Water and energy are critical for our current society and will be of increasing importance in the future. Climate change is forcing us to reassess our energy usage and will have real and substantial impacts on the water cycle. Solving the interlinked challenges of water, climate and energy in a sustainable manner is one of the fundamental goals of this generation. Following on from conferences on Climate Change Adaptation and Water and Energy, the International Water Association is proud to announce the inaugural World Congress on Water, Climate and Energy in 2012.

The Congress will explore the topics of resilient and sustainable cities with a focus on climate change adaptation and mitigation. The challenges of climate change adaptation and incorporating uncertainty into the city vision and infrastructure will be discussed together with the impacts and responses of climate change on water resources. Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, operating in a carbon constrained world and a focus on renewable energy including practical applications and integration in to the energy mix will be covered.

Solutions to these challenges, including the role of technologies and smart networks will also be a central theme. Recognising that technology is only part of the solution the conference will also address the economic, political and regulatory aspects of water, climate and energy.

The congress will attract up to 2,000 international participants for this global event and will feature a large industry presence and trade exhibition.

Submissions for oral and poster presentation are invited on the topics listed below supplemented by invited talks by world experts and political leaders.

The 36th sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), the fifteenth session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA), the seventeenth session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the first session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) will take place concurrently from 14 to 25 May. All sessions will be held at the Maritim Hotel in Bonn.

Since the beginning of life on Earth, oceans have influenced the fundamental processes of our planet. From their role in the global carbon cycle to providing the habitats that sustain marine biodiversity, oceans provide the living resources and services upon which humans depend. They create opportunities for economic development, for societal well-being, and for quality of life. But we are changing the World Ocean to an extent that is unprecedented in millions of years. Greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, affecting the global carbon cycle, and changing the chemical composition of the ocean. These fundamental changes can have serious consequences for oceanic productivity and species composition. Marine ecosystems are being disrupted by overfishing and pollution at various scales so the consequences for Earth, as we have known it, might become serious. There is general agreement that our understanding of the role of oceans in the ecology of the planet is in its infancy. While many adverse effects of climate change have been described to date, they are likely a fraction of what will become apparent in the coming years. These changes are described and debated in regional or thematic symposia and workshops, but a comprehensive view of the current state of the global ocean and comparison between regions demands an international symposium program that reaches for that scale. ICES, PICES and IOC joined forces in 2008 for the first global ocean symposium (Gijón, Spain) and it attracted 400 scientists from 48 countries. This second look at the "Effects of Climate Change on the World's Oceans" will lead us through many issues of the role of climate change on the oceans: sea level rise, changes in thermo-haline ocean circulation, acidification, oligotrophy of temperate seas, changes in species abundance, distribution and phenology, loss of biodiversity, all of which will have serious implications for marine living resources, etc. This symposium aims to bring together experts from different disciplines to exchange observations, results, models and ideas at a global scale and to discuss the opportunities to mitigate and protect the marine environment and its living resources.

This international conference will focus on the current state of knowledge on climate change impacts on forest ecosystems, services and activities. It will highlight methods and challenges to mitigate or tackle climate change impacts, both before they arise and once they have occured. It will show how climate change and forest sciences address the issues facing forest managers.

The predicted effects of climate change over the coming decades include extreme weather events, drought, flooding, sea level rise, retreating glaciers, habitat shifts, and the increased spread of life-threatening diseases. These conditions have the potential to disrupt societies around the world and force nations to change the way they keep populations safe and secure.

The Conference on Oceans, Climate and Security (GCOCS) will examine the conditions that are likely to be produced by climate change, how these conditions will affect coastal and ocean ecosystems and communities, and how they may affect human and national security interests. GCOCS will focus on three specific themes examining the overall problem from different perspectives with a unified goal of understanding how to mitigate the effects that we can control and adapt to those that we cannot. The three tracks are:

• Track 1: Raising Visibility and Fostering Literacy
• Track 2: Science and Technology Needs
• Track 3: Security Policy & Governance Implications

Real Science, Real Choices

This year’s theme is “Real Science, Real Choices.” Our goal is to feature approximately 60 scientists and policy experts speaking at plenary sessions and on three tracks of concurrent panel sessions exploring what real climate science is telling us about the causes and consequences of climate change, and the real consequences of choices being made based on the current perceptions of the state of climate science.

Auf Initiative verschiedener Wissenschaftler finden seit Oktober 2009 jährlich die Spiekerooger Klimagespräche statt. Sie führen regelmäßig rund dreißig Vertreterinnen und Vertreter der Wirtschafts-, Sozial-, Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften zusammen, um Fragen des Umgangs mit dem Klimawandel zu diskutieren. Dieser interdisziplinäre wissenschaftliche Diskurs wird nun wiederum einer breiten Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht.

Auf der Tagung werden wir die Ergebnisse der Spiekerooger Klimagespräche inhaltlich überprüfen und uns über geeignete Vermittlungsformen zu kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen verständigen.

AUM2012 is the second of a planned series of annual symposia for discussing applied urban simulation models that offer insight into complex dynamics of urban change and inform practical initiatives.  AUM2012 aims to bring together scholars and practitioners from diverse disciplines, professional institutions and government agencies in many countries.  The cross-fertilisation of ideas is expected to serve as a springboard for innovation in urban modelling at different levels – from conceptual experiments to policy appraisal.

AUM2012 will continue to focus on models of large city regions, especially their applications in addressing grand challenges such as energy and climate change.  It is open to all model types and styles, although for 2012 we particularly welcome papers that assess different pathways towards energy efficient and climate wise cities, where system-level thinking is still hampered by a lack of common understanding of the theories and tools.  We also welcome papers that report innovations in methods and techniques.

The symposium programme will be structured around the following themes:

• Emerging frontiers – new generic models of urban activities
• Integrated modelling of activities and infrastructure in the city region
• Urban models at the precinct and neighbourhood level
• Intelligent and adaptable cities – sensing, actuation and feedback
• Policy models in practical use

The presentation will focus on the prevalence of climate scepticism – in its various forms - in the print media around the world. Most previous academic research on climate scepticism has tended to focus on the way it has been organised, and its impact on policy outputs, rather on the types of scepticism and the individuals who represent them. The paper lays out the different forms of scepticism, and gives examples of the differences between them. It then draws on extensive content analysis of a large database of newspaper articles in Brazil, China, France, India, the UK and the USA, taken from two separate three-month periods in 2007 and 2009/10. It shows the country variations in the quantity, type and professional backgrounds of sceptics quoted in the press. It concludes that climate scepticism is largely an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, found most frequently in the US and British newspapers, and explores some of the reasons why this may be so.

Speaker: James Painter, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford

time: 5 to 6.30pm