Planet Under Pressure 2012

23 February 2012

How much can we predict climate change? What will be the impacts of our changing demography? How can we sustainably meet our global energy needs while protecting the biodiversity of our planet?

These are just some of the issues that will be addressed by a team of Oxford Martin School academics who will be attending the international conference, Planet Under Pressure 2012, this March.

This global science conference will focus on solutions to the global sustainability challenge and provide a comprehensive update of the pressure planet Earth is now under. The conference will discuss solutions at all scales to move societies on to a sustainable pathway. It aims to provide scientific leadership towards the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development - Rio+20.

Participating academics include:

  • Professor Sarah Harper, Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, who is leading two sessions on People and the Planet: the impact of the demographic transition involving Professor Charles Godfray, Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food.
  • Professor Richard Darton, Professor Steve Rayner, Phil Renforth and Tim Kruger from the Oxford Geoengineering Programme, who will lead two sessions on geoengineering. Geoengineering governance explores the Oxford Principals as a basis for governing geoengineering research while the engineering constraints on proposed geoengineering techniques will be explored in the second session.
  • Tim Palmer, Co-Director of the Programme on Modelling and Predicting Climate, leading Climate Change Prediction: What do we know and how can we best use this information?

  • A group from the Programme on Globalising Tidal Power Generation led by Professor Guy Houlsby and the Biodviersity Institute led by Professor Kathy Willis contributing to the poster exhibition. Professor Yadvinder Malhi, Director of the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests; displaying work depicting Prospects for a tropical forest tipping point and how to avoid it, and James Martin Fellows Lauren Coad and Connie McDermott presenting two posters, The effectiveness of protected areas in reducing deforestation: A case study from the Eastern Arc Mountains, Tanzania and Operationalising equity in national legal frameworks for REDD+: the case of Indonesia.

  • Former Director of the Environmental Change Institute, Professor Diana Liverman, will deliver the first main plenary address on Drivers of global environmental change.
  • Oxford Martin School Advisory Council Members: Lord Martin Rees, former President of the Royal Society, will offer the hosts' welcome address; and Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Director General, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Laurence Tubiana, Director, Institute of Sustainable Development and International Relations will also be taking part in the conference.

The conference takes place at the London International Convention Centre from March 26-29 focusing on solutions to the global sustainability challenge.

Planet Under Pressure - Session pages for further information: