200 environmental researchers in Lund

19 April 2012

200 environmental researchers are in Lund to give input to the Rio+20 conference.What political measures must be taken to manage the global environmental and sustainability problems? How can the United Nations and global policies be bolstered so that they are able to drive development in the right direction? Is a global parliament the answer? How much influence should the global justice and environmental movements have?

On 18–20 April, around 200 environmental researchers in social sciences from around the world will be at Lund University. Some of the issues for discussion concern how Africa can combine its huge growth with sustainability, whether green capitalism is possible and how environmental and sustainability issues can be reinforced within the UN system.

“The conference in Lund is to be seen as the research community’s input to Rio +20 – the United Nations conference on sustainable development which will be held in Brazil in June,” says Karin Bäckstrand, a political scientist and conference host along with Lennart Olsson, director of LUCSUS, the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies.

The dates of the conference were well chosen to enable the researchers to influence the global agenda and the Swedish Government’s preparations for the conference in Rio. On 23–25 April the Government will be holding an international conference entitled Stockholm+40 to commemorate the UN’s first environmental conference, which was held in Stockholm in 1972, where it will decide which issues to pursue in Rio.

Just as at the Rio conference, issues of democracy and justice will play a prominent role at the Lund conference. Over the three days, there will be around 20 lectures and over 180 researchers will present their results on 40 panels.

A selection of items from the programme:

Thursday, 19 April 8:30–10:00 Towards Postmodern Global Democracies, Jan Aart Scholte, Warwick University
Thursday, 19 April 13:30–15:00 Panel on “A Global Parliament: A Means to Strengthen Accountability, Legitimacy and Democracy?”

Friday, 20 April 8:30–10:00 Africa's Land Grabs: Enhanced Development or Recolonizing the Continent? Margaret Carol Lee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill