FLARE 2023 Annual Meeting

The 2023 FLARE Annual Meeting will be held October 12-16 in Nairobi, Kenya in partnership with CIFOR-ICRAF.

October 12th will be the opening reception and October 16th will be the optional workshop day.

The event will be held at the beautiful CIFOR-ICRAF campus in Nairobi and represents the first FLARE annual meeting to take place in the Global South.

2023 Annual Meeting Theme

Linking Research and Action for Thriving Forests, Trees, and People

Research can play a key role in advocacy and action to address climate change, reduce vulnerability, conserve forests, and foster human development. For example, evidence accumulated over decades has demonstrated the critical role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in protecting and sustainably managing forests and, in turn, helped lead to government recognition of community land rights and new funding flows. More generally, impact assessments of different forest-related interventions have helped improve policy design.

Yet too often research has been ineffective in fostering change – or reforms benefitting communities and forests inspired and honed by research have been clawed back by forest services and other interested parties. Too often, even when research reveals options and abuses, key findings are hidden behind a paywall, suppressed by threatened parties, or are couched in specialist language that obscures their practical relevance, among other barriers. The result is that knowledge relevant to tackling the urgent challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty alleviation and other social ills often remains unused.  What can we do to confront such obstacles? How can research—and researchers—make a difference?

FLARE 2023 will explore these questions and seeks to make concrete progress toward better harnessing research for action. Doing so will require dialogue and collaboration among scientists, government officials, concerned citizens, activists and advocates, business leaders, journalists, and others.

Therefore, proposals for FLARE 2023 are particularly welcome that:

  • Include collaboration between researchers and other actors mentioned above,
  • Involve early career scholars and practitioners, including in intergenerational partnerships,
  • Are led by scholars from low- and middle- income countries/the Global South.

And that:

  • Address barriers to effective use of research in policy and practice and means to overcome them,
  • Document and explain the exclusions of research from arenas where it could result in better forest management or improve lives and livelihoods,
  • Present cases of positive policy change that reflect good practice in research uptake,
  • Demonstrate collaborative approaches that have worked to bridge divides and/or show promise to do so,
  • Provide examples of collective action for systemic change that favors thriving human communities and forest landscapes, and/or
  • Highlight the voices, challenges, and successes of those who suffer most from forest loss and degradation, climate and environmental change, and restrictive policies.

Learn more

Array ( [0] => Africa/Nairobi )

Hybrid event: Bringing Sustainability to the campus, global perspectives

As part of the second Symposium on Teaching & Curriculum Development in Sustainability Entrepreneurship, UNEP is hosting an online event to hear from global academic practitioners on how to integrate sustainability into programme designs and inspire eco-entrepreneurs and new business model innovators of tomorrow. Speakers will address their experience and strategy for integrating sustainability; what has been effective and where challenges remain.

Panelists will include:

  • Dr. Diana Trujillo, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
  • Majid Mirza, University of Waterloo, Canada
  • Dr. Booyuel Kim, Seoul National University, Korea
  • Dr. Dan LeClair, Global Business School Network, USA

The online event explores:

  • How do we introduce sustainability into entrepreneurship?
  • What are the key challenges faced? What is working?
  • How can we amplify effective integration of sustainability in (the private sector and) business schools?
  • What tools do students need? Are they available and/or do they need to be developed?

 

Register here

Array ( [0] => Europe/Paris )

TRED conference 2023: Co-creating space for collaborative research and learning to inspire, interact and integrate

We are happy to announce this first TRED conference that will take place on June 12-14th, 2023 in Wageningen (the 12th is online).

In this interactive conference, we will not just discuss inter- and transdisciplinarity, we will also dig deeper into the fundamentals of inter- and transdisciplinary science, create a safe space for dialogue, make time for hands-on explorations of different approaches, and experiment with transdisciplinary processes through mini-hackathons.

Background

Climate change, the transition to a circular economy, and issues concerning human health, are examples of challenges we need to address in our society these days. These issues are both urgent and complex and require the integration of different (scientific) knowledge. However, for many challenges, scientific perspectives alone are not enough. Societal knowledge is needed to understand and define problems, identify alternatives, evaluate strategies, and design and implement processes.

But when, how, with whom, and even why we should integrate knowledge are not always clear. Moreover, although transdisciplinarity requires (new forms of) collaboration, many researchers and societal members feel alone in their endeavours.

The Transdisciplinary Research, Education and Dialogue initiative (TRED) seeks to further transdisciplinary science through creating a safe space for dialogue, unpacking theories, practices and essentials of knowledge integrations.

We look forward to co-creating space for collaborative research and learning with you.

Venue and travel information

The Dialogue Centre of Wageningen University & Research, Omnia, is the perfect venue for scientists, students, society and partners to meet. Here, there is room for a good conversation and the sharing of ideas in a relaxed atmosphere.

Registration

You can register for the conference here.
The registration deadline is 2 June 2023.

Learn more

Array ( [0] => Europe/Amsterdam )