Planet Under Pressure 2012 post-conference evaluation
15th May 2012
Eight weeks has now passed since the Planet under
Pressure conference. The Global Environmental Change Research
Programme provides an update on the fantastic progress made
since the conference:
We believe that the Planet Under Pressure was
a huge success. The conference brought together the world-leading
experts in a broad range of fields. The feedback received thus far
indicates the conference has met its objectives in many key areas.
It attracted 3000 scientists, decision makers, business
representatives, journalists and others; well above the expected
2500. Over 400 articles have been published worldwide in 15
languages and the conference still reverberates in the media,
online discussions and policy circles.
The conference highlighted the urgent need to
focus on solutions to global challenges. Part of the solution is to
bring natural and social scientists even closer together. In this
respect, Planet Under Pressure may mark a turning point in
international Earth-system research. Indeed, the conference marked
the beginning of a refocus of the international research community,
led by the four global-change programmes, towards a programme of
research focusing on sustainability.
We believe that the conference’s proximity to
the Rio+20 Summit has given the scientific community a strong voice
in this process, particularly through the nine policy briefs and
suite of white papers commissioned specially for the conference,
and the media attention the conference gained.
Beyond policy links, the conference’s
communications strategy was ambitious and experimental. During the
conference the “Bridges to the Future” participatory sessions
proved popular and aided the formation of new collaborations
between science, business and policy communities. Through
engagement with science and technology centres worldwide we
arranged 150 events reaching 12,000 people, from the Columbia to
the US, from the Philippines to Egypt. The film “Welcome to the
Anthropocene” commissioned for the conference has been viewed by
over 600,000 people and conference updates reached one million
people via Twitter.
We recommend you catch some of the conference
highlights:
Webcast:
The Daily News Show (Episode 1 includes Prof. Sir Bob
Watson and Dr Carol Turley)
Webcast:
Plenary programme
Editorial:
New York Times The greatest challenge of our
species
3-minute film: http://vimeo.com/39048998