Second meeting
The second meeting of the Transition Team, the committee designing ‘Future Earth– Research for global sustainability’, was held on 9-11 December 2011 in San Francisco. As outlined in the meeting summary, further progress was achieved to define a conceptual framework, a research strategy and a governance for Future Earth.
Participants welcomed the enhanced engagement of the existing Global Environmental Change programmes, and outlined key elements of an institutional design, including the idea of an integrated secretariat. The forthcoming international events (the Planet under Pressure Conference in March and the Rio +20 UN Conference on sustainable development in June) will provide opportunities to communicate on the roadmap and the expected outcomes of the Initiative.
Goals and expected outcomes
The goals of the second meeting are:
- To progress on developing the Earth System Sustainability Initiative (ESSI) – provide input to critical issues
- Develop steps to more effectively engage user community in the development of the ESSI
Expected outcomes are:
- A shared vision on ESSI
- Agreement on first draft of integrated research strategy
- Advancing first draft of institutional design Outline of education/communications/interaction with stakeholders plan
- Outline of data strategy
- Strategy to involve user community in development of the ESSI
- Roadmap for activities/announcement of ESSI at Planet under Pressure, Rio+20 and other 2012 events
- Agreement on the name of the Initiative
- Outline of essential characteristics of the overall transition report and governance structure
- Articulation of plans to relate ESSI to activities of the various Alliance partner
