[E&E seminars] 2008 AGS Annual Meeting at MIT

[Karen Gibson]

AGS Annual Meeting 2008
28 - 31 January | Cambridge, MA USA

Designing Pathways for a Sustainable World:
at Scale, in Time, and for All

Hosted by MIT

We invite you to register online at http://web.mit.edu/agsam08

PLEASE NOTE:  the poster abstract submission deadline is 26 October  
2007.

Registration is open for the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Alliance for  
Global Sustainability at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The need for substantive action on climate, energy, food, and water  
challenges is urgent. To respond, we must design pathways toward  
sustainability that take into consideration the scale, timing, and  
social equity of proposed technologies and policies. Will redesigned  
systems be of a scale to have significant impact for target regions,  
and can they be adapted for other regions? Can systems be implemented  
in time to make a difference? Do the pathways foster equitable  
distribution of resources and opportunities?

The 2008 AGS Annual Meeting builds upon progress in 2007 to develop  
the “pathways” concept as a framework for advancing near-term  
transitions to sustainability and is designed to move us from the  
academic concept of sustainability as “something we study” to  
“something we study and do.” The basis of the pathways concept is how  
we transition from our present systems, based on today’s  
technologies, infrastructures, and markets, toward more sustainable  
systems. Pathways can be thought of as alternative bridging  
technologies and strategies that move us from the present to a  
sustainable future. The question is what are the pathways and how do  
we flexibly choose among them?

Keynote speaker:    Dr. R.K. Pachauri
					Chairman of the IPCC, Director-General of TERI and,
					through his leadership of IPCC, recent Nobel Peace Prize winner

Panel discussions and breakout sessions will focus on:

	•  The question, "Is it too late?"
	•  Challenges to research universities from industry, government, &  
civil society
	•  More effective interactions between societal sectors and research  
universities
	•  Agents of change and innovative approaches
	•   Implications of new pathways for the developing world

All participants are invited to submit poster abstracts relevant to  
the topics of the meeting and the AGS Flagship Programs. Poster  
abstracts will be reviewed and selected based on their relevance,  
significance, and quality. See the conference website for details.

Key dates for the conference:

Conference dates: 28 - 31 January 2008
Submission deadline for Poster abstracts: 26 October 2007
Registration deadline: online - 14 January 2008

The 2008 AGS Annual Meeting Web Site
http://web.mit.edu/agsam08

We hope you will join us!

If you have any questions, please email:  kgibson at mit.edu

___________________________________________________

The Alliance for Global Sustainability (AGS) is a network of  
international science and technology-based universities -  
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA, USA), Swiss  
Federal Institute of Technology (Zurich, Switzerland), The University  
of Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan), and Chalmers University of Technology  
(Göteborg, Sweden) - committed to joint research, education, and  
outreach to address the issues around global sustainability. The AGS  
was created a decade ago to help understand the complex issues that  
lie at the intersection of environmental, economic, and social goals.
http://globalsustainability.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/environmental-seminars/attachments/20071019/c6c56880/attachment.htm