES initiative is co-championed by: UNEP, UNDP, the International Science Council, the German Environment Agency, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of Kenya, and Future Earth & Sustainability in the Digital Age. Read more on the CODES community and work here.

Research Bytes from Anthropocene Magazine

Far-reaching study spells out how to drastically cut the energy footprint of buildings

The formula, which calls for a combination efficiency technology and peak load management, could eliminate need for one third of US coal and natural gas power plants. More here.

Which countries are the wealthiest, when blue carbon is the currency?

Researchers calculated that mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows store roughly the equivalent of the annual carbon emissions of France—with an estimated value of $190 billion per year. More here.

Employment in the energy sector will dramatically expand as economies decarbonize

A team calculated that a decarbonized world could lose 9.5 million fossil fuel jobs—and gain a whopping 17.4 million renewable jobs. More here.

An innovative seed ‘glove’ could help crops grow in arid extremes

Researchers develop a nutrient-enriched, gel coating for seeds that soaks up moisture and could buffer plants against drought. More here.

Events & Opportunities

To see more upcoming events, and share your own, join the Future Earth Membership Portal.

IMBeR GRP: call for abstract - IMBIZO6

Closes: 16 August 2021

The IMBeR IMBIZO6 (Zulu word for a gathering) will be a virtual event from 18-22 October 2021. The overall theme of the IMBIZO is Buoyant Solutions for Ocean Sustainability. It comprises three concurrent but interacting workshops, each with a maximum of 40 participants, selected on the relevance of their abstracts to the workshop topic. The topics are the following:

Workshop 1: Exploring potential marine options for climate intervention
Workshop 2: Lighting the ‘grey zone’: how can we integrate human dimensions in decadal-scale prediction systems?
Workshop 3: Ocean governance and climate adaptation: comparing responses, charting future courses

Find out more here.

PAGES working group applications and/or financial support for workshops or meetings

Closes: 20 September 2021

The next call for applications for new PAGES working groups and/or financial support to hold a workshop or meeting closes 20 September. You must contact a PAGES SSC member at least two weeks before the deadline to advise them of your plans.

Information about creating a new working group here.

Information about applying for financial support to conduct a workshop or meeting from April 2022 onwards here.

PAGES working group applications and/or financial support for workshops or meetings

Closes: 20 September 2021

The next call for applications for new PAGES working groups and/or financial support to hold a workshop or meeting closes 20 September. You must contact a PAGES SSC member at least two weeks before the deadline to advise them of your plans.

Information about creating a new working group can be found here.

Information about applying for financial support to conduct a workshop or meeting from April 2022 onwards can be found here.

PAGES-IAI Fellowship Program

Closes: 30 September 2021

PAGES and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) are pleased to announce a new fellowship opportunity for Latin American and Caribbean early-career scientists. The International Mobility Research Fellowship Program supports Latin American and Caribbean early-career scientists pursuing international research experience in paleoscience. It will cover the costs associated with travel and living expenses while abroad. This program, which will run for a minimum of two years, will support up to six fellowships per year.

The call for applications is now open. Fellowships will be awarded for a short duration (one to three months) and must be used within 12 months. The deadline for applications is 30 September at 23:00 UYT (02:00 UTC 1 October). More info here.

Joint European Space Agency (ESA) - Future Earth programme's 2021 call for collaborative research activities

Closes: 30 September 2021

The programme aims to facilitate the development and uptake of Earth observation data by Future Earth’s research networks.

Proposals are particularly welcomed on the themes of biodiversity, climate impacts on human health, or climate tipping elements, to better understand feedbacks, interactions and instabilities, but is not exclusive to these themes. The activities should address pressing research questions that are a priority for the networks, supported up to 20,000EUR. It is an open call to the GRPs and KANs. Full details here.

This Month's Quote

"If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way."

– Aristotle

Future Earth is governed by the International Science Council (ISC), Belmont Forum of funding agencies, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations University (UNU), the World Meteorological Organization, and the Science and Technology in Society (STS) forum.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

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