Planet Under Pressure 2012 post-conference evaluation
15 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