Preliminary schedule of the 7^th Open Meeting 2008

Some general background/ guidelines on each of the four days:

DAY 1 - How do we deal with demographic challenges?
Though demographic challenges are in many ways synonymous with human dimensions research, they
have not yet been explored fully or placed at the center of the Global Environmental Change research
agenda. However, we can immediately understand the importance of research on demography by asking
ourselves some of the following:

What do we aim for in research on demography?
What do we need to know about demographic challenges?
What strategies do we need to put in place to get at the aims identified?
How do we implement those changes that we need?
How do we communicate them and educate people about them?

This day at the Open Meeting will discuss scientific approaches to demography and will include
sessions related to

1. Interactions of demography with specific issue areas of global change such as health,
   urbanization, pollution and environmental degradation, resource uses, etc;
2. The nature of demographic change and its drivers and impacts (e.g. modernization and
   economic integration processes, institutional frameworks, technology, and vulnerability of
   those affected, erosion of resilience as well as emergence of coping capacities in different
   societies);
3. The influence and causes of perceptions and belief systems on demographic challenges (e.g.
   social learning processes, role of traditional and scientific knowledge, cognitive frames,
   behavioral patterns, values and ethics);
4. Internal social feedbacks that impact demography and vice-versa (e.g. economic forces, power relations, gender, culture and religious beliefs, security, violence);

The day should be composed of an opening morning plenary and subsequent set of parallel sessions. The role of the plenary is both to introduce the different topics captured under this heading as well as linkages to the other main challenges of the 7th IHDP Open Meeting. It should also provide a platform for exchanges of insights and views stemming from science and the general public on one of the most central issues of humankind.

DAY 2 - How do we establish social cohesion while overcoming global inequity?
Moving toward sustainability requires a perspective of global social interdependence in order to foster
global equity balanced with local social cohesion.

The elements subsumed under this include risk management, disaster prevention, a balanced allocation
of public and private goods, the increase of adaptive capacities at all levels, the connection of the
movement of labor with social welfare and security, the design of sustainable development pathways,
the reconsideration of economic models for sufficiency, the re-design of the institutional framework of
the flows of finance and goods, and the emergence of global ethics and values towards social cohesion
and global equity.

DAY 3 - How do we deal with limitations of resources and ecosystem services?
Improving quality of life still means increasing resource consumption. Production patterns focus on
increasing production and efficiency gains, but not on sustainability. Efficiency gains often are
counteracted by rebound effects, and are limited by resource availability.

This day contains sessions that discuss the science of approaches to the human dimensions of resource
limitations and ecosystem services in consumption and production. This includes challenges related to

1. interactions of lifestyles, material fluxes, and climate change:
2. What we can learn from the past in which traditional societies adapted to resource limitations
3. understanding of resource limitations from perspectives of business practices
4. developing methodologies, scenarios and storylines for innovative sustainable lifestyles
5. mechanisms and opportunities for international and regional scale communication
6. education, cognition and social learning related to ecosystem services
7. policy making in relation to ecosystem services

The plenary should look to future innovative sustainable lifestyles.

DAY 4 - How do we adapt institutions to address global change?
The day would begin with a plenary debate, looking at three elements of this theme: legal, academic,
and institutional. There should also be a “practical” element to this discussion, meaning the inclusion of
policy perspectives. This debate should give good ground for discussions during the rest of the day,
with the possibility of a semi-plenary following the full plenary, as well as applicable parallel sessions.

A potential semi-plenary later that morning would have a focus on Asia, where the two levels of global
trends and local realities coincide.

Issues for the plenaries and parallel sessions could include but not be limited to: regional perspectives
on broader questions, ongoing experiments and experience, and methodological issues – such as how to
design effective institutions, governance structures and strategies so that they have the capacity to
change existing systems towards sustainable structure, regional institutional approach/ alliances/
newtorks, devolution/ decentralization processes in a broad context, as well as international agreements
development pathways (particularly of China and India), and institutional conditions under which they
can transform towards sustainability.