2014年12月22日月曜日

Heide Hackmann is the new ICSU Executive Director, Urban Health programme office opens

ICSU(国際科学会議)のニューズレターです。先日もお伝えしましたが、ISSC(国際社会科学協議会)事務局長のHeide HackmannさんがICSUの事務局長に決まったことのニュースなどがあります。
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…with apologies for cross-posting, the official announcement from ICSU


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Dr. Heide Hackmann to be ICSU Executive Director and Dr. Lucilla Spini, Head 
of Science Programmes
Heide Hackmann, a social scientist with extensive experience running 
international research organizations, will be Executive Director of the 
Council’s Secretariat from March 2015. Lucilla Spini, a biological 
anthropologist with experience in international science coordination will 
take on the newly created role of Head of Science Programmes in early 
January.

Hackmann joins the Council from the International Social Science Council 
(ISSC), where she has been Executive Director since 2007. During her tenure, 
she strengthened ISSC’s activity profile, membership base and financial 
position, and forged strong links with the International Council for Science 
through key partnerships. These include the Integrated Research on Disaster 
Risk programme and the Science and Technology Alliance for Global 
Sustainability, the consortium of international organizations that founded 
Future Earth, the new global research initiative on global sustainability, 
and coordinating inputs from the international scientific community on key 
policy processes at the United Nations.

Hackmann also led the launch of the regular World Social Science Forums and 
spearheaded the development of a new series of World Social Science Reports. 
She initiated a new global social science research funding and coordination 
programme on Transformations to Sustainability, which was launched in March 
2014 as a major contribution to Future Earth.

Announcing her appointment, Hackmann said that she felt “excited and 
grateful for the privilege to head the activities of ICSU, an organization 
with a long track record of strengthening international research 
collaboration, and now assuming a leadership role in securing effective 
collaborations between the sciences and with society in order to address 
global priority problems.”

Peter Liss will step down as Interim Executive Director of the International 
Council for Science, when Hackmann takes up her new role on 2 March, 2015.

President of the International Council for Science, Gordon McBean, said: 
“We are extremely pleased to announce Heide Hackmann’s appointment as 
Executive Director. During her tenure at ISSC, she has demonstrated her 
ability to rally scientists from both the natural and social sciences to 
work together to address some of the biggest challenges facing humanity. 
ICSU will benefit greatly from her leadership, vision, and ability to build 
bridges between different disciplines.” He added that the Executive Board 
was “confident that Hackmann will lead the Council to renewed strength and 
influence.”

Hackmann was born in South Africa and completed her PhD in Science and 
Technology studies at the University of Twente, Netherlands in 2003. From 
then until 2007 she was Head of the Department of International Relations 
and National Quality Assurance and Director: CO-REACH (an EU-funded 
multi-lateral initiative for the Coordination of Research between Europe and 
China) at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

The Council also announced that Dr. Lucilla Spini will take on the newly 
created post of Head of Science Programmes, starting from 12 January 2015. 
In this role, she will manage the development and implementation of ICSU’s 
scientific and science for policy initiatives, as defined in its Strategic 
Plan. Spini is an Italian national who holds a B.A. in anthropology from New 
York University, as well as an M.Sc. in human biology and D.Phil. in 
biological anthropology, both from the University of Oxford. Since 2001, she 
has worked on science/policy bridging, global environmental change, 
sustainable development and research coordination for a number of 
international organizations, including UNESCO, UNU, and the FAO. She is 
currently a Giorgio Ruffolo Research Fellow in the Sustainability Science 
Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.





Urban Health and Wellbeing office opens in Xiamen, China
Led by the International Council for Science (ICSU), and co-sponsored by the 
United Nations University and the InterAcademy Medical Panel, the new 
programme will inform city planning, policies and design with science-based 
strategies and tactics to improve the health of billions of people living in 
fast-growing urban areas. It will also identify and help manage the 
unintended health consequences of urban policy and the connections between 
cities and planetary change.

The new programme ? which will be hosted by the Institute of Urban 
Environment at Chinese Academy of Sciences - will provide a hub for 
interdisciplinary scientific knowledge development, exchange and 
communication. It will support city leaders and managers to make informed 
policy decisions by providing scientifically based information on the costs 
and benefits of healthy urban system structures and better urban health. It 
will build capacity in scientific and other stakeholder communities to learn 
and apply systems methods and inform urban residents on healthy urban 
structures and ways to achieve and maintain better health.

The novelty of the programme lies in its systems approach, said Professor 
Anthony Capon of the United Nations University, calling it "a particularly 
effective way to understand and manage changing urban environments with 
profound implications for the way people live, work, learn, move and play, 
all of which have health implications."

President Gordon McBean, who was present at the opening ceremony on December 
9 of the international programme office, noted that the Council is leading 
on science for policy initiatives in 2015 through several key United Nations 
processes. “There is an important role for the scientific information on 
the human health-urban environment connections ? to the Sustainable 
Development Goals, to the post-2015 framework on Disaster Risk reduction. 
Future Earth is now underway with new efforts to co-design, co-produce and 
co-deliver knowledge on sustainability and there are scientific connections 
among IRDR, Future Earth and Urban Health and Well-Being.”

"One of the questions we need to address in this programme is "how many 
health risks are people willing to take for the benefits that come with 
urban lives?" Citizens and policymakers need to be able to make that 
decision and become active agents of urban change. This programme will 
support them in making these decisions," said Franz Gatzweiler, Executive 
Director of the programme.

"Human health in urban areas represents a growing concern worldwide but 
nowhere more so than in China, with recent WHO reports of millions of deaths 
worldwide each year from urban air pollution. Urgent action is needed to 
protect and promote health through improved urban planning and design,” 
said Yong-Guan Zhu, Director-General, Institute of Urban Environment, 
Chinese Academy of Sciences.

A two-day expert workshop bringing together around 60 experts was also held 
in Xiamen this week, hosted by the Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese 
Academy of Sciences.

The launch was covered by both the BBC and the Daily Mail (UK).

Note from the editors: Every issue of ICSU Insight highlights a project from 
the ICSU family. If you think a particular project should be considered for 
this, please write to insight@icsu.org.





New video: 2014 Young Scientists' Networking Conference

From 25-31 May, 30 young scientists from across the disciplines met at Villa 
Vigoni, the German Italian Centre for European Excellence in Menaggio, 
Italy, to work on their vision for a sustainable economy. In this video, 
they give an insight into the broad range of their research interests and 
their ideas for the future. Watch the video on our website.

The call for applications for the 2015 conference, on the topic of 'Future 
Sustainability - the role of Science in the Sustainable Development Goals' 
is still open until December 22nd.



Global conference on science advice to governments: final report available

The synthesis report of the first international conference of practitioners 
and scholars on Science Advice to Governments which took place in Auckland 
earlier this year is now available from the ICSU website. The conference, 
which took place in August ahead of ICSU’s General Assembly, was convened 
by the International Council for Science (ICSU) and hosted by New Zealand’s 
Chief Science Advisor Sir Peter Gluckman. It brought together some 200 
participants including science advisors, senior officials, representatives 
of national academies, experts and scholars from more than 40 countries 
across Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, the United States, Canada 
and Latin America.


CFRS supports scientists whose human rights are under threat as a result of 
scientific activity

The Chair of ICSU's Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in the conduct 
of Science, Leiv K. Sydnes, recently attended a court hearing in Turkey 
against the scientist Büşra Ersanlı. CFRS had monitored her situation since 
she was first imprisoned. Ersanlı, a faculty member in the Department of 
Political Science and International Relations at Marmara University in 
Istanbul, was arrested in October 2011 as part of a crackdown on Kurdish 
political parties. She was charged with suspected links to the Kurdistan 
Workers’ Party (PKK). Ersanlı was in fact a member of the Assembly of the 
Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), and she never advocated violence.



Junior Science Officer at the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk programme

Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) is a decade-long research 
programme co-sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the 
International Social Science Council (ISSC), and the United Nations 
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). It is a global, 
multi-disciplinary approach to dealing with the challenges brought by 
natural disasters, mitigating their impacts, and improving related 
policy-making mechanisms.

The International Programme Office of IRDR in Beijing, China, is now 
recruiting a Junior Science Officer.


Call for contributions to the UN Global Sustainable Development Report 2015

The Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR) is a United Nations 
publication aiming to strengthen the science-policy interface at the High 
Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development, which replaced the 
Commission on Sustainable Development after Rio+20 as the main United 
Nations platform providing political leadership and guidance on sustainable 
development issues at the international level.

The call for contributions invites scientists to bring their science issues 
and solutions to the attention of policymakers and participate in a 
conversation with them.

The contributions should address an issue, finding, or research with a 
bearing on sustainable development in its three dimensions ? economic, 
social, and environmental ? or the inter-linkages between them. Thus the 
focus could be on the review of up-to-date findings relating to a particular 
issue, address the single issue of importance, or present solutions to a 
problem or challenge. It could also present the 'story' of a research 
finding that has great policy relevance but is not typically considered in 
the policy debate. The briefs are to be factual and based on peer-reviewed 
literature. Contributions from both the natural and social science 
communities from all disciplines are highly valued and welcomed.

Find more information about the call on the UN Sustainable Development 
website. The deadline for contributions is January 20th, 2015.



Peter Liss is the new interim Executive Director of ICSU

Prof. Peter Liss has joined ICSU at the start of October as the Interim 
Executive Director of ICSU for the next months, until a permanent Executive 
Director is appointed. Liss is an environmental chemist with research 
interests in the interactions between the oceans and the atmosphere and 
their role in global change. He is a Professor in the School of 
Environmental at the University of East Anglia. Prof. Liss has been Chair of 
the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) of ICSU, Chair of 
IGBP's SOLAS (Surface Ocean ? Lower Atmosphere) project and a member of the 
Future Earth Transition Team. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a 
member of Academia Europaea.



More than 1,000 delegates gather in Geneva for talks on global disaster risk 
reduction agreement

ICSU took part in the second preparatory session for the Third World 
Disaster Risk Reduction Conference at the UN in Geneva from Nov 17-18. As 
the organizing partner of the Science and Technology Major Group, ICSU 
convened a delegation of more than 20 representatives from Europe, Latin 
America, Asia, Africa drawn from research organizations, ICSU's IRDR 
programme and ICSU's Regional Offices and partner organizations such as the 
IAP.

The Science and Technology Major Group made a series of inputs via 
statements in the technical workshops and co-chairs dialogue on issues 
ranging from the contribution that science can make in the implementation of 
the Framework, the links between the post-2015 agenda and DRR and the 
integration of DRR with financing.



Future Earth Engagement Committee announced

Jairam Ramesh will chair the Committee, which will provide leadership and 
strategic guidance on engaging societal partners with Future Earth, ensuring 
that Future Earth provides the knowledge society needs.


ICSU publishes report of External Review Panel

The External Review Panel (ERP) was set up in mid-2013 to review the 
activities of ICSU which had not been reviewed since 1996. Terms of 
Reference and a timetable were agreed upon and a series of meetings set in 
order to deliver this report in good time for the General Assembly in 
Auckland from 31 August to 3 September, 2014. The full report with the 
Panel's findings is now available for download.



Landmark scientifc data conference ends with strong support of data sharing 
for sustainability

SciDataCon2014, the International Conference on Data Sharing and Integration 
for Global Sustainability, took place on 2?5 November in New Delhi, India. 
It was motivated by the conviction that the most significant research 
challenges?and in particular the pressing issues relating to global 
sustainability in the face of ongoing natural and human-induced changes to 
the planetary system?cannot be properly addressed without paying attention 
to issues relating to equitable access to quality-assured and interoperable 
datasets and their long-term management and preservation.



Call for nominations: ICSU Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in the 
conduct of Science

As a key policy committee, the CFRS safeguards and promotes the Principle of 
Universality of Science, one of the strategic priority areas of the 
International Council for Science. Nominations for individuals to serve on 
this Committee are now invited. With the replacement of about a third of the 
current membership, 6-8 new members are being sought.

Nominations should be summited using the form available from our website as 
soon as possible, but no later than Friday, 19 December 2014.



Invitation to ICSU Members to host the CFRS secretariat

The International Council for Science has launched a call to its Members to 
host the secretariat of the ICSU Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in 
the conduct of Science (CFRS).

As a key ICSU policy committee, CFRS safeguards and promotes the Principle 
of Universality of Science, one of the strategic priority areas of the 
International Council for Science. For its core activities, the Committee 
needs to rely on additional support. Since October 2010, the Swiss Academy 
of Sciences (SCNAT) has very generously hosted the CFRS Secretariat.

The International Council for Science has now issued a call to its members 
to consider hosting the CFRS Secretariat from October 2015 to ensure 
continuity of CFRS’s work.

Expressions of interest should be submitted no later than Friday, 23 January 
2015.


Asia Pacific

Urban Health and Wellbeing Systems Thinking Workshop, Xiamen, China

ICSU ROAP and its partners, the Institute of Urban Environment (IUE), 
Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the newly established International 
Programme Office on Urban Health and Wellbeing is conducting a systems 
thinking workshop for a team of Chinese researchers on 11 and 12 December 
2014, in Xiamen, China where the IUE is located. This will be the last 
activity organised by ICSU ROAP for 2014. A group at IUE, led by Professor 
Heqing Shen, is developing an urban air quality and public health pilot 
project that will adopt the systems approach. The workshop will build on an 
earlier systems thinking workshop that ICSU ROAP held in Kuala Lumpur in 
January 2013. The workshop will also introduce the new ICSU-UNU-IAMP 
International Programme on urban health and wellbeing, with its systems 
thinking and system dynamics approach, to a wider group of scientists.


More news from ICSU's Asia-Pacific Regional Office

Latin America & the Caribbean

Society and Nature

The workshop "Society and Nature: Dialogue between natural and social 
scientists on the challenges of sustainability" was organized by ICSU ROLAC 
and ISSC at the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Rio de Janeiro, September 
30th ? October 1st, 2014.

The main objective of this workshop was to facilitate communication between 
natural and social scientists around energy issues, socio- environmental 
risks, urban mobility, and problems of poverty and growing inequality.

Second Latin-American Forum of Disaster Risk Reduction in Higher Education

On November 24-26, ICSU ROLAC organized the “Second Latin-American Forum of 
Disaster Risk Reduction in Higher Education” in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. 
Rüdiger Klein (Excecutive Director of IRDR) promoted aligning the strategies 
of DRR in the LAC region and IRDR. The previews of the Consultancy hired 
earlier this year were presented and an action plan of the Steering 
Committee was drafted.


Tokyo Conference on International Study for Disaster Risk Reduction and 
Resilience   Tokyo, January 14-16

World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction  Sendai, March 14-18


3rd Young Scientists Networking Conference on Integrated Science Menaggio, May 24-29

1st International Workshop on Supporting Future Earth with Global  Geo-information Beijing, June 9-10

2nd COSPAR Symposium: Water and Life in the Universe  Foz do Iguacu, November 9-13