APRU-SCC: APRU Sustainability and Climate Change Sandbox

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Birth of the APRU-SCC Program - March 2012

Sunday, 04 March 2012 21:47 Jim Falk
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After much behind the scenes work to find funding and support to continue the work of the CMAS research program we are pleased to be able to announce success. In particular:

  • Our program has been renamed the APRU Sustainability and Climate Change Research Program (APRU-SCC).  This responds to a request from the new Secretary General of APRU, Professor Chris Tremewan, to ensure that the program has a broad enough brief to be able to respond actively to emerging challenges in relation to climate change and sustainability.
     
  • The APRU-SCC first event will be an International    Workshop on Coastal Cities, Climate Change and Sea Level Rise, to be held at the University of California at San Diego in conjunction with our SCC International Team meeting - date to be announced shortly.  More details on concept are below.  Members of CMAS are invited and encouraged to attend.  We will be writing to you shortly for your feedback on themes and program. 

  •  A new Planning Committee has been established to make sure that everything that needs to make this a success is achieved.  The Committee currently consists of Profs Tremewan, Dick Drobnick, and Jim Falk together with Prof David Woodruff (Director of the UCSD Sustainable Solutions Institute) and Prof Charlie Kennel (former Director of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography).   An SCC Program Committee also will assist us all in shaping up the work for the International meeting and beyond. 

  • Following a selection process, Jeremy “Jay” Piggott, a Malaysian New Zealander currently based in the Department of Zoology at the University of Otago, will formally begin work as our inaugural APRU-SCC Research Fellow, on 1 July 2012. He will be co-located with APRU in Singapore.  

  • Professor Jim Falk will be joining Prof Tremewan in Seoul in late March to present these developments to the APRU Senior Staff meeting and Professor Charlie Kennel will be attending the annual APRU Presidents’ Meeting in June at the University of Oregon also to inform presidents on the SCC latest insights and the way ahead. 

Prof. Christopher Tremewan, Secretary General, APRU  and Prof. Jim Falk, University of Melbourne.


Last Updated on Monday, 05 March 2012 22:58
 

Themes for the 2012 International Meeting

Monday, 05 March 2012 18:05 Jim Falk
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 When SCC (formerly CMAS) was established the IPCC fourth assessment was just appearing. Then there was optimism that the global temperature rise might be held to 2 degrees over the rest of the century. Now it is becoming clear that unless a great deal is done in this “decisive decade” to reverse present trends, we are facing a temperature rise of more like 4 degrees by 2100.[1] One key task is to consider the implications of this (for both adaptation and mitigation), especially in the context of  coastal communities and the hydrological systems on which they depend, and to whose disruption they are vulnerable.

 It is proposed to continue to tackle this issue utilizing the progress that CMAS had made as evidenced in our productive meeting in 2010 in Jakarta.  In particular, we will examine the implications for planning in each of the cities represented by the International SCC Researchers who come together.

 As in previous meetings we intend to join together the international expertise of SCC with the leading experts and decision makers from California and UCSD.

 In considering the issues we will take a “Knowledge-Action” approach in which a key issue is what information is needed from ‘the outside in” and from “the inside out” to enable communities to respond effectively, and how can a program like APRU facilitate appropriate knowledge flows.

 Finally, and not the least taking into account all of the above, we will examine what further developments of SCC are required.  This is a new opportunity,  in a re-shaping and re-invigorated program to collectively determine SCC’s role and direction.  The task here is to identify opportunity to do more together than we could achieve separately in helping our communities and universities meet the challenge of the "decisive decade". This will include determining which researchers we need to bring in from our Universities to further develop SCC and what advice we should give to the Presidents of our universities, who sponsor APRU and this program. 

[1] See the papers of http://www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/content/pages/conference-four-degrees-or-more-australia-hot-world; and Joeri Rogelj, William Hare, Jason Lowe, Detlef P. van Vuuren, Keywan Riahi, Ben Matthews, Tatsuya Hanaoka, Kejun Jiang & Malte Meinshausen, Nature Climate Change 1, 413–418 (2011) http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n8/full/nclimate1258.html

 

Last Updated on Monday, 05 March 2012 22:55
 

Welcome to the SCC Sandbox

Saturday, 07 July 2007 19:54 Jim Falk
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This is the APRU-SCC sandbox, a workplace, rather than the official polished website for the Institute and its Sustainability and Climate Change research program. You can find that at http://www.apru.org/awi/

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Indonesia meeting has lead to strong outcomes

Tuesday, 23 March 2010 00:59 Jim Falk
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The 5th CMAS (now SCC) international research meeting, which concluded in Jakarta, Indonesia, in March 2010, produced a range of important outcomes. Attended by researchers from 12 universities from across the Pacific Rim, it seemed to be the consensus that the research program was poised for its next stage of development. 

The two day team meeting was followed by a further two day workshop focussing on Indonesia and Climate Change. Opened by the Vice-President of Indonesia, Professor Boediono in his palace, the meeting closed with the announcement by the Vice-Rector of the University of Indonesia that it would establish a Research Centre on Climate Change within three months.   That Centre is now fully operating and is directed by Prof Jatna Supriatna, co-Director of APRU-SCC.

 

 The meeting and its outcomes received strong press coverage.  For more about these meetings click here and for associated documents here. For more pictures click here. For more on outcomes click here.