Upcoming Events

CDT-SIS Conference 20th November 2019

The fifth annual CDT-SIS conference is taking place on the 20th November 2019. This years conference will be titled: ‘Creating a Sustainable World’. Make sure to sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cdt-sis-conference-2019-creating-a-sustainable-future-tickets-59536590545

Water, Energy and Food NEXUS

This conference will feature presenters from across Higher Education Institutions and industry who will present on the water, energy and food Nexus and the challenges that are being faced.

The event will be on the 10th April 2019 and will start with welcoming refreshments at 9am at Boldrewood Campus building 176 lower level and the first presentation will start at 10am. A buffet lunch will be provided and the conference will close at 3.30pm.

Demand for water, energy, and food (WEF) is increasing with global population growth. The WEF Nexus describes the interacting interplay between different sectors by which exploitation of one resource may negatively impact others. Efficient and sustainable WEF resource management is urgently needed to enhance and maintain quality of life. This USRG will spearhead the advancement of understanding of how to develop WEF resources sustainably to benefit societies and the environment. The USRG will provide a focal point for defining and setting the agenda for NEXUS research so that we are placed as a world leader in this field.

This topic is of international importance (World Economic Forum 2011, 2014) and targets the need of societies globally. Economic success is dependent on WEF security and supply, despite ageing infrastructure, increased geopolitical insecurity, and the constraints of targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

To sign up for the conference please can you follow the link to the eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/water-energy-food-nexus-conference-tickets-57593612044

Royal Geographic Society

Annual International Conference 2016

27 August 2014-Royal Geographical Society, London annual conference.The theme for the 2016 Annual Conference is nexus thinking, an approach that has attracted a surge of interest in the last five years among academics, policy-makers and third sector organizations.  The aim of nexus thinking is to address the interdependencies, tensions and trade-offs between different environmental and social domains – an approach to which geographers might feel an inherent attraction.  Rather than seeing energy, food and water resources as separate systems, for example, nexus thinking focuses on their interconnections, favouring an integrated approach that moves beyond national, sectoral, policy and disciplinary silos to identify more efficient, equitable and sustainable use of scarce resources.

The current interest in nexus thinking originated in an influential 2011 report from the World Economic Forum which described water security as the gossamer that links together the web of food, energy, climate, economic growth and human security challenges.  The concept gained further currency in the run-up to the Rio+20 Summit in 2012 and it is currently the focus of the ESRC’s Nexus Network initiative.  Former RGS-IBG President, Professor Judith Rees, also wrote about the value of geographical ideas and methods in addressing current nexus challenges in her 2013 presidential address.

The 2016 annual conference offers an opportunity to take these ideas forward both in the specific context of research on water, energy and food security but also, more widely, by demonstrating the power of geographical thinking to work across disciplinary boundaries, to think relationally and to make connections across time and space.  The conference encourages debate about these issues, including what nexus thinking might add to existing approaches and what its potential might be as a metaphor or method.

 

Find out more HERE