Johan Rockström to speak at 2018 World Economic Forum

The annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, kicks off on 23 January. The focus of this year’s four-day meeting for business and political leaders is the changing geopolitical landscape and implications for the global commons. Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and co-chair of Future Earth’s newly formed Advisory Comittee, will speak at the forum. At a 25 January lunch session, Rockström will discuss the need for science-based targets to underpin efforts to manage the global commons – the critical components and processes of the planet that ensure the stability of human society.

“The global commons – a stable, resilience Earth system –  is every child’s birthright and our common heritage. It is now at risk,” Rockström will say at the event.

For more information about this event, visit the official website of the World Economic Forum.

Rockström will also speak on 24 January at 07:30 with Christina Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), about another topic: decarbonizing the world’s economies by following a “carbon law” roadmap, through which nations cut their emissions by half every decade.

The event will highlight a new initiative to discuss the role of innovators in the technology sector in catalysing disruptive transformation. The initiative is a partnership between Future Earth, Stockholm Resilience Centre and Mission 2020, a new organisation created by Figueres.

Stockholm Resilience Centre’s Maja Schlueter will also speak on 24 January at 10:45 at the World Economic Forum’s Ideas Lab. She will discuss “amplifying feedbacks” that make it more difficult for people to change their behaviour in sustainable ways. She will explain how society can harness such feedbacks to create situations in which sustainable behaviour begets more sustainable behaviour.