Future Earth at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2014: What should the future of global environmental change research look like?

This meeting will be held in Room Y7 of the Austria Center Vienna, where the General Assembly is taking place.

Future Earth is currently running a community consultation to identify the most important and most critical challenges for global change science to address in the next 5 years. These challenges will be used to develop our Strategic Research Agenda – a set of research priorities that will be co-designed with stakeholders from the funding, business and policy communities to help guide their strategies on sustainable development.

Attendees at the meeting will be asked to give their views on the research priorities for the next five years of global change research, and to highlight gaps in existing knowledge that could be addressed by transdisciplinary research under Future Earth in the longer term.

In the first half of the session, Corinne Le Quéré (Future Earth Science Committee Member, Professor of Climate Change Science and Policy at the University of East Anglia and Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research) will introduce Future Earth and the process for developing its Strategic Research Agenda, and will give an overview of the ‘long list’ of research priorities that have been proposed during an initial consultation within Future Earth's existing scientific community. This list of priorities will serve as starting point for discussions.

Attendees will be asked to comment and to share their own ideas for what the top priorities for global environmental change research should be. The aim of this discussion is to seek fresh input and ideas on the future and priorities of global environmental change research, and to inspire researchers to get involved with initiatives under Future Earth.

We particularly encourage early career researchers to come along to this session. As well as providing an opportunity to take part in an innovative approach to defining research priorities, attendees will have a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas and network with their peers.

Diana Greenslade (Future Earth Science Officer) will also be on hand to talk about the implementation of Future Earth and opportunities to get involved, for example through linking existing research activities with Future Earth.

A light breakfast will be provided.

This meeting will be held in Room Y7 of the Austria Center Vienna.